A guest post from author Douglas J. Gladstone centering on Angel Luis Alcaraz Acosta and Sergio Ferrer who are among 498 pre-1980 MLB retirees currently ineligible for a pension

 

Even the most knowledgeable baseball fan probably doesn’t remember Angel Luis Alcaraz Acosta, who played in the big leagues in 1967 and 1968 for the Los Angeles Dodgers and 1969 and 1970 for the Kansas City Royals.

 

A graduate of Ana Roque High School in Humacao, Puerto Rico, Alcaraz was a reserve infielder who, in parts of four seasons, appeared in 115 games, came up to the plate 365 times, collected 70 hits, including four home runs, nine doubles and two triples, scored 30 times and had 29 runs batted in,

 

Alcaraz, who now lives in Venus Gardens-Rio Piedras, in San Juan, turned 84 years-old this past June.

 

For his time playing the game he loved, Alcaraz earned the princely salary of $8,000 during his last season playing for the Dodgers; in his first season playing for the Royals, he got a raise to $10,000.

 

Alcaraz would most likely be a footnote in the annals of the national pastime if it weren’t for one thing: he’s now among the 498 retired ballplayers not receiving Major League Baseball (MLB) pensions.

 

I am thinking of Alcaraz because he has all but been forgotten by today’s players.

 

For that matter, so too has San Juan’s Sergio Ferrer, who played for the Minnesota Twins in 1974 and 1975 before finishing up his career with the New York Mets in 1978 and 1979. In his rookie season, Ferrer was paid $7,800.

 

See, in 1980, the vesting rules for a pension changed. It used to be a player needed four years of service to be eligible for one but, ever since, it’s only been 43 days.

 

It was a sweetheart deal the league offered the Major League Baseball Players’ Association (MLBPA), which is the union that represents the current players, with one notable caveat: the pre-1980 players like Alcaraz and Ferrer were not retroactively included.

 

So for the past 45 years, post-1980 players like New York Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor  —  a prominent member of the union who in 2021 signed a 10-year, $341 million contract extension — have only needed 43 game days of service on an active roster to get a pension. And their designated beneficiaries get to keep that pension.

 

Instead of MLB pensions, all pre-1980 players like Alcaraz get is a yearly payment of up to $11,500 for every 43 game days of service they accrued on an active MLB roster. Given the time he spent with Los Angeles and Kansas City, it's more likely that Alcaraz gets a bone of $5,500 thrown at him. And that's before taxes are taken out.

 

What's more, the payment cannot be passed on to anyone. So when Alcaraz dies, whoever his designated beneficiary is will not receive the bone he’s being thrown. 

 

But do you hear this issue being bandied about by today’s ballplayers in advance of the collective bargaining negotiations that are soon to get underway? Of course not.

 

Under the terms of the collective bargaining agreement between the union and MLB, the league doesn’t have to bargain about the pre-1980 players unless the union first broaches it. As for the MLBPA, it doesn’t owe these retirees what is known as the “duty of fair representation”, i.e, once they’re out of the game, the union doesn’t have to provide legal guidance or counsel to them.

 

What makes this unseemly is that the national pastime is doing great financially. The average salary is $5.1 million, the minimum salary is $760,000 and, according to my friend and fellow SABR member Max Effgen, the Major League Baseball Players Pension Plan currently has $4.6 billion in assets, with 9,670 participants; that is an increase of $400 million in assets with 177 fewer participants from 2022.

 

Are both MLB and MLBPA suggesting they can't afford to pay these men more?

 

If anyone can help these men it’s Lindor, a native son of Caguas, Puerto Rico who, as a member of the eight-member players’ union executive committee, is in a position to go to MLBPA Executive Director Tony Clark and insist that this injustice be remedied once and for all.

 

Listen, nobody begrudges anyone his money. This is, after all, still a capitalist country.  

 

But if it weren’t for the guys like Ferrer and Alcaraz, who endured labor stoppages and went without paychecks so free agency could occur in the first place, do you think Lindor would be in a position to be getting the kind of big money he’s making?

 

Lindor’s nickname is “Mr. Smile.” By doing the right thing, he can put a smile on the face of Alcaraz, Ferrer and 496 other men.

