By Garth Shanklin
Sports Editor

Let’s play a quick word association game. I’ll throw out a word, you tell me your first thoughts that come to mind. Ready? Here we go! The word is: Congress.

Now, if you’re like most people, the words you immediately thought of weren’t very nice. Synonyms of useless, spineless, slow-acting, etc. very well could have popped into your mind. It’d be hard to blame you, given everything talked about in most media circles regarding Congress is the distinct inability to do something, anything, about gun violence in the country. No increased background checks, no banning the sale of guns to people on the no-fly list, no increased funds for mental health care. No anything.

They tried, bless their hearts, to do something last month. Four bills were voted on in the Senate, all four failed for one reason or another. The House got so frustrated they organized a sit-in, which did wonders for their popularity but very little to actually solve the problem.

So, while we wait for something to happen on important legislation that, according to the Washington Post, roughly 90 percent of the country wants, it can’t hurt to check what other legislation the representatives in Washington, D.C. are introducing.

Lo and behold, one of the newer bills actually has something to do with sports. H.R 5580, or the so-called “Save America’s Pastime Act” was introduced in the House of Representatives in late June by Illinois Democat Cheri Bustos and Kentucky Republican Brett Guthrie.

A quick trip over to Congress.gov would in theory tell you all you need to know about the former bill, except it doesn’t. Since all the bill would do is change an existing law, you really need to dig a little deeper to figure out what the differences will be.

Once you realize the law that Bustos and Guthrie want to adjust is the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, things begin to get a bit more interesting. The proposed bill would remove a period from a paragraph and add the phrase “any employee who has entered into a contract to play baseball at the minor league level” into the legislation. It would also add a subsection that prevents “the provisions of section seven” from applying to those same employees who signed that minor league contract.

Section seven of the FLSA is the section that deals with maximum hours. Minor leaguers currently have to put in lengthy hours, when you factor in practices, games, warm-ups and training. The pay they receive isn’t scaled to those hours, instead they are paid on a per-month basis.

According to Jeff Blank, a former Los Angeles Dodgers broadcaster and a lawyer, minor leaguers are paid depending on where they play. Short-season teams, such as the Billings Mustangs, pay players roughly $1,150, according to Blank. That number increases to $1,300 for teams in low-A ball, like the Dayton Dragons, while high-A teams like the Daytona Tortugas pay players roughly $1,500 per month.

Once you make the jump to AA, which for the Reds would make you a member of the Pensacola Blue Wahoos, the monthly pay increases to $1,700 per month. Players at the highest level of minor league competition, AAA, earn $2150 per month.

Those numbers do change. If you repeat a level, your pay is $50 higher than the previous year at every level below AA. The AA level increases by $100 per month. In AAA, the second year of pay is $250 higher and the third year is $300 higher than the second, meaning players in their third year of AAA ball with the Louisville Bats make roughly $2,700 per month, according to Blank.

If a player is placed on the 40-man roster, those numbers jump. Players can also become free agents and negotiate higher salaries, as you would expect.

What does this have to do with the recently introduced legislation? A lot, as it turns out. Major League Baseball is quietly facing a lawsuit by three former minor league players alleging minor leaguers are underpaid and exploited.

According to the lawsuit, minor leaguers are often paid less than $7,500 per season but receive no overtime despite the fact is is required. The players contend that they are forced to sign contracts that prevent them from signing with other teams, as minor leaguers cannot become minor-league free-agents until after their sixth season. The players also say that they work year-round, yet are only paid during the regular season.

Minor League Baseball said the suit “threatens baseball’s decades-old player development system with an unprecedented cost increase” and that cities would be “in jeopardy of losing their minor league teams.”

That seems a tad odd, since Major League Baseball hauled in over $9 billion in revenue in 2015, according to NBC Sports’ Bill Baer. It’s especially odd since the Minor League Baseball website itself states as an answer to one of the questions on an FAQ page “Minor League Baseball player contracts are handled by the Major League Baseball office.”

If the higher-ups are handling the contracts, it’s highly unlikely the owners of the Dragons are actually asked to pay the players wages themselves.

The player development contracts teams sign with their major-league counterparts allow the major-league squads to handle all decisions regarding player development, including contract negotiations. Some teams, such as the St. Louis Cardinals, actively own at least one of their minor league affiliates, in this case the Springfield Cardinals.

That said, most teams are still privately owned by members of the community. Those teams do not pay the salaries for the players, just employees. Those employees have to be paid certain amounts for the work they do because of the FLSA, yet the players themselves can be paid far less while working just as long. One would think this is a violation of the FLSA, and it likely is, especially since a second part of the proposed legislation banns any liability or punishment on the behalf of the employer for violating the act.

Why would two people propose legislation that undercuts the right of workers? Say what you want about the salaries of Major Leaguers, minor league ballplayers are not making anywhere near their major league counterparts. They don’t have a union to protect them from legislation like this, which has been wholly backed by Minor League Baseball.

Between the two congresspersons, three minor league teams are represented. Guthrie’s district contains the Bowling Green Hot Rods while part of Bustos’ district lies in Peoria, Illinois, home of the Peoria Chiefs. Another part of Bustos’ district is the Quad Cities, a group of four cities along the Illinois/Iowa border. The Quad Cities River Bandits call that area home, though they are in Iowa, not Illinois.

It’s highly unlikely any of those minor league teams have enough clout to sway local politicians, but the major leagues certainly do. According to OpenSecrets.org, a website that tracks political donations, the Major League Baseball Political Action Committee has given Reps. Bustos and Guthre $4,000 each since 2014. Many people probably aren’t aware MLB even has a PAC, yet not only do they have one it would appear they actually know what to use it for. To be fair to MLB, the NFL also has a PAC and used it to give Senator John Thune’s campaign $10,000. The Republican from South Dakota also convienently is the head of the Senate Commerce Committee, the same committee the NFL and other sports leagues testified in front of about domestic violence in 2014.

To be fair to Bustos, she withdrew her support from the bill late last week after “hearing from you and learning more the last 24 hours.” It’s amazing how quickly positions can change when people from both sides of the aisle begin yelling at you publicly.

That said, the bill is not yet dead, and until it does it’s still a problem. It’s clear that while Minor League baseball supports the bill, there’s no way of knowing if the teams themselves do or not. I’d like to believe they don’t, but there’s no way to tell.

I went to college in Peoria at Bradley University. The Bradley baseball team shares Dozer Park with the Peoria Chiefs, and the summer in between my junior and senior year I covered the Chiefs for the St. Louis Cardinals Scout.com website. I’ve worked with the people in that stadium before, and I know they care about the players that come through there. They wouldn’t want them to be used by a system they have no say in.

Yet, should the bill pass, that’s exactly what would happen. The players’ best hope is the aforementioned lawsuit, but exempting minor leaguers from the rules gives the suit no basis to stand on. It would fail, and with it any hope the players have at making a decent wage.

Aside from the financial impact, the league and the players are already on different sides of the issue, and driving a wedge between the players at the minor league level and the league itself does more harm than good to both parties.

So, as fans of the game, that leaves us with two options. We can either do nothing and hope Congress does the same, which to be frank is a fairly likely option these days, or we can take action by reaching out to the members of Congress themselves and letting them know where we stand.

As of this writing, Tuesday, July 5, the bill currently sits in committee, and while no Ohio representatives are on the committee, at least one area of the tri-state is represented. If you happen to be reading this in southeast Indiana, congratulations, you’re in luck! Republican Luke Messer is on the committee, though he too has received campaign contributions from MLB’s PAC.

As for the rest of us, it’s a waiting game. Sure, it’s likely that the bill becomes so weighed down with ridiculous riders that have nothing to do with baseball, thus ensuring it’s ultimate demise, or it could be something seen as simple enough that no changes are made to it and it’s allowed to the floor. If that’s the case, the people need to make their voices heard, because if there’s one thing we know about Congress, it’s that they always listen to the will of the people.