Ballplayers who didn’t exist Max Effgen, November 10, 2026November 9, 2026 A Dollar at the Hyatt Regency The first autograph I ever paid for cost one dollar. It was 1983 or 1984, at a baseball card show at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare. Bob Feller sat at a table with a stack of 8×10 photos. The photo cost a few dollars. His signature on it cost one dollar more. My father and I bonded over baseball the way a lot of American fathers and sons do, with one twist: we collected autographed baseballs from Hall of Famers. Between the ages of 10 and 12, I got every then living member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Feller was one of the first, and the first I paid for. What I remember most is not the price. It is how personal he made it. He asked my name. He asked what position I played. He spent four or five minutes with everyone in that line. I would learn later that this was the exception, not the rule, which is a fair summary of Bob Feller’s whole life. On the drive home, I asked my dad why a Hall of Famer was signing for a dollar. He explained that players from Feller’s era didn’t make what players made now. They didn’t have the pensions or the benefits. I didn’t know then that Feller had been the first president of the Major League Baseball Players Association, in 1954. The man signing my photo for a dollar had helped build the union that would later secure one of the best pensions in professional sports. Legends of the game, like Feller, just played too early to collect much of it. That drive home may have been the seed of what I now think of as my quixotic quest: advocating the MLB and MLBPA pension reform for the men baseball left out. One Game Short Tom Bruno and I went to the same high school, about twenty years apart. I met him when I wrote his biography for SABR’s BioProject. That interview is how I learned about the hundreds of former MLB players who played from 1947-79 who are still to this day without a pension. Advocates call these the “Bitter Cup” players, after Douglas Gladstone’s 2010 book, A Bitter Cup of Coffee. Bruno was born in Chicago in January 1953, adopted at six months old, and raised in suburban Downers Grove. He was a 6-foot-5 right-hander with a fastball nobody wanted to bat against. The Kansas City Royals signed him in 1971 and sent him to their Baseball Academy, the experimental program that also produced Frank White, U.L. Washington, Rodney Scott, and manager Ron Washington. He debuted with the Royals on August 1, 1976. He pitched for Toronto in 1977 and St. Louis in 1978 and 1979. His best year was 1978: a 1.99 ERA in relief for the Cardinals. On August 11 of that season, he struck out the side in the 12th inning against the Mets for the only save of his career. Bruno pitched in parts of four major-league seasons but fell short of the then required four full seasons of major-league service. Under the rules of his era, only four full seasons matters. In the spring of 1980, Bruno walked out with his union in the spring training strike. On the last day of spring training, he was cut. He never pitched in the majors again. Weeks later in May 1980, the union and the owners signed the agreement that changed pension eligibility from four years to 43 service days. It applied to players who were active from 1980 and forward. Bruno had walked out alongside those players, his union brothers, to help make that change a reality. Since Bruno was not on a MLB roster for a single game in 1980, he is without access to the MLBPA Welfare Plan (a.k.a. pension). Bruno told me: “I’m a Catholic. When you go to the church to get a divorce, you get an annulment. It’s like it never happened. You might find my numbers in the big leagues, but it’s like I never happened. To my own union and Major League Baseball, I never existed. If I get one more day that season, I’m fine.” What struck me most from the interview was what he did not say. He does not blame today’s players. “They’re busy trying to keep their own jobs,” he said. What he wants is simpler: “Whatever we accrued, that should be the same for everybody.” The Change Was Not Retroactive The 1980 agreement was a genuine win for players, and that is part of why the gap it left is difficult and frustrating. Over Memorial Day weekend in 1980, the union and the owners averted a threatened walkout. The deal made players eligible for health benefits after one day of major-league service and for a pension after 43 days, about a quarter of a season. Before that, a player needed four full years to vest. The new rule was not made retroactive. Players who had left the game between 1947 and 1979 with less than four years but more than 43 service days of service stayed outside the plan. That choice broke with the plan’s own history. When eligibility dropped from five full seasons to four in 1969, during the spring training boycott that delayed the season, the change was made retroactive to 1947. The men who had played in the plan’s first two decades were brought along. In 1980, the men who had played in its third and fourth decades were not. There is also a newer problem