Congress, baseball team up to cheat minor leaguers

They’ve gone and done it.

Faced with the prospect of a class action lawsuit because minor league ballplayers do not make a federally-mandated minimum wage for the for the long hours they put in seven days a week, Congress has stuck inside a “must-pass” budget bill the Orwellian-named “Save America’s Pastime Act.” This bill would allow MLB owners to continue to exploit minor league baseball players and pay them a sub-minimum wage as a matter of law.

This act is a response to a series of class action lawsuits by former minor league players who were not paid a federally-mandated minimum wage for their time in the minors. Two years ago, I wrote about an attempt to pass this bill as a…