Is it ballplayers or state legislators who are minor league?

Memo to Florida legislators: minor league baseball players aren’t minor league human beings. In fact, folks, in the United States there are no minor league human beings. All of us are created equal.

While equality gets lip service in Tallahassee, it often gets lost in practice – and even in rhetoric.

Case in point, bills advanced last week in the House and Senate to exempt minor league ballplayers from Florida’s minimum wage, which guarantees all of us in Florida more than the federal minimum.

Legislators voiced four shaky reasons to exclude these 18- to 25-year-olds from even the minimum wage for their work in Florida.

First, the federal minimum wage is only $7.25 an hour, while Florida’s now is $11 and will rise $1 a year until it reaches $15 on Sept. 30, 2026. The US exempts pro baseball players from a minimum wage, so why, lawmakers ask, shouldn’t Florida?

The answer is simple: Floridians by vote amended our constitution to pay more than a federal minimum. We decided to do better across the board, so why stoop below that just for minor league baseball? It might not be constitutional to override the will of Florida voters in amending the constitution, which trumps the Legislature.

Second, the case made for this measure includes that minor league players are just trying out for big money in Major League Baseball, where minimum pay last season was $700,000 and the ceiling is multiple tens of millions. So, minor league players are on the trail of huge money.

That’s true if they reach the major leagues. But the vast majority of the 750 minor league players in Florida will never play a day of Major League Baseball. Even if some do, until then they have to eat and pay rent just like you do – they can’t live on future paychecks. They deserve the same minimum wage the rest of us get.

The third argument is the reverse: the players would be eating dirt if they weren’t in pro baseball – they are second class and lucky to be getting any money at all.

“Most of these players are from Third World countries where, if they remained in their country, their best-case scenario would be to earn $5,000 or $10,000 a year,” Sen. Ed Hooper of Clearwater argued last week. That is, whatever they get is good enough for them.

That’s a very clear message: minorities aren’t good enough for what the rest of us are due. It’s also part of an unstated belief: minor league players may work here, but the vast majority aren’t from Florida but other states and – even worse – other nations. They aren’t worthy of the protections Florida workers get.

This concerted effort to pay pro baseball players less than the rest of us didn’t come out of thin air. It came from teams that don’t want to spend a dime more.

Until this year a Florida minor league minimum wage exemption wouldn’t have altered anything, because minor league players by contract all got more than the $290 per week federal minimum wage and at least as much as Florida’s minimum. Minimum wage rules were immaterial.

But last Sept. 30, after the 2022 season, the minimum began to be felt. The lowest pay in baseball, in rookie leagues, is $400 weekly, which was equal to last year’s $10 minimum wage in Florida.

But Florida’s minimum now is $11, which would give a covered rookie $440 – $40 a week over what they would otherwise get. Next year the gap would be $80 and the following year $120, up to a $200 per week gap in September 2026 if baseball doesn’t raise its contract levels.

These changes affect all 18 rookie teams in the Florida Complex League, which plays in Major League Baseball’s Florida spring training sites.

Florida also has 10 teams in the Florida State League, where players get $500 per week minimum. But there would be a $100 gap to reach a $15 Florida minimum wage in three years or so. Players on the Miami Marlins’ Jacksonville and Pensacola affiliates are higher paid and wouldn’t be affected.

None of these 30 teams is in Miami-Dade but, combined, spring training of Major League teams and these 30 teams yields a significant economic impact in Florida.

That brings us to the fourth argument fueling this foul ball: ensure that spring training and minor league baseball remain in Florida, says Sen. Jonathan Martin of Fort Myers, the sponsor of the Senate bill, who also called minor league baseball a benefit-filled “extended tryout period.”

But a threat to leave Florida if teams don’t get their way is empty. The Florida Marlins threatened to leave for Las Vegas if they didn’t get their new $3 billion stadium. That ploy succeeded for everyone but taxpayers, who still owe far more than $2 billion on that stadium, a bill that soon comes due.

Of course, as Marlins then-owners gleefully bragged afterward, there was no chance of really going to Las Vegas, or anywhere. It was a toothless threat that succeeded.

The same is true of minor league teams leaving if they can’t chisel young players out of $100 or so apiece each week. Spring training isn’t going anywhere fast. Cities throughout Florida have at their expense built the teams 17 stadiums that would be hard to replicate.

Also hard to replicate is the proximity of significant population centers within short bus rides of games. Building a stadium far from other teams wouldn’t work. Ask Homestead, which built a $22 million, $6,500-seat stadium for Cleveland Indians spring training that the team never used because the bus rides were too far and local population too small.

Even if teams could cluster population centers and stadiums, where would they find Florida weather? Teams are here not because they love us but because they love all that we provide to them, including a lure to hometown fans who are happy to spend spring in Florida rather than the cold North.

Still, in a Republican-controlled legislature a bill to hold down cheap baseball wages for kids is likely to wind up on the governor’s desk to sign.

That could create a conflict for Ron DeSantis, who is proud that he captained his college baseball team and realizes that pro baseball is actually work – and a living.

But then, the players on his team at Yale were not the poor minorities who would have been lucky to get $5,000 or $10,000 a year at home. The governor’s empathy may be severely tested.

This is opening day. Play ball.