layered on the old one. In 1980, baseball standardized a year of service at 172 days on the active roster, approximately 92 to 93 percent of a regular season. Before that, the definition was less uniform. In my research, there is no public explanation of why the number is 172 rather than 175 or 180, which would have made the quarter-season math cleaner. One clue: the 1972 season, shortened by the first in-season strike, ran about 172 days. MLB still defines service time this way today. Additionally, the former players impacted played when there were between 16 and 26 teams. The MLB has been at 30 since 1998. Each new MLB team adds 25 roster spots, so there are 100 more MLB players today than in 1979. The change to service day counting matters for the men in this story. Their careers were recorded under one system and are now measured under another. Who Got Left Out 465 of these men are known and still alive. Their average age is 79. It is easy to picture them as September call-ups who had a cup of coffee and went home. Some were but many were not. Most spent years in the minor leagues before they got their chance. Some lost time to Vietnam-era military service, in an era when a player’s roster status during service could decide whether those years counted. Several, like Bruno, pitched or played in parts of three or four seasons and still fell short of four full years. David Clyde, the former Rangers and Indians pitcher, reportedly ended up 37 days short. They were also union men in the years when the union was built. Players of this era walked out in 1972, the first in-season strike in baseball history, over pension contributions. They were locked out in 1973 and 1976. Bruno and others walked out again in the spring of 1980. The benefits today’s players enjoy were won on their picket lines. The argument against them has always been that they knew the rules when they played. Under the agreement in force at the time, they had no expectation of a pension. That is true. It was also true of the players from 1947 to 1968, and in 1969 the union brought them in anyway. What separates the two groups is not principle. It is timing and leverage. In 1969, the retirees were still close to the players at the table. By 1980, the men who had just left were nobody’s constituency. The league had no obligation to bargain for them, and the union, focused on the players it represented, did not insist. Now that the union also represents minor leaguers, the case is harder to ignore. The union has accepted that the years it takes to develop a major-league player deserve recognition. The men who built that union in the 1970s deserve the same acknowledgment from it. A Stipend, Not a Pension In April 2011, after years of pressure from Gladstone and the players themselves, MLB and the MLBPA announced payments for the men who retired between 1947 and 1979 without vesting. The Commissioner’s Office and the union funded them jointly. Each man received $625 for every 43 days of service, up to $10,000 a year. The 2022 collective bargaining agreement raised that by 15 percent, to $718.75 per 43 days and a maximum of $11,500. It was real money, and for some of these men it mattered. It is also not a pension, and the differences are not technical. It dies with the player. The payment cannot pass to a widow or any other beneficiary. The MLBPA vested player’s pension can. No health plan. The non-vested men are not covered by the players’ health plan. A player who appears for one day on the MLB roster is today. It is a fraction of the real thing. The stipend is approximately 10-15% of the present pension. A player with 43 days of service today earns a pension of about $7,250 a year at age 62. The pre-1980 player with the same 43 days gets $718.75, about a tenth. At longer service the gap widens: today’s pension tops out near $290,000 a year at ten years, while the stipend stops at $11,500. It lives inside the CBA. The payments were set by agreement, not written into the pension plan. They run with the current agreement with no renewal guarantees, which expires December 1. That last point is why this matters now. The players’ pension fund is estimated at more than $4 billion. MLB’s revenue reached a record $12.1 billion in 2024. And the one benefit these men have depends on a negotiation they have no part in. The Records Problem The pension gap is the story most people know. The records problem is the one almost nobody has looked at, and it reaches beyond the pre-1980 men. A player’s pension depends on his credited service. For the men of the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, that service was recorded on paper timecards. The MLBPA Benefit Plan Office in Sparks, Maryland, keeps the administrative records used to calculate pensions and eligibility today. The historical service timecards, though, now sit at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. The Hall of Fame is a museum and an archive. It is not a pension administrator. Under ERISA, the federal law that governs pension plans, responsibility for accurate service records rests with the plan’s sponsor and