A provision of the new collective bargaining agreement between Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association included an extension through 2016 of what was deemed "charitable payments” delivered to non-vested retired MLB players who played prior to 1980.
These players, who played less than four or five seasons in the majors depending upon their debuts, are eligible for up to $10,000 in annual payments, as agreed upon earlier this season. For some players who just barely missed the cutoff for vesting, they receive checks of close to $10,000 per year; others who played the minimum required 43 days, are receiving as little as $625 per year. This payment is in stark contrast to the $30,000 annual pension payment to a player who debuted after 1980 that was on an active major league roster for the 43-day minimum.
These payments that the non-vested players received, many whose stays in the majors were blocked by the reserve clause in the pre-expansion era, do not have survivors benefits. At a time when they raised the minimum major league salary by 16%, that MLB could have taken this opportunity to include this dwindling group of 900 players in the pension plan.
Author Douglas Gladstone, who wrote the book "A Bitter Cup of Coffee", which brought much needed attention to the plight of the non-vested players, believes that both MLB and the MLBPA missed a golden opportunity to fully right a long engrained wrong.
"It is also unseemly that the union fails to recognize that all these former players helped grow the game. Many of them endured work stoppages and went without checks so that today's crop of players can make what most people think are ridiculous and obscene salaries. The union managed to negotiate a 16% increase, from $414,000 to $480,000, in the minimum salary that all of its players will earn beginning next season. Would it have been so terrible if these retired players were cut in for a slice of the pie as well?"
At a convention of retired MLB players a few months ago, a few players commented that the non-vested players should be happy that they’re getting anything and that if they don’t like it, “they can return the checks.”
Gladstone, who has remained in contact with many of these non-vested players after the release of his book, feels that the current players haven’t advocated enough for those that paved the way for them to enjoy the spoils of major league stardom.
"It is anathema to me how, after more than three decades, neither Major League Baseball, nor the Major League Baseball Players Association want to do right by the ever dwindling number of non-vested, pre-1980 players who do not receive retirement benefits from having played the game they love,” said Gladstone.
“In spite of the fact that all these men can be retroactively restored into pension coverage, provided both parties agree to it in collective bargaining, it is all too apparent that both the league and the union don't want to help these men. And that is why this whole disgraceful chapter in labor relations continues to be a terrible inequity and injustice that stains baseball's history.”
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