Recently on HBO there was a special report on the pay for minor league baseball players. here is the link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=tfgsenSCyPE&app=desktop
There is a huge difference in pay from a major league player and a minor league player. I remember Carlos Castillo telling me that his check when he got called up was somewhere in the $8500 range. He had been there for two weeks. I didn't make that much for a whole season. Yes sir my first year with the White Sox I earned every penny of the $4200.00 before taxes. It was probably about $3500.00 after. Now that was only five months of work, since I signed as a free agent on May 6th. I will mention that the following year when I went to spring training I was paid $36 a week, which I had to give the club house manager $8.00. They fed all of us three meals a day which included breakfast, a sack lunch and dinner at the hotel. Who can live on $36 a week? I am thankful that The Organization paid for the hotel while I was there. When I did the break down of my last years salary with the Sox I was earning $1250.00 a month before taxes. I went to the office or the ballpark just about everyday of the season which starts the first week of April and can go to the middle of
September if team made it to playoffs. We play 140 games plus playoffs in 150 days. So lets do the math. The typical day started for me about 11:30am with flips or short toss with the hitting coach (some guy started earlier) and then early work with the positional fielding coaches, side pens with pitchers, full stretch run and throw, batting practice, break for the other team to take batting practice, suit up and then a 7:05 game start, finish by 10:00, then weights, shower, leave exhausted 11:00pm. Road trips meant morning lifting so the day started earlier and ended after the game. Twelve hours a day for 150 days equals exactly 1800 hours of work. That is only 20 hours less than an average person working 40 hours a week working 50 weeks a year. I use 50 weeks instead of 52 because everyone gets a vacation. We would get three days a season for All-Star Break. So I earned $7500.00 that season divided by 1800 hours comes out to be $4.17 an hour. Wow, what an idiot I seemed to be on paper now that I actually did the breakdown. I was worth so much more than that as a drywall apprentice. I earned $14.00 an hour doing that. As a professional hitting instructor I earned $60.00 an hour doing that. If I would have made it to the majors and sat the bench for a full season I would have earn $270,000 in 1999. I earned 2.7% of the major league minimum in 1999. I was blind a stupid, chasing my childhood dream. I was once asked if I would play professional baseball for free? I didn't think twice about my answer either. Hell No! Then I would say that my time is worth more than that. I laugh now because my time really wasn't. It was worth $4.17 per hour. So in the off season I would work my butt off saving money so I could weather spring training and the first two weeks of the season till I would receive that check. Also if you cried about it they would hand you a Taco Bell application and say, "Taco Bell is hiring why don't you go there?"
So this is the second reason I decided to become a doctor. I want to receive the compensation that I am worth. I have a tremendous amount of value and I feel I should be compensated handsomely for it. I'm glad some players finally sued for wage equality. I hope they win and all of us that played receive a check for back pay. It would help with some of my current expenses as I finish my last year. The lower 10% of chiropractors earn around $96,000 per year. That is still 12 times greater than the average minor league player makes. According to MLB, the average MLB player earns $3.39 million! http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/10158314/mlb-average-salary-54-percent-339-million So as a chiropractor in the lower 10% of earners this would still be 3% of what the average MLB player earns. I figure I find comical.
