Colabello hitting a home run for the Blue Jays in 2015.
Links to Chris Colabello Interview Clips:
The Pittsfield Bunkbeds
39 Minutes of Sleep
Minor League Pay Reform
Chris Colabello played seven years of Independent League Baseball before first signing with a MLB affiliate in 2012. Colabello played three seasons in the Twins organization and made his MLB debut with the team in 2013. He was later claimed off of waivers by the Toronto Blue Jays in the winter of 2014. Chris was an integral player on the memorable 2015 Toronto Blue Jays team that reached the American League Championship Series. Chris, a family friend of our designer, Stephen McLendon, shared some of his thoughts on improvements that could be made to the MiLB system, while acknowledging the attractiveness of the job and its inevitably low wages.
"I played seven years on Independent Baseball before I was signed to an MLB affiliated team. I made $750 a month in Indy ball before taxes. The system is built on there being a lot of us who want to play. The line we used to use was 'There's a football field of guys waiting to take your job everyday.' That is true at all levels of pro baseball. The higher the talent level, the longer the list is. If you have a huge demand of players who want to play and a limited supply of jobs, theoretically, you could probably charge people to play. I remember filling out a questionnaire and I was thinking, "All I need is a plane ticket. I don't even care about my signing bonus. I just want to play." That is the wrong way to go about it from the perspective of the athlete and it's going to be that way forever.
These organizations generate ridiculous amounts of revenue and their players at the lower levels are assets for them who will eventually be moved. There are some moral, ethical, and capitalistic questions to be asked about taking better care of these guys if we aren't going to pay for their training and offseason. I think teams are becoming more aware of that. Certainly I understand players who don't feel they are paid enough, but at the same time, I played with David Price and in his locker he hung a sign that said, "If you don't like it, play better." You could look at it both ways. I certainly was on the wrong side of it for a lot of years, but luckily I had a support system and other resources to make it work. Yes, I believe Minor League players should be paid more than minimum wage, but it's not my decision to make. If you want to play, the wage is an unfortunate reality of it.
I have always suggested have a Players' Association for Minor League players. This the reason that the MLB has the MLBPA, because players were being taken advantage of. There were cases of collusion throughout the years reported in baseball. You have these businesspeople that are preying on the fact that the players have a job that a lot of people want to have and they take advantage of that. It allows Minor League players to become expendable assets as opposed to human beings.
In society, the more you have, the more you are given. I remember when I was on the Blue Jays in 2015 and we reached the ALCS, on four separate occasions when I would go out to dinner and got the bill, it had already been paid for. In some capacity you feel indebted to people and I never wanted to feel that way.
I think a Minor League Players' Association would work. It would need someone standing up and doing it or help from the MLBPA. I also always thought a Big Brother program, especially for equipment. That is the hardest part if you are a Minor League player with no agent. You are paying for all of your own stuff at retail prices. On the surface it sounds great, but a lot of thought would need to go into it for either option to work. I think it would be worthwhile.
In winter ball in Mexico, we were making a little bit of money. I made $8000 in cash because it Mexico they already take taxes out. That was more than I ever made in a season up until that point. I played two and half seasons of winter ball and I thought I was rich. After it was all said and done, none of it is all that bad. At the end of the day, at 7:05, somebody turned the lights on, the mound was 60 feet 6 inches away, and you got to play the game that you grew up playing when you were a kid. It's all about perspective. After a Big League career, you could look at Oakland like it's a dump, whereas college guys would think that it's the best field that they ever played at.
This was the craziest run that I ever had to go through. In 2017, I was with the Brewers in AAA Colorado Springs. AAA is pretty good all things considered, depending on where you are. We got rained out a couple times against Iowa earlier in the year. In Colorado Springs, you had to drive to Denver to take the plane because that was the only place that had direct flights and you had to fly everywhere from Springs. We had played that night and left the field at 11:30 PM, a 3:00 AM bus to the airport, which was a two hour drive, 5:45 AM Southwest flight to Iowa direct, we get to the hotel in Iowa around 11:00, 5:05 PM double header, two seven inning games. Next day, day game. Next day, double header. Next day, night game, but the night game was also a travel day the next morning. Six games in four days, morning travel on both sides of it. I think I slept a total of 39 minutes during that series. That's what was tough to me. Getting extended, continuous sleep was usually a challenge.
Food was never really an issue for me because I was a mind over body kind of guy. All I could think about after going 0-4 with two punchies was a buffalo chicken pizza and Dairy Queen. Honestly, I would feel better playing after eating that as opposed to a salad and protein because I never really needed to be at my athletic peak when I was playing. I was a hitter.
I was always lucky. I didn't have a lot of injuries. I didn't have a non-impact injury in my career. In the 16 years that I played, I had a hamstring for like a week and if I really needed to, I could have played on it. My athleticism wasn't what was going to separate me and I think that is the beauty of baseball.
In Indy ball, instead of staying in a hotel, we had to stay in summer camp bunk beds in my fourth year of professional baseball. The bunk beds in Pittsfield were just wooden planks with little soft things on top. There were cockroaches, crickets, and grasshoppers everywhere. We had grown men, guys with kids, in the middle of the summer staying here.
- Chris Colabello