NEW YORK — The executive director of the nonprofit Advocates for Minor Leaguers has recommended that Congress enact legislation nullifying Major League Baseball’s antitrust exemption as it applies to minor league players.
Harry Marino on Wednesday asked the Senate Judiciary Committee to pursue a “Minor League Curt Flood Act” in response to a letter from the four-member committee, chaired by Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat. The letter sent by the committee on June 28 asked the advocacy group about the effect of baseball's 100-year-old antitrust exemption on working conditions in the minor leagues.
Applying antitrust law to the employment of minor league players could allow them to seek free agency sooner, strengthening their leverage to ask for better salaries and other working conditions.
Marino's letter to Congress was obtained Thursday by The Associated Press.
Advocates for Minor Leaguers has pushed in recent years to improve pay, housing and other employment standards for players who generally make between $4,800 and $15,400 annually.
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Those players are subject to Uniform Player Contracts when they enter professional baseball, preventing them from becoming minor league free agents for seven seasons. Marino argued that those UPCs keep players from seeking salaries beyond the MLB-mandated league minimums, ranging...
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