On today’s summertime Plain English: Minor league baseball and small-town entertainment
Lesson summary
Hi there everyone, I’m Jeff and this is Plain English lesson number 602 on August 28, 2023. Summer is coming to an end, and we’re doing a few shorter, easier lessons here so that our team can enjoy a little bit of a break at the end of the summer. This full lesson can be found at PlainEnglish.com/602.
On today’s lesson, I’ll tell you all about minor league baseball—these are the teams in the small towns, full of players waiting to achieve their dreams of playing on the big stage. In the second half of the lesson, I’ll tell you about the phrasal verb “weed out,” and we have a quote of the week. Let’s get going.
Minor league baseball and small-town entertainment
Baseball is called “America’s pastime” and you know I’m a big fan. Major League Baseball is our top-level league, with 30 teams in the biggest media markets in the country. But beneath the surface, there is another baseball world, a world of young players working their way up, trying to realize their dreams and play in the majors. That world called “minor league baseball,” or just “the minors.”
All 30 major league teams have a network of minor league teams below them—in total , there are 206 minor league teams supporting just 30 major league teams.
The minors have multiple leagues, each with different levels of difficulty. Minors are classified as single-A, double-A, or triple-A. The youngest players, the ones most recently signed out of high school, usually just 17 or 18 years old, they play in single-A teams.
If they do well, they progress to double-A, and then to triple-A. Each level is more competitive than the last. And at each level, some players get weeded out . It’s like a pyramid, with the major league team sitting at the top. Only about ten percent of players who enter the minor league system ever play in the majors.
When players are in the minor league system, they play in smaller markets. Typically, triple-A teams will be in medium-sized cities. Indianapolis, Nashville, Omaha, Des Moines, St. Paul, Toledo, Scranton. These all have Triple-A teams. Double-A and single-A teams play in even smaller cities: Peoria, Illinois; Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Eugene, Oregon; Greensboro, South Carolina.
Life as a minor leaguer isn’t easy. Players make about $25,000 per year; most have other jobs in the off-season. Housing is included in their salaries, but they only get their own bedrooms after reaching Double-A. Minor league teams don’t fly to their away games: they take a bus. And those can be long bus trips. They stay in cheap hotels. They get a meal allowance, but they have to work to make it last the full week.
Minor league teams play in front of small crowds. The stadiums hold between 5,000 and 15,000 fans, but many games draw only a few thousand spectators.
For the spectators who go, though, a minor-league baseball game is family-friendly fun. Tickets are usually only about $10 to $15. Most people buy them at the window on the day of the game—no need to reserve them in advance. You can get in even cheaper if you want to sit on the lawn rather than in a seat.
The teams are fixtures in the local community, but the players aren’t there for long. The good ones get promoted—hopefully up to the major league team—and the not-so-good ones retire and are replaced by younger players. Players usually spend between four and seven years in the minors—after that, they’re either promoted to the majors or released from the system. Players are usually 22 or 23 years old when they’re promoted to the big leagues.
And it’s not just the players who are on this journey. A whole ecosystem of workers is also trying to get promoted. New umpires—those are the officials—they work the games, hoping that they, too, will get promoted to umpire in major league games. Minor league games aren’t usually on television, but they are on the radio. And most major league television and radio broadcasters got their start working the minors, too.
Minor league baseball is small-town American entertainment in the summertime. When you look at a map of the vast, continent-sized country and you think about all those towns and cities that are not in the major media markets—a lot of them have minor league baseball teams nearby. The stands are full of birthday parties, corporate outings, families having a night out, and baseball fans who live far from the nearest major league team.
I used to absolutely love going to minor league baseball games. It was a great excuse for me to get in the car, drive a few hours, see a new town or city, and then see a game at night. The players are all hungry, trying to get promoted. The quality of the games is good. You can sit really close, you see how fast they run, how hard they throw a ball. If you sit up close at a major league stadium, you might pay $200. But you can go to a triple-A game, sit in the first few rows, and maybe pay only $20.
One of my favorite stadiums is in Davenport, Iowa. It looks out on a huge arching bridge over the Mississippi River.
Other than 2020, this was the first year I didn’t go to a single game all year, probably the first time in the last 20-plus years. I definitely miss it.
Quote of the Week
Today’s quote of the week is from the Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho. He says, “The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion.” Once more from Paulo Coelho, ” The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion.”
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