Bob Fenwick
Not many people get to play the sport they love for a living. Bob Fenwick was one of the lucky few that did, playing professional baseball in the early 1970s.
However, Fenwick, age 71, doesn’t receive a traditional pension from Major League Baseball (MLB), and there is a man on a mission trying to change that for the 500 plus players who are in the same boat as he is.
Doug Gladstone, author of “A Bitter Cup of Coffee; How MLB & The Players Association Threw 874 Retirees a Curve” is letting the public know that when it comes to its pension plan for certain players, the MLB is penurious, and at worst, petty.
“These men are being penalized for playing the game they loved at the wrong time,” Gladstone said.
After starring at Anoka High School and the University of Minnesota, Bob was drafted by the Houston Astros. While he was at the University of Minnesota in 1966 Bob set a single season stolen base record with 29 steals. It stood for 22 years, broken in part because the Gophers had a longer season and played more games. He ranked 4th in steals as of 2008. Bob’s 1966-67 batting average of .364 ranked in the top 10 through 2004, almost 40 years after his playing days as a Gopher were over.
During his playing career with the Astros, in 1972, and St. Louis Cardinals, in 1973, Bob was a utility infielder who appeared in 41 games and came up to the plate 56 times. He collected 10 hits, including three doubles; scored seven runs and drove in five.
“Mr. Fenwick doesn’t receive a traditional pension because the rules for receiving MLB pensions changed in 1980,” Gladstone said. “Fenwick and the other men do not get pensions because they didn’t accrue four years of service credit. That was what ballplayers who played between 1947–1979 needed to be eligible for the pension plan.
“Instead, they all receive non-qualified retirement payments based on a complicated formula that had to have been calculated by an actuary.
“In brief, for every quarter of service a man had accrued, he’d get $625. Four quarters (one year) totaled $2,500. Sixteen-quarters (four years) amounts to the maximum, $10,000. And that payment is before taxes were taken out.”
Gladstone also pointed out that when the player dies, “the payment is not permitted to be passed on to a designated beneficiary, like a spouse or other loved one. So none of Mr. Fenwick’s loved ones will receive that payment when he dies. These men are also not eligible to be covered under the league’s umbrella health insurance plan.
“The union doesn’t have to be their legal advocates, the league doesn’t have to negotiate about this matter, and the alumni association is too busy putting on golf outings,” he said.
Gladstone noted a contradiction in MLB’s thinking.
“Why does former Milwaukee Brewers outfielder Caleb Gindl get an MLB pension but retired Astros and Cardinals infielder Ray Busse does not?
“Gindl only played parts of two seasons for the Brewers, in 2013 and 2014. He appeared in a total of 64 games and only had 151 career at bats. Why is he more deserving of a pension than Busse, who appeared in more games (68) and had more at bats (156) during the parts of three seasons (1971, 1973 and 1974) he spent in The Show?
“Some 500 men do not get pensions because they didn’t accrue four years of service credit. That was what ballplayers who played between 1947 – 1979 needed to be eligible for the pension plan.”
Remember high school phenom, David Clyde? Twenty days after his last high school game, Clyde was the starting pitcher for the Texas Rangers. He was featured on the cover of Sport’s Illustrated.
But as Gladstone points out, “Former Texas Ranger and Cleveland Indian pitcher David Clyde was only 37 game days shy,” of receiving a full pension. And “former Cleveland Indian pinch hitter supreme Don Dillard was only 17 game days shy,” of reaching the MLB qualifying mark.
“And the non-vested player is not covered under the MLB’s health care umbrella coverage plan, either.”
As an example, Gladstone picked former Expo pitcher Michael Wegener, who was reportedly diagnosed in 1991 with stage three non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, the sixth most form of cancer among males. “As of last May, his cancer was in remission for the second time. A pension would let him be covered by the same great health insurance plan men who receive pensions are covered by.
“Retroactively restoring Wegener into pension coverage would also allow his benefit payments to be passed on to his wife, Marcia, or daughter, Michelle, in the event that God forbid something ever happens to him.
“By contrast, a player who played after 1980 is eligible for health coverage after one game day. And he’s eligible for a pension after 43 game days. And the payment can be passed on to a loved one or designated recipient.
“The maximum pension allowable under the IRS is $210,000. But the non-vested, pre-1979 players don’t even come close to making that. For instance, for his 3½ years of service credit, former White Sox, Mariners, Red and Yankees hurler Rich Hinton receives a gross check of $8,625. After taxes are taken out, his net check is $6,262.”
Gladstone recommends that the union and league immediately increase the payments to a minimum of $10,000 for each person who is eligible and do away, “with the ridiculous $625 per quarter formula, based on a number of quarters the man played, up to 16 quarters.”
MLB has set a precedent for this too, said Gladstone.
“In 1997, the league gave the pre-1947 players — men like 1941 NL MVP Dolph Camilli — quarterly payments of $7,500 – $10,000. And these were men who obviously didn’t pay union dues because the pension plan didn’t exist when they played. There were no qualifications.”
Gladstone feels that this would be a tremendous show of faith by the league and the union to include Fenwick and the other players in the health insurance and league minimum pension.
When asked how he had come to learn about this topic, Gladstone replied, “I’m just a huge baseball fan, albeit one who’s also a professional publicist and freelance writer, who was shocked and taken aback by the fact that mainstream sports columnists hadn’t written about this injustice before. Fact is, I was writing a Baseball Digest story about Jimmy Qualls, the guy who broke up Tom Seaver’s attempt at a perfect game on July 9, 1969, when he just casually mentioned to me that he doesn’t get a pension. If he doesn’t tell me that, I don’t write the book.”
A former Cook County commissioner, Bob Fenwick also once served as president of the Association of Minnesota Counties. Since hanging up his spikes, he has worked as a manager of Sawtooth Lumber as well as serving as the general manager of the Superior National Golf Course and is now employed at Isak Hansen True Value and Home Builders in Lutsen. Bob also serves as president of the North Shore Health Care Foundation.
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