administrator. In a plan like this one, that is a joint responsibility of the MLB clubs and the union. The union does not carry it alone. MLB carries it too, and moving the historical cards to Cooperstown did not move the obligation. As far as I know, there is no public audit of these records. What It Would Cost, and Who Can Fix It By my estimate, giving these men full pensions would cost in the range of $20 million a year. That is my number, built from the current benefit formula and the service time of the surviving players, and I’d welcome anyone who wants to check it. Put it next to the business. MLB’s revenue was $12.1 billion in 2024. The players’ pension fund is estimated at more than $4 billion. Twenty million dollars is less than two-tenths of one percent of a single year’s revenue. Gladstone has argued that even a flat $10,000 a year per man would cost about $5 million. The cost also declines every year, and that is the uncomfortable part. These men are, on average, 79. Each year the bill gets smaller because fewer of them are alive to collect. Waiting is the cheapest option, and it is the one both sides have taken. Both MLB and the MLBPA can fix this at any time. Neither needs a court, a law or a new commissioner. They need a paragraph in the next agreement. The obstacle is structural. Under the CBA, the league does not have to bargain over the pre-1980 players unless the union raises the issue. Advocates have long pointed to that as the reason the union has to lead. The union, for its part, has reasonably said its first duty is to the players it represents now, and that in 2011 the league agreed to a program it had no obligation to offer. Both things can be true. It can be true that the 2011 payments were a good-faith step, and that a stipend which dies with the player, carries no health coverage and is worth about a tenth of a pension is not the end of the job. A fair fix has three parts: Bring the surviving pre-1980 men into the pension plan, credited for the service they actually earned, as the 1969 agreement did for the generation before them. Make the benefit survive them. At minimum, let the payment pass to a widow or beneficiary, as a vested player’s pension does. Audit the service records. MLB and the union, not the Hall of Fame, should verify the credited service of every retiree from the paper-card era and correct what is wrong. December 1 The current collective bargaining agreement expires at 11:59 p.m. Eastern on December 1. A lockout is widely expected to follow. The headline fights are a salary cap, a salary floor and the luxury tax. The pre-1980 players will not be in the room, and they will not be on anyone’s list of demands unless someone puts them there. A negotiation over billions of dollars is not built to notice $20 million, or 500 men in their late seventies. That is exactly why it should. The last nine collective bargaining agreements have overlooked full pensions for those on the “Bittercup” list. I think about that card show more now than I have ever expected. Bob Feller was a Hall of Famer, a war veteran and the first president of the players’ union. He still sat at a table signing for a dollar, because when he played, the people running the game did not think the men who made it were owed much after they stopped. The union Feller helped start changed that. It built one of the best pension plans in sport. A player who appears for a single day this season is vested in the plan for life. Tom Bruno pitched in parts of four seasons for three teams. He walked out with that union in 1980 and was cut on the last day of spring. To the plan his union built, he is a man who never existed. He needs one more day. As I told NBC News Gretchen Morgenson, “These guys were really the last of that working-class style ballplayer,” said Max Effgen, a researcher at the Society for American Baseball Research. “They were making good money but didn’t enjoy free agency, 401(k)s, healthcare and other situations the players have now.” “Disparities between eras will always exist,” Effgen added, “but baseball owners and the union must understand that past sacrifices paved the way for modern riches.” Link to the full story and details on the 1980-1992 MLB retirees whose pension has not seen a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) in some time is here: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/foul-ball-aging-ex-mlb-stars-say-league-turning-back-rcna341183 Link to pre-1980 pensionless baseball players: is here: https://bittercupbaseball.com. Sources Tom Bruno, SABR BioProject (Max Effgen) and MLB.com player page: 69 games, 7-7, 4.22 ERA, 1976–1979 Wikipedia, Tom Bruno: debut Aug 1, 1976; only save Aug 11, 1978 NBC Sports, 2011 announcement: up to $10,000 a year, jointly funded; four-year rule before 1980 Miami New Times: $625 per quarter-year in 2011; Gladstone’s $5 million estimate Douglas Gladstone, Goodreads blog: 2022 CBA raised payments to $718.75 per 43 days, $11,500 maximum Times of San Diego, Gladstone op-ed (May 2024): payment can’t pass to a beneficiary; league needn’t bargain unless union raises it Baseball Happenