Will MLB's battle with the minor leagues deal a blow to America's heart?

Andy Shea, the president of the Lexington Legends, is the embodiment of the minor league baseball dream. The minor leagues are a peculiarly American place where – in the idealized world, at least – clubs exist at the heart of smaller towns and cities in America, far away from the commercialization of the big leagues, and fans gather at the local ballpark on warm summer evenings to drink cold beer and eat hot dogs to a soundtrack of food vendors’ cries and the crack of bat on ball.

After graduating from Boston College 16 years ago, Shea moved to Lexington to work for the Legends (his family owned the club), starting out near the bottom as a door-to-door salesman and parking attendant. He thought he would stay in Kentucky for a year, then maybe two before moving on, but fell in love with the minor leagues, the Legends and the surrounding communities, and he now serves as the team’s president.

“Minor league baseball is for everyone. On any given night you can talk to everyone from a bank president to a family of four attending for free because of their child’s reading program and everyone in between,” Shea says. Tickets and concessions at Legends games, and most minor league games, are a fraction of the cost of their MLB counterparts. The Legends offer 25c hot dog nights, all while donating free tickets to the community.

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But like much in the modern United States, things are changing. And if Major League Baseball (MLB) moves forward with its plans, approximately 220 Legends employees ranging from Shea to seasonal vendors – and thousands more at clubs across the country – could soon be out of work.

Last Sunday presidential candidate Bernie Sanders held an event in Iowa that was a far cry from his typical stump speech. He sent a booming message as he took batting practice and threw grounders as representatives from three Minor League Baseball (MiLB) teams looked on. Two of those clubs, the Clinton LumberKings and Burlington Bees, are among the 42 minor league teams – including the Legends – that MLB is targeting for contraction when the current deal between the two leagues expires at the end of the 2020 season. The 42 teams targeted are smaller minor league clubs that are central to their communities. All of them are affiliates of MLB franchises, the feeder clubs where prospects are cultivated and veteran major leaguers are designated for rehab assignments, and several have been around for decades.

Part of MLB’s proposal includes shifting teams to new locations and moving some short-season teams to full-season status. But the bottom line is if the proposal is successful, minor league baseball will be reduced from 160 guaranteed teams to just 118. MLB claims its key rationale for the proposed changes is MiLB’s failure to address facilities improvements, MLB overly subsidizing MiLB operations, and reducing travel times for teams.

Sanders isn’t buying it. He grew up a massive Brooklyn Dodgers fan only to be devastated as a 16-year-old when the team departed for Los Angeles. For Sanders, the proposal to eliminate approximately 25% of minor league clubs is personal. Back in November, Sanders wrote a letter to the MLB commissioner, Rob Manfred, urging him to reconsider, and calling the proposed contraction “an absolute disaster for baseball fans, workers and communities throughout the country”. He also warned of “turning off families and young children across the country to the game of baseball” and called on MLB to pay its minor league players a living wage. As Sanders points out in the letter, minor league players make as little as $1,160 a month, which is below the $7.25 federal minimum wage.

Sanders may be the splashiest political name crusading to save these 42 clubs but he’s hardly alone. Four house representatives created the Save Minor League Baseball Task Force last month. They have been joined by more than 100 members of Congress in a display of bipartisanship that has become increasingly rare on Capitol Hill.

Saving minor league baseball is low-hanging fruit for most politicians. Many of their constituents love baseball and have an intimate relationship with these minor league clubs, and the quest to keep them around is not exactly a fiery political issue like taxes or reproductive rights. But for many of the politicians it’s also an opportunity to showcase a deeper understanding of the clubs’ place in the community, something that extends beyond dollar signs.

“I can’t tell you how many families in Lowell don’t have the opportunity to go to Fenway Park. These teams, these parks, allow kids to experience baseball,” Massachusetts congresswomen Lori Trahan told reporters at the press conference announcing the task force.

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The 42 clubs that may not exist in 2021 have employed a business-as-usual approach, heavily marketing their upcoming seasons. And they are also aware of the swelling political support.

“It’s amazing. When you look at Bernie Sanders and the 106 people from Congress that signed, it’s bipartisan and that’s something that catches everyone’s attention,” says Shea. “It makes you feel good about what you’re doing, about your industry, and what your sport is doing.”

Like many minor league teams, the Legends pride themselves in community outreach and charitable efforts. Shea says the team donated $1m in cash and in kind donations to charities and to community programs such as ‘Stache Tank where students are given a budget to create and execute a club promotion. Yes, the Legends’ mascot is a mustache.

Tensions between MLB and MiLB have reached boiling point in recent days. MiLB issued a four-page letter criticizing MLB for “repeating and inaccurately” describing MiLB’s stance on a variety of issues. MLB shot back with a scathing statement threatening to eradicate MiLB.

“If the National Association [of Minor League Clubs] has an interest in an agreement with Major League Baseball, it must address the very significant issues with the current system at the bargaining table,” the statement read. “Otherwise, MLB clubs will be free to affiliate with any minor league team or potential team in the United States, including independent league teams and cities which are not permitted to compete for an affiliate under the current agreement.”

It was a knee-jerk response and very unlikely to happen. Still, Sanders seized the moment and wrote a follow-up to Manfred that was far less polite than his first letter. “I’m outraged,” Sanders began.

He reiterated how the nation has rallied around minor league baseball. How the optics of MLB doling out contracts worth a combined $792m to star free agents Gerrit Cole, Anthony Rendon and Stephen Strasburg over the last week but needing to shutter a quarter of its minor league system makes no sense to the public. How baseball should not be viewed as just another corporation.

“The time has come for Major League Baseball to stop these bogus threats, withdraw your proposal to eliminate 42 teams, negotiate in good faith and pay minor league players a living wage,” he concluded.

Whether or not MLB makes a concerted effort to allow these organizations to exist remains to be seen but for now one thing is clear: Sanders and other politicos have gained clout with baseball fans.