Baseball Players Are Helping Their Own

Ballplayers aren’t any different now from how they were a generation or a century ago, so they shouldn’t be blamed. They still think history began the day before yesterday and life goes on forever--happily ever after.

They don’t know about the players who came before them and made the game the pot of gold it is today.

For that matter, neither do the owners, who made fortunes on the backs of players and didn’t have to give back freedom or money.

George Steinbrenner makes the other owners look bad. Whatever Steinbrenner’s motivation, the New York Yankees’ owner is the first of the owners to respond to the work of the Baseball Alumni Team, the group that puts on the Old Timers Series for Equitable.

The Yankees play the Kansas City Royals July 13 and Steinbrenner has pledged to take expenses off the gate and give the balance to the fund that helps needy baseball people. Consider that he might have at least 40,000 in Yankee Stadium for the first game after the All-Star break, and it’s a substantial gesture.

The Alumni Team stages a game in each of the 26 ballparks. They average 33,000 per game. The owners donate only the playing field. Equitable gives the Alumni $10,000 for each game and $1,000 to each player.

In 1989 the term “needy” in reference to an athlete looks like a contradiction in terms. The last thing they should need is public charity, as long as owners and players are reaping rich rewards. But players haven’t always made the kind of salaries they enjoy now.

And not even the black players acknowledge the contribution of the Negro Leagues. “I read about Babe Ruth and Walter Johnson when I was growing up,” Bob Gibson said. He didn’t read about Willie Wells, and neither did I because Willie Wells played in the Negro Leagues and the national print didn’t give it much coverage.

Willie Wells died a few months ago, and his widow is broke, says Joe Garagiola, the new president of the Baseball Alumni Team. If you need a spokesman for a cause, Garagiola is the spokesman you want. If you want examples, Garagiola will give examples and protect anonymity and dignity at the same time.

The organization paid rent for Denny McLain’s family while he was in prison and helped hold the family together. Somebody from the group read a Tampa, Fla., newspaper headline about a raffle to buy an artificial leg for a former big-league outfielder, who turned out to be Sandy Amoros. He’s the fellow who made the catch that saved the 1955 World Series for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

A former teammate of Garagiola suffered a stroke and his wife wrote that the sheriff was at the door and she had no place to turn. She owed $263 in payments on their trailer and $233 in rent to the trailer park, $1,100 to Sears, $600 to Penney’s, $700 to Belk’s and $323 in taxes. The Alumni Team now pays the mortgage and rent.

By the standards of today’s ballplayer, the figures are a pittance. The commissioner’s office pays expenses for the Alumni board of directors. The owners contribute nothing. The players association acknowledges something, but it finds complications blocking participation when it ought to find a way to help.

“I wouldn’t say they were obligated,” Gibson said. “I’d like them to feel they want to contribute something.”

When the baseball pension was established in 1946, it was to be funded by the radio fees for the World Series. And so it went for four years. The 1950 Phillies insisted on keeping the television revenue for themselves. Marty Narion, then the union head, had to make an impassioned plea to get their contribution.

The difference between then and now is that almost all of the old-time players had to go to work after baseball. Today, the pension pays $90,000 a year at age 62 for the top category. There are about 400 living players from before the pension and even some of today’s players who need help.

There are a number of younger, recent players who need help as well. One is 28 years old. “Mental problems; difficulty adjusting,” said Ralph Branca, the outgoing president of the Baseball Alumni Team.

Many players find life a trial after competition and celebrity. They thought it would go on forever.

“Too bad other walks of life don’t have the services we can give our own,” Gibson said. He is one of the most active of the contributors and was as tough a player as there ever was. He wouldn’t talk to a man from an opposing team in an All-Star Game.

He is very much like Bill White, the president-elect of the National League, who thinks too many hitters complain about being thrown at when all the pitcher has done is come inside. White and Gibson were roommates on the good St. Louis teams of the mid-1960s. White was skilled at pulling the outside pitch; Gibson tried to preserve the outside corner of the plate for his own by pitching inside to players who crowded the plate.

Gibson is delighted for White’s election--personally, for a good friend--and for the fact of it. “It gives kids who might look at this an idea that things can be different, that ‘it might happen for me,’ ” Gibson said. “After he does a good job, it’s going to prove to a lot of Archie Bunkers life is not quite what they thought.”