Lawsuits Are Likely the Final Recourse for Former Players

After years of neglect, old-timers of the NBA and major league baseball are fed up.

Forgotten and abandoned for decades, the players of the post-World War II NBA and of big league baseball feel even more neglected now, when high-profile athletes are signing contracts unimaginable in their time.

Lawyers representing roughly 75 needy, post-World War II pioneer NBA players may be moving toward an age-discrimination suit against the league, which opens play Nov. 1.

Suits on behalf of old major league baseball players have already been filed and more may be on the way.

“These [elderly NBA players] have tried every political and diplomatic avenue, they’ve appealed to everyone in the NBA for years, and nothing has worked,” said San Francisco attorney Guy Kornblum.

“There’s a lot of statutory law which says when you take care of some people in a group, then you have to take care of everyone. When you don’t, you’re entering the area of arbitrary exclusion.

“We’re still trying to resolve this. A suit would be a last resort.”

Bill Tosheff, 1950s NBA player who heads the pre-1955 NBA Players Assn., says the league has turned a deaf ear to pleas that older players be brought into the league’s pension plan.

“In the last four years, I’ve written about 10 letters to [NBA Commissioner] David Stern and have never had a [personal] response,” Tosheff said.

“He has people in the NBA office write me, reminding me the players in question aren’t qualified under the rules to get pensions.”

NBA pension rules state that post-1965 players are vested after three seasons, whereas pre-1965 players must have played five years. Tosheff’s group wants all the pioneer-era--late 1940s--players brought into the pension plan, regardless of length of service.

“There are some needy people out there,” Tosheff said.

“These are guys who happily played for less than $10,000 a year and never dreamed pro athletes would ever get pensions. They also never dreamed a basketball player would get $25 million a year, either,” he said.

The NBA is associated with two foundations that aid old NBA players in financial need. One, the Maurice Stokes Foundation, has given out close to $1 million to needy former players in the last 38 years. Another, The Legends Foundation, does the same.

The Legends Foundation gave Elmore Morgenthaler $5,000 earlier this year to help pay his wife’s medical bills.

But old players, Tosheff points out, don’t want to be charity cases.

“They feel they earned the right to be part of the pension plan,” he said.

Baseball old-timers like Dolph Camilli, Al Gionfriddo, Sam Jethro and Frank Crosetti have brought an action against major league baseball that seeks compensation for major league baseball’s selling of products--particularly videos--that use their name and likeness.

Video stores, big league stadium souvenir shops and mail-order houses sell numerous baseball history videos, many containing such events as Gionfriddo’s epic catch of a Joe DiMaggio drive in the 1947 World Series.

Gionfriddo, 74, retired and living in Solvang, played parts of four major league seasons. He receives no pension.

“A year ago I got a check from major league baseball for $75,” said Gionfriddo, a former Brooklyn Dodger.

“I have no idea what it was for. There was no explanation. Whatever it was, that’s the only income I’ve had from baseball since I retired in 1947.”

Camilli, another former Dodger who was the National League’s most valuable player in 1941, is 89 and lives in San Mateo. He receives no pension.

His highest salary in his 12-season major league career was $24,000.

Average big league salary today: $1.2 million.

Jethro, 78, lives in public housing in Erie, Pa., with his wife and 12-year-old granddaughter. He has diabetes, and his only income is a Social Security check.

Baseball’s pension rules require pre-1980 players to have four years of big league service. Jethro, who played in the old Negro leagues before joining the Boston Braves in 1950, had three years and 17 days.

One lawyer involved in the action by baseball old-timers thinks Jethro, an African American, might have grounds for a civil rights case.

“The reason Jethro’s rookie year was 1950, when he was 32, and not years before that was because blacks were barred from major league baseball,” said Ron Katz, a San Francisco attorney.

[According to baseball encyclopedias, Jethro was born in 1922, which would have made him 28 as a rookie and 74 now. Because he was so late getting to organized baseball, however, he might have fudged on his age.]

“For major league baseball to deny him pension benefits because he didn’t have four years is, well, what they’re saying is he’s not entitled to a pension because he’s black.”

Other aging big leaguers contend that baseball denies them pension benefits because they served in World War II.

From 1942 to ‘45, Buddy Hassett, 85 and battling cancer, interrupted his seven-year major league career to serve in the Navy.

He returned to the New York Yankees in the spring of 1946, but accepted instead an offer to play for and manage a Yankee minor league team. Had he ended that ’46 season on a big league roster, he would today be receiving a pension.

Gionfriddo wonders how many pre-1947 baseball players are in need.

“It’s a hard thing to ask a guy,” he said.

“The old guys, I see them only at the card shows these days. You never know who’s hurting. It’s hard to talk about. Guys have dignity.”

The NFL had major pension inequities until the owners enriched the pension fund in 1987. Benefits were raised again, by 40%, in 1993.

Still, there is a wide gap between benefits that will flow to today’s players and the 1940s and 1950s players.

“There are some dire-need cases out there, guys who played in my era,” said Curly Morrison, who played seven years for Cleveland in the 1950s and receives a $418 monthly pension check.

“They make the guys who played before 1959 have five years before they get a pension, compared to three years today. There’s a lot of disgruntled guys out there because of that.”