A Bill of Rights for minor league baseball players? Even for California, it’s a bit much

Apparently, this is Bill of Rights season at the California Legislature.

Last month, Los Angeles Assemblyman Miguel Santiago introduced AB 1881, a “Dog and Cat Bill of Rights.” Last week it was a Bill of Rights for minor-league baseball players.

The bill would provide for defining “minor-league baseball players in such a way that they would be subject to California labor laws, prohibit any initial player contract from lasting longer than four years, guarantee that players retain the rights to their names, images, and likenesses, and guarantee that those players who exercise their name, image and likeness rights are not subject to retaliation.”

The bill’s author, Sen. Josh Becker, a San Mateo Democrat, says that “players are asking for fair treatment and the opportunity to make a decent living under decent conditions.”

I have no problem with that. Everyone knows that professional baseball owners are, um, not noted humanitarians.

I’m just wondering if we’re getting a little Bill of Rights-heavy in California.

I heard no call for a Bill of Rights for artists and cartoonists. I’ll officially call for one now if it helps.

As a former ballplayer myself (1969-70 Springfield, Va., Little League Lions, then traded to the Springfield Jays — my power year), I certainly can empathize with minor-league players.

I felt the stark oppression of my two Little League coaches, Maj. Stutz (U.S. Army) and another guy who was an Army sergeant.

They wore the standard U.S. Army olive baseball caps, military fatigue pants and white T-shirts that were ubiquitous in the Washington, D.C., area during the Vietnam War. If that major and sergeant yelled at you to hustle harder, you hustled harder.

There were quite a number of push-ups but no direct critiques of my bed-making. My former Army sergeant father was in charge of that.

As a devoted fan of the now-defunct Washington Senators, I knew suffering anyway. The team might as well have copyrighted the word “hapless.”

There was no Bill of Rights for the Washington Senators. Team owner Bob Short, an alleged Democrat who was treasurer of the national party, moved the whole operation to Arlington, Texas, where they became the Texas Rangers. Former President George W. Bush later became the Rangers’ owner. Baseball was more bipartisan then.

Fun fact: Short also owned the Minneapolis Lakers and moved them to Los Angeles in 1960, hence their incomprehensible Midwestern name for a Los Angeles team.

But here’s the deal: These guys are playing baseball, OK? For money.

I am sure that minor-league baseball players are all indeed oppressed and probably deserve their own special Bill of Rights. But to again put this in perspective, they are being paid to play baseball.

This is not anything like the pressure I faced. Have they ever been yelled at by Maj. Stutz?