As reported here, Douglas J. Gladstone’s first book, ‘A Bitter Cup of Coffee: How MLB and The Players Association Threw 874 Retirees a Curve’, released on April 14, recounts the nearly three decades of disservice and injustice that has been perpetrated by Major League Baseball (MLB) and the MLB Players Association upon members of its own fraternity.
Gladstone stumbled upon the story of the hundreds of major leaguers who were not included in the pension and benefits plan for former players during the course of an interview with ex-Chicago Cub outfielder Jimmy Qualls. And when Qualls revealed the reasons why he and other past players had been left out in the cold, Gladstone realized this story had to be told.
For a small peek through the window of the soul of the man who undertook this daunting ‘labor of love’, all one has to do is read the dedication and the final two paragraphs of the book’s acknowledgments, in which Gladstone states respectively:
Dedication
“For my parents, Berdie and Joe, who gave me life.
And for my wife, Karen, and daughter, Jovie, who make my life worth living.”
Acknowledgments
“To my beautiful daughter, Jovie, I want you to know that I took up writing again after a protracted time away from my chosen field because of you. I want you to know that you can aspire to be anything you want to be and accomplish anything you want to do in this life, even if the path you take is somewhat circuitous, like mine was. Remember not to let anyone ever tell you that you should put your dreams on hold.
Last, to my best friend, chief cheerleader and severest critic, my devoted wife, Karen, you have been my partner and hand holder from the get-go, so your blessings and encouragement meant everything to me. I love the life we’ve made for ourselves, and I will always love you and our daughter, forever and ever, which is a very long time.”
So for a man who draws tremendous inspiration and motivation from the love he shares with his family, it’s not a far stretch of the imagination to see why Gladstone would endeavor to extract some measure of justice and fair play for those who, to this day, have been ignored, and to a certain extent, steamrolled by MLB.
The press release for ‘A Bitter Cup of Coffee’ indicates that the book tells the story of a group of former big-league ball players who have been denied pensions as a result of the failure of both MLB and the Players Union to retroactively amend the vesting requirement change that granted instant pension eligibility to ballplayers in 1980.
Prior to that year, players had to have four years service credit to earn an annuity and medical benefits. Since 1980, however, all they have needed is one day of service credit for health insurance and 43 days of service credit for a pension.
But, according to Gladstone and as detailed in the book, the issue involves much more depth and scope than what is stated in the press release.
To coincide with the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier, and in an effort to enhance its public image more than any other motivating factor, MLB’s executive council created a pension plan for approximately 85 African-American players who didn’t play in the majors long enough to qualify for a pension or who did not have the opportunity to play in the majors at all.
To be eligible, the players had to either play in the Negro Leagues for at least one season before 1948 or play a combined four years in the Negro Leagues and the Major Leagues before 1979.
The annual payments amounted to between $7,500 and $10,000 per player and did not include health insurance or survivor benefits.
In 2004, MLB Commissioner Bud Selig agreed to pay pensions to even more Negro League players on the grounds that baseball had not been totally integrated until 1959, when the Boston Red Sox became the last team to field an African-American player.
This group of players were given the option of choosing a pension of $4,500 per year ($375 per month) for life or $10,000 per year for four years.
Furthermore, in 2008, MLB gave $5,000 payments to 30 former Negro League players in ‘draft signing bonuses’ as they matched each of the players up with one baseball team and honored them at a ceremony in Florida.
But while doling out long awaited and long overdue token restitution to former Negro League players, MLB lost sight of the simultaneous inequity to the pre-1980, non-vested players; whose number has shrunk from 1,053 to 874 in the past thirty years.
In a recent chat with the author, Gladstone elaborated by saying:
“This is an employment contractual situation. Most of these Negro Leaguers had no employment contractual relationship with Major League Baseball. I think it’s just a travesty that even though Major League Baseball awarded these payments, strictly speaking, as charitable donations; they still awarded them at the expense of those 874 men who did have a contractual employment relationship with MLB. And that’s the issue that most people are not cognizant of, and that’s the issue I hope the book will illuminate.
The institutional racism that barred the Negro Leaguers, the segregation of attitudes that baseball was maintaining in the 30’s and 40’s, has nothing to do with this issue. I’m not saying that MLB shouldn’t have done something, clearly they did. I think it coincided with the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier. But that has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that these ball players had a contractual labor relationship with the league and the Negro Leaguers did not.
No one is disputing that MLB shouldn’t have conferred charitable donations upon the Negro Leaguers; no one has said that at all. The attitude was best summed up by former player Bill Edgerton of the Seattle Pilots; he basically says, ‘Look, if you’re telling me that my service credit is just as good as the Negro Leaguers; well then, they’re getting paid for their credit and I’m not’. And that’s what it really boils down to. It’s just a travesty that this has gone largely unreported by the mainstream media for three decades. And that these guys, many of whom are in their late 60’s, early 70’s, a few are in their late 80’s; these ball players are being taken unfair advantage of.”
This is the cause that Gladstone has chosen to fight for through the penning and publication of ‘A Bitter Cup of Coffee’; a fight that has new teeth after a failed class-action lawsuit in 2003 and a fight that MLB thought it could win by attrition.
But when an injustice is being carried out, all it takes is one individual to speak up and begin the process of balancing the scales. And at this particular juncture, Douglas J. Gladstone is that individual and, with the release of his book, he is about to serve Major League Baseball its own ‘Bitter Cup of Coffee’; which should serve notice to Bud Selig and the MLB Players Association that they would be best served to wake up and smell the coffee sooner rather than later.
For more on this developing MLB pension scandal, be sure to pick up a copy of ‘A Bitter Cup of Coffee: How MLB and The Players Association Threw 874 Retirees a Curve’ in stores now. The story as a whole and the individual stories of baseball’s forgotten family members are too compelling to ignore.
In addition, stay tuned to Examiner.com for more commentary from Douglas J. Gladstone as well as the men who have been directly affected by MLB’s gross miscarriage of justice.
Click here to read the original article on Examiner.com, which includes relevant links and a special video presentation.
When Will MLB Finally Take Care of its Own?
