Senator proposes minor league baseball bill; what would Dick Durbin's 'Fair Ball Act' accomplish?

The Save America's Pastime Act was nothing if not cleverly titled. The proposed bill — whose language was eventually folded into the March 2018 federal spending bill — amended the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to exempt minor league baseball players from minimum wage and maximum hours requirements.

How that "saved America's pastime" remains dubious. It was birthed only by virtue of several years — and several million dollars' worth — of lobbying efforts by Major League Baseball. It effectively removed a serious legal challenge to one of baseball's basic employment practices. Minor league salaries have historically been so poor, they scarcely stood a challenge in court against federal labor law.

Five years later, in March 2023, minor league baseball players formally unionized, choosing the MLB Players' Association as its bargaining representative. The first collective bargaining agreement between MLB and minor league baseball players took effect days later, saving perhaps hundreds of young athletes the awkward reality of looking for offseason jobs while trying to reach the big leagues.

Now, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin has introduced new legislation to safeguard against the salary gains players achieved under union representation from getting rolled back in the future. The goal of the "Fair Ball Act" is to incentivize MLB to maintain a collective bargaining agreement with minor leaguers, and to prevent MLB from using the minimum wage and overtime exemptions as leverage during future negotiations.

“Workers deserve a fair playing field everywhere — including in baseball," Durbin said in a statement Wednesday. "Executives at MLB lobbied Congress hard for federal wage and hour law exemptions in order to avoid legal liability with the 2018 Save America’s Pastime Act.  While I commend MLB for voluntarily recognizing the unionization of Minor League Baseball players in 2022, it is time to rollback SAPA in deference to the gains made by that historic unionization. I’m proud to stand with these workers, unions, and the integrity of the sport. I stand ready to pass the Fair Ball Act into law."

The MLB Players' Association has already come out in support of the bill.

“The Fair Ball Act appropriately narrows SAPA so that Minor League ballplayers will be exempted from federal wage and hour laws if and only if their compensation has been determined via good faith collective bargaining,” executive director Tony Clark said. “This is a win for Minor Leaguers, for baseball, and indeed for workers and collective bargaining as a whole.”

It's not the only piece of legislation lawmakers will try to enact before Republicans assume control of both the White House and Congress in January, but it likely is one of few of interest to sports fans.

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