Bobby Klaus, of Tierrasanta celebrates his 87th birthday on Dec. 27. The one-time big leaguer played for the Cincinnati Reds and New York Mets for parts of two seasons, in 1964 and 1965.
In 215 games, Klaus came up to the plate 590 times. He scored 65 runs, collected 123 hits, including 25 doubles, four triples and six career home runs. He also walked 74 times and had 29 career runs batted in to go along with his lifetime .208 batting average.
Those obviously weren’t Hall of Fame numbers, but he got to do something most people will never do, namely, play in “The Show.”
Ditto John Lawrence Balaz, a former California Angels outfielder who attended Point Loma High School and later San Diego Community College. During parts of the 1974 and 1975 seasons, Balaz appeared in a total of 59 career games, came up to the plate 162 times, collected 39 hits, including eight doubles, one triple and two home runs, and had 16 runs batted in.
Klaus and Balaz are among the 516 retirees not receiving Major League Baseball pensions because of a change in the vesting requirements that occurred in 1980. The players’ union was offered the opportunity to give its members the following sweetheart deal: 43 game days of service for a pension. Prior to 1980, you needed four years of service to be eligible for a pension.
As of this year, a vested retiree receiving an MLB pension can earn as much as $275,000.
All Klaus and Balaz receive are yearly stipends. Per a negotiated agreement between MLB and the union representing current ballplayers, the Major League Baseball Players’ Association, 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.
Balaz earned $16,000 in his final season playing for the Angels. Men of Klaus’ generation earned even less; typically, they were lucky to make $6,000 to $9,000 per year.
Meanwhile, the minimum salary this year went up to $740,000.
The bone these men are being thrown isn’t a real pension; 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 the 73-year-old Balaz dies, neither his wife, Bonnie, nor his children, Lauren and Justin, will continue receiving it.
Patty Hilton knows all too well what it is like to have this stipend taken away. Her late husband, Dave, died seven years ago, in September 2017; six months after he died, Patty received bupkis.
In 161 games for the San Diego Padres during the 1970s, Hilton came up to the plate 506 times, collected 108 hits, including 19 doubles, three triples and six home runs, had 33 runs batted in and scored 40 runs. He earned $22,500 in his final season playing for San Diego.
The man who could help Patty and Bonnie, Tony Clark, is now the executive director of the MLBPA. But Clark, who played for the Padres in 2008 and played college basketball at San Diego State University, where he was the Aztecs’ top scorer with 11.5 points per game during the 1991-92 season, has consistently declined to.
I put the onus of responsibility on Clark, who earned a reported salary of $4.25 million last year, because the league doesn’t have to entertain this matter during collective bargaining negotiations. It is up to the union to broach the topic.
Considering that Hilton and Balaz endured labor stoppages and stood on picket lines so current Padres like Manny Machado, Fernando Tatis, Jr. and Michael King could reap the benefits of free agency, it is anathema to me why the MLBPA doesn’t do more for these men and their families.
One possible answer is a quote attributed to the founder of the American Newspaper Guild, the late Haywood Broun. “Sports,” he once wrote, “does not build character. It reveals it.”
Douglas J. Gladstone is the author of A Bitter Cup of Coffee: How MLB & The Players Association Threw 874 Retirees a Curve.
