“It’s been humbling.”

That’s how Michael Jordan described his experience as a rookie – playing baseball. Jordan went from being the best player in the NBA to a struggling right-fielder with the Birmingham Barons of the Southern League, a Class-AA affiliate of the Chicago White Sox. “For the last nine years,” Jordan told the New York Times in 1994, “I lived in a situation where I had the world at my feet. Now I’m just another minor leaguer in the clubhouse here trying to make it to the major leagues.”

He never made it – and neither will the vast majority of the prospects and suspects down on the farm. This is baseball’s underclass, a group that we rarely pay attention to unless a Jordan comes along, or a name veteran is making a rehab appearance. If you’ve ever thought to yourself how great it would be to get a taste of being a pro baseball player, even in the minors, think again. You’d better be on your way to the bigs, or it gets old fast. Imagine the 1987 movie Bull Durham, but with nearly all the scenes taking place on the bus. Now watch that movie several times a day.

The Durham Bulls have parlayed their exposure from that box-office smash into a successful business, moving up from A-level ball to become the AAA affiliate of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in 1998. Most minor league teams aren’t so upwardly mobile, and there are around 250 of them in North America, many of them playing in front of fewer than 1,000 fans per game.

Millionaire major-league players are coached to tell the media that they’d play the game for free. Try saying that when you’re making $850 a month, and only during the season. That’s the maximum rookie salary in the minors, with a $20 per diem on the road, ostensibly for meals. Reaching AAA status will net you a minimum of $2,150 a month, and if you’re a member of the small handful of independents like the Northern League, you can make more. Maybe even enough to feed a family.

It’s enough to make you want to rejoin the Chicago Bulls and win three more championships, isn’t it?