 

 

Douglas J. Gladstone is the author of “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 Reggie Baldwin--one of 502 pre-1980 MLB retirees currently ineligible for a pension

 

This is the tale of two Grambling State University Tigers – Reggie Baldwin and Gary Eave.

 

A Magna Cum Laude graduate, Mr. Baldwin, who turned 71-years-old on August 19th, was a catcher who played for the Tigers between 1973 and 1976. Mr. Eave pitched for Grambling a bit later, between 1982 and 1985.

 

Both were lucky enough to play in “The Show”: Mr. Baldwin with the Houston Astros in 1978 and 1979, and Mr. Eave with Atlanta Braves and Seattle Mariners between 1988 and 1990.

 

Yet only one of them is collecting a pension from Major League Baseball (MLB).

 

Regrettably, Mr. Baldwin is among the ever shrinking group of former ballplayers – 502 at last count -- who don’t receive a MLB pension because of the time when they played. See, Baldwin and the 501 other men like him played prior to 1980, when new vesting requirements were implemented in collective bargaining negotiations with the union representing ballplayers, the Major League Baseball Players’ Association (MLBPA), which lowered the service credit you needed for a pension from four years to just 43 days. But the men like Baldwin, who all had more than 43 days of service but less than four years, were not retroactively included in this new arrangement.

 

Instead, all the men like Baldwin receive are non-qualified retirement payments of $718.75 for every 43 game days they were on a big league roster, up to a maximum payment of $11,500.

 

However, a vested retiree can receive up to $275,000, according to the IRS.

 

Baldwin, who co-founded Antioch International Ministries with his wife Prophetess Franett Baldwin in 1990, made $21,000 as a rookie catcher for the Astros in 1978. (Eave didn’t fare that much better, by the way; in his rookie year with the Braves, he earned $62,500).  Meanwhile, thanks to the 2022 collective bargaining agreement, the players’ union made sure that the minimum salary for current players rose to $760,000 this season.

 

In the 52 career games he appeared in, Baldwin came up to the plate 87 times, scored five runs, collected 21 hits, including six doubles and one home run, and drove in 12 runs.

 

With the average MLB salary last year reported to be $5.1 million, and with MLBPA Executive Director Tony Clark reportedly receiving a yearly salary of $3.41 million, it is my position that the union is forgetting to take care of the men like Baldwin. After all, unions are supposed to help hard working people in this country get a fair shake in life.

 

Since the league doesn’t have to have negotiate about this matter in collective bargaining, it’s essentially up to the union to go to bat for these men. 

 

What makes this especially reprehensible is that Clark, a former ballplayer with the Detroit Tigers and five other teams, received the Negro League Museum’s Jackie Robinson Award in 2016; however, he has never commented about these non-vested retirees, many of whom are filing for bankruptcy at advanced ages and having banks foreclose on their homes.

 

Other persons of color affected include Scipio Spinks of the Astros, Joe Gilbert of the Montreal Expos (who wore uniform number 42 as a tribute to Robinson) and Aaron Pointer, an NAACP award winner who was the first African-American linesman in the PAC-10.

 

I have never met Mr. Baldwin – for that matter, I haven’t met Mr. Eave, either – but I have made numerous appearances with Mr. Spinks, who once body doubled the late Oscar winner Louis Gossett, Jr. in a television movie about Hall of Fame pitcher Satchel Paige called “Don’t Look Back.” Like myself, he puts the onus to correct this travesty squarely on the back of the union.

 

It is perhaps ironic that, as we celebrate the contributions of the union movement on Labor Day today, the MLBPA refuses to fight for the men who endured work stoppages, went without paychecks and stood on picket lines all so that today’s players could reap the benefits of free agency. 

 

That’s why, if you want to assist in correcting this egregious error, I urge you to contact Mr. Clark, as well as MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, and tell them exactly what you think of this blight on the national pastime.

 

Clark can be contacted via email at comms@mlbpa.org while the Commissioner can be contacted via email at customerservice@mlb.com.

 

Thank you for anything you can do to remedy this injustice.

 

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