The not so glamorous life of the Minor League Baseball player
By Ben Verlander
FOX Sports MLB Analyst
It’s a dream come true.
The moment you hear your name called on draft day, your dream becomes reality.
All of the lessons growing up, Little League, high school, college, all of the blood, sweat and tears you put in have led to that moment.
"With the 426th pick in the 2013 draft, the Detroit Tigers select outfielder Ben Verlander."
I put my head in my hands and couldn’t hold back the tears. My dream had come true. I was going to be a professional baseball player.
Within a few days, my bags were packed, and I was heading to Lakeland, Florida, to sign my contract and make it official.
All of the other draft picks and I were put up in dorms at "Tigertown" in Lakeland. The dorms were worse than any college dorms I’ve ever seen. We're talking tile floors, springy bunk beds, nasty community showers, the smell of mold — the whole nine yards.
I showed up for professional baseball and immediately realized the minor leagues aren’t as glamorous as most people think. Not even close.
After a few days, I was off to my first location to play for the Connecticut Tigers in Norwich, Connecticut. My professional baseball career was underway.
I walked out of the locker room and onto the concourse of Dodd Stadium and was greeted by local media wanting to hear my thoughts.
I’ll forever remember that moment: walking out, seeing the field and thinking to myself, "This is my home."
It was awesome. It was beautiful. It was the start of my career.
That career would be full of ups and downs, with me sometimes feeling like a superstar, other times grinding it out and a lot of the time just pushing through.
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From the travel to the food to the releases to the clubhouses, Minor League Baseball is full of incredible life experiences. One thing it isn’t, though? Glamorous.
Some of the greatest memories of my life come from traveling from city to city on a bus in the minor leagues.
Often, we'd spend all night on the bus, with players just lying in the middle aisle, trying to get comfortable enough to fall asleep.
In my second season, when I was playing for the West Michigan Whitecaps, the longest road trip we had all year was to Bowling Green, Kentucky. It was a 10-hour bus ride, there and back.
We played a series against the Bowling Green Hot Rods, and for whatever reason, the series ended with a night game instead of the typical day game on "getaway day." (Getaway day is the last day of the series, and it's called that because usually the visiting team travels right after the game to get back home or to the next opponent.)
Naturally, on getaway day, the game went into extra innings, and we didn’t get on the road until midnight. We didn’t get back home until after 10 a.m. and had to play that day at 1 p.m.
That pretty much sums up the travel life of a Minor League Baseball player.
Then there's the food situation.
The food differs greatly depending on which team you’re on. I played on teams that didn’t provide postgame meals, I played on teams that ate like kings after games, and I played on teams that were given half a baked potato for dinner.
I want to talk about why this is such a big deal.
Minor-league players are not millionaires, though some might think so. In my first season as a professional baseball player, I made $6,000.
I played 142 games in 150 days. I was at the baseball field from 12 p.m. until midnight. Six thousand dollars is a bit ridiculous.
One time, one of my best friends literally didn’t have enough money to put gas in his car. He ended up making it to the big leagues but was almost forced to give up on his dream because he didn’t have the money to continue.
One thing that always needs to be taken care of is the pre- and postgame meal. Professional athletes need to fuel their bodies properly in order to compete at the highest level, and unfortunately, minor-leaguers don’t have the money to make that happen on their own.
Recently, members of the Oakland Athletics organization posted pictures of their "meals," and it became quite the talking point on social media.
The sad truth is that this is the norm. The meals provided for dinner in the minor leagues often aren't enough food for a middle schooler.
I was told countless times: "If you don’t like it, play better."
Regulations surrounding COVID-19, as well as challenges that come after a year with no minor league games being played and a total restructuring of the minor league system have made this year even tougher than your typical season.
But still, the unofficial slogan of the minors lives on — if you don’t like it, you need to play better so you get moved up
As for living arrangements, that can be a whole different grind of its own.
At the lower levels, organizations typically have a host family system set up. Each player is essentially taken in by a family so he doesn't have to find a place or food on his own.
I don’t know how I would’ve survived without my host families. The Whipple family and the Lewandowski family were lifesavers for me, and my professional career couldn’t have continued without them.
Once you get to a certain level, however, there is no more host family system. You’re on your own to figure it out. Typically, that means five or six guys will live together in a house meant for four people.
Those houses can best be described as being like dingy frat houses. They were just gross, but you did what you had to do to make ends meet.
I’ve also seen it happen that someone moves into a place and then gets moved to another team almost immediately. You can’t ever get settled. At the drop of a hat, you could be moving up a level or down a level or to a totally different organization via a trade.
Clubhouses are also a big deal at the professional level because the majority of your time is spent there. You get to the field early and do everything pregame there, and then postgame, you’re there for showers and dinner.
For a 7 p.m. game, you’re at the stadium from noon until about an hour after the game ends. That’s almost 12 hours a day at the field.
I will always remember the first road clubhouse I visited. It was in Burlington, Vermont, and it was quite literally a small shack with a dirt floor. It was behind the outfield wall and under the bleachers.
That's not exactly what you picture when you think of being a pro athlete.
As time went on, I played in some stadiums with awesome locker rooms that made you want to spend all day there and some not so great ones that made you want to get ready for the game at the hotel.
It becomes a job. Yes, you are still playing a game, but it’s most certainly a job, and you continue to push through the hardships for a chance at the ultimate goal: Major League Baseball.
With every step you make, you can feel it. You get closer and closer to the major-league level. You see guys who were your teammates make it, and it makes you believe all over again.
You can’t focus on how hard it is. You have to focus on how close you are.
The takeaway here is that once you get drafted, baseball becomes a business. It’s all about the bottom line and making as much money as possible for those at the top. It isn't about a glamorous or even comfortable experience for those involved.
Unfortunately, for years, that has meant underpaying and cutting corners wherever possible at the minor-league level: the pay, the nutrition, the hotels, the clubhouses, the list goes on.
Some of the best experiences of my life came when I was a professional baseball player, but it’s not easy. It’s not always "fun." It’s certainly not glamorous, and it's a daily grind.
But I would do it all again in a heartbeat.
Ben Verlander is an MLB Analyst for FOX Sports and the host of the "Flippin' Bats" podcast. Born and raised in Richmond, Virginia, Verlander was an All-American at Old Dominion University before he joined his brother, Justin, in Detroit as a 14th-round pick of the Tigers in 2013. He spent five years in the Tigers organization. Follow him on Twitter @Verly32.