A guest post from author Douglas J. Gladstone centering on Vince Colbert--one of 516 pre-1980 MLB retirees currently ineligible for a pension

 

Three years ago, I had a telephone conversation with Vince Colbert, who was born in Washington, D.C. and who attended Eastern Senior High School. I had the unpleasant task of telling him that he was not receiving a Major League Baseball (MLB) pension for his time in the game, when he was a pitcher for the then Cleveland Indians during the early 1970s.

I wasn’t trying to embarrass Colbert, who now makes his home in The Forest City on Blanford Road. Lots of former ballplayers who I’ve spoken to believe they’re receiving a pension from having played the game. 

 

What Colbert and 516 other men who played prior to 1980 have been getting is called a non-qualified retirement annuity. What that means is the payment cannot be passed to a widow, loved one, family member or other designated beneficiary. When the man passes, the payment passes with him.

All the men like Colbert receive are these yearly stipends of $718.75 for every 43 game days they were on an active MLB roster, up to a maximum payment of $11,500. They’re getting them due to a 1980 vesting change which made it easier for players to qualify for a pension. Prior to 1980, a player needed four years to be eligible for a MLB pension. For the past 44 years, all you’ve needed is 43 days on an active MLB roster. 

So if the Washington Nationals put you on their roster on August 15th, and you stayed with the team through September 27th, you’ll get an annual MLB pension when you turn 62-years-of-age.

Unfortunately, that sweetheart deal wasn’t made retroactive to include the men like Colbert, who had more than 43 days of service but less than four years. 

Meanwhile, the maximum pension you can get now is $275,000. But the annual stipend Colbert gets is worth only about $8,000 per year. And that is before taxes are taken out. 

In his final season, in 1972, Colbert’s salary was $16,500. These days, the minimum salary for the last man on the bench is $740,000.

Times sure have changed. Nationals pitcher Trevor Williams earns $7 million a year and he is the second highest paid player on the team. Only Patrick Corbin, who signed a six-year, $140 million contract in 2018, earns more. 

In my opinion, the game has forgotten about Colbert and the other non-vested retirees.  After all, it was the men like Colbert who walked the picket lines, endured labor stoppages and went without paychecks so Shohei Ohtani could sign a 10-year, $700 million contract.

I find that kind of money obscene. Especially when the median household income in Washington D.C. is only a reported $90,000 and 16.5 percent of people live below the poverty line. 

Colbert deserves to be treated better if only because he was the first African American to ever receive an athletic scholarship from East Carolina University (ECU).

Colbert, who pitched and played hoops for the ECU Pirates, was inducted into the college’s Sports Hall of Fame in 2009. According to the school, not only did the two-sport star average over 14 points and seven rebounds per game, but he helped the Pirates win back-to-back Southern Conference baseball titles in 1967 and '68.

There are two men who could help Colbert. One is Tony Clark, the executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, which is the union that represents current ballplayers. As the winner of the Negro Leagues Museum's prestigious Jackie Robinson Award for Social Justice in 2017, Clark should be going to bat for, not only Colbert, but all the men affected, irrespective of the color of their skin.

The other is Hall of Famer Jim Thome, the president of the Colorado Springs, Colorado-based Major League Baseball Players Alumni Association (MLBPAA) who had his number retired by the Indians in 2018.  

You would think the MLBPAA would be sounding the alarm about this blight on the national pastime. But you only hear the sound of crickets coming out of Colorado Springs. Remember the Robert DeNiro baseball movie Bang the Drum Slowly? The MLBPAA isn’t banging the drum loudly or quickly. It has been quiet as a church mouse. 

It is anathema to me why neither Clark nor Thome aren’t doing their more to help the men like Colbert. One possible answer is a quote attributed to the founder of the American Newspaper Guild, the late Haywood Broun:

“Sports does not build character,” he once wrote. “It reveals it.”

Douglas J. Gladstone authored the book, A Bitter Cup of Coffee: How MLB & The Players Association Threw 874 Retirees a Curve

 

 

 

 

A guest post from author Douglas J. Gladstone centering on Steve Whitaker and Bill Dillman who are among 516 pre-1980 MLB retirees currently ineligible for a pension

 

Twenty-three years ago, former Major League Baseball (MLB) player Steve Whitaker and his son, Chad, founded the real estate company that bears their name. Located on Southeast Ninth Avenue in Fort Lauderdale, Whitaker Realty bills itself as a company that is “passionate” about real estate.

The company sells high-end properties that result in handsomely paid brokerage fees, like the waterfront Fort Lauderdale home previously owned by two-time Stanley Cup champion Willie Mitchell and his wife that went for $4.5 million. Or the Hillsboro Mile mansion that a Whitaker associate sold for $14.9 million.

Given all the financial success he’s attained after hanging up his spikes, you might not think that Whitaker would give a flying fig that he’s among the remaining 516 retirees not receiving MLB pensions because of a change in the vesting requirements that occurred in 1980. That was the year the players' union was offered the opportunity to give its members the following sweetheart deal: only 43 game days of service for a pension. Prior to 1980, you needed four years of service to be eligible for a pension.

The only catch was that, if you had more than 43 days of service but less than four years like Steve, or Cocoa Beach’s Bill Dillman, you were left out in the cold.

The 81-year-old Whitaker is just as passionate about righting the wrong he says has been done to him and his other baseball brethren as he is about the suit brought last month against the National Association of Realtors that contended the current commission process violated antitrust rules.

Whitaker had a respectable, if unspectacular, career. In the 266 games he appeared in, he scored 73 runs, came up to the plate 758 times, collected 174 hits, including 24 home runs, 20 doubles and six triples, and had 85 runs batted in. Obviously not Hall of Fame numbers, but Whitaker did something that only 20,600 others have done since 1876 – he played in “The Show.”

As of this year, a vested retiree receiving an MLB pension can earn as much as $275,000. But that amount is not even remotely close to what either Steve or Bill receive.  Per a negotiated agreement between MLB and the union representing current ballplayers, the Major League Baseball Players’ Association (MLBPA), for every 43 game days on an active MLB roster a non-vested man accrued, he gets $718.75, up to the maximum of $11,500. And that payment is before taxes are taken out.

By the way, in 1969, when he played for the expansion Seattle Pilots, Steve earned the princely sum of $15,000. When Bill debuted as a pitcher with the Baltimore Orioles in 1967, rookies at the time earned $6,000 to $9,000.

Meanwhile, the minimum salary this year went up to $740,000. And the average salary is $4.5 million.

The bone these men are being thrown isn’t a real pension, either; rather, it is what is called a non-qualified retirement annuity. What that means is the payment cannot be passed to a widow, loved one, family member or other designated beneficiary. When the man passes, the payment passes with him.

So whenever Steve dies, neither Chad nor anyone else will continue receiving it. Ditto Bill, whose own son, Doug, often tells me how upset his father is by this galling inequity. 

Tony Clark, the executive director of the MLBPA, is the man who could help. But Clark has consistently refused to do anything or even say anything about this reprehensible situation. For that matter, neither has the Colorado Springs, Colorado-based Major League Baseball Players Alumni Association (MLBPAA).

You would think a group that supposedly cares about former players would be sounding the alarm about this blight on the national pastime. But you only hear the sound of crickets coming out of Colorado Springs. Remember the Robert DeNiro baseball movie Bang the Drum Slowly? The MLBPAA isn’t banging the drum loudly, softly or quickly. It has been quiet as a church mouse.

Consequently, Whitaker routinely fires off emails to MLBPAA officials protesting the way he and the 515 others are being treated. “Let’s make this right!,” he wrote in one. “Work on getting the pre-1980 MLB players their rightful pensions.”

 

“I just got our so-called stipend today and found out they have been taking out Social Security taxes and Medicare taxes that can’t be recouped,” he recently complained. “So another screwing.”

He’s also not afraid of telephoning Clark’s pension liaison, former Montreal Expos pitcher Steve Rogers, to complain that the union isn’t doing more to help right this wrong. “What a crock of expletive deleted,” he told me afterwards.

(I was almost afraid to tell Whitaker that it was Rogers and the late Sal Bando that were the respective National League and American League Player Representatives who signed off on the infamous agreement in 1980.)

It is anathema to me why neither the MLBPA nor the MLBPAA don’t do more to help the men like Whitaker or Dillman and their families. But one possible answer is a quote attributed to the founder of the American Newspaper Guild, the late Haywood Broun:

 “Sports does not build character,” he once wrote. “It reveals it.”

 

Douglas J. Gladstone authored the book, A Bitter Cup of Coffee: How MLB & The Players Association Threw 874 Retirees a Curve

A guest post from author Douglas J. Gladstone centering on Scipio Spinks--one of 517 pre-1980 MLB retirees currently ineligible for a pension

 

Because of all the batters he could fan, it is perhaps only fitting that Chicago native Scipio Spinks comes from the Windy City.

Indeed, during one memorable contest, Spinks and future Cincinnati Reds hurler Gary Nolan, combined to strike out 37 batters in a Class A Northern League game in 1966.

Drafted by the Houston Astros, only modest success followed Spinks in “The Show”: in 35 career games, including those he appeared in with the St. Louis Cardinals, in 1972 and 1973, he won seven games and threw seven complete games.

Though he has no regrets about his time playing the game, Spinks, who once served as a double for the late Louis Gossett, Jr., in a movie about Hall of Famer Satchel Paige entitled Don’t Look Back, is annoyed about one very important thing, namely, that he doesn’t receive a Major League Baseball (MLB) pension.

Spinks, who turns years 77-years-old in July, is one of 517 retirees being hosed out of pensions by the league and the Major League Baseball Players’ Association (MLBPA), which is the union that represents both current players and minor leaguers. All these men receive are yearly non-qualified retirement stipends of $718.75 for every 43 game days on an active MLB roster, up to a maximum payment of $11,500.

Due to vesting rule changes that averted a strike in 1980, the players' union was offered the opportunity to give its members the following sweetheart deal: one game day of service credit to buy into the league's umbrella health insurance plan, and 43 game days of service for a pension. However, the deal forgot to include the men like Spinks, who played prior to 1980.

Fast forward 44 years, and neither MLB nor the MLBPA want to retroactively restore these non-vested men into pension coverage; instead, taxes are taken out of their non-qualified retirement payment, which cannot be passed on to a surviving spouse or designated beneficiary.

So when Spinks dies, the payment he is currently receiving is not passed on to any of his loved ones, including his third wife, Jeanette, or the daughter he has from his first marriage, Terri Lynn.

Meanwhile, the maximum IRS pension a vested retiree can receive is $275,000. And the minimum salary for the 26^th man riding the pines this year is $740,000.

Though Spinks may not be looking back at his career with regret, he is focused on getting the MLBPA to right what he feels is a significant wrong

“SOMETHING needs to be done,” he told me via email last year. “Let’s do something about it, I’m tired of this bullshit with the players’ association.”

With the average MLB salary last reported to be $4.5 million , and with MLBPA Executive Director Tony Clark reportedly receiving a yearly salary of $4.25 million, it is Spinks’ contention that the union is forgetting to take care of the men like him, who helped grow the game by enduring labor stoppages and going without paychecks all so free agency could occur. After all, unions are supposed to help hard working women and men in this country get a fair shake in life.

Spinks has given a good part of his life to baseball. According to his LinkedIn page, he’s currently the head coach at the University of Houston-Downtown. And for six years he served as a scout for the Arizona Diamondbacks.

From where I sit, it’s time the national pastime looks back at what Spinks has given to it and remedy this injustice once and for all.

Douglas J. Gladstone (@GLADSTONEWRITER) is the author of “A Bitter Cup of Coffee: How MLB & the Players’ Association Threw 874 Retirees a Curve.”