Class A by Lucas Mann

Author:Lucas Mann [Mann, Lucas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-90755-4
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2013-05-07T04:00:00+00:00

I can find only one person who stood up and said the phrase “minor leagues” before a Senate Judiciary Committee during baseball’s antitrust hearings in 1997. He was Dan Peltier, a career journeyman, parts of nine years in the minors, 108 games in the bigs with Texas and San Francisco, one home run against the Cleveland Indians, the highlight of it all. Peltier began his testimony as a baseball player is taught to speak. He acknowledged how much the game had given him, called himself lucky, reiterated that quickly. He was lucky to have been able to play a game for a living, the way so many want to, and he was especially lucky to have an accounting degree from Notre Dame and enough saved to begin an adult life at thirty. Then he spoke of reality. In A-ball, he made $850 per month. Take out a good $50 per month for clubhouse dues, an archaic system in which players have to help the guy whose job it is to wash their jockstraps make a living. Subtract rent, which he was responsible for. Subtract food. Unlivable.

Baseball salaries are different now. The highest-paid major-league player in 1997 made $16 million less than Alex Rodriguez does right now, a goal too lofty for Hank and Sams to even consider as they hang bored on the dugout railing. Minor-league inflation has not caught up. Hank makes $200 more per month than he would have in 1997, and in rookie ball the salary is still $850 monthly.

If it was easy, it wouldn’t be a dream.

It doesn’t matter that this sentence doesn’t make sense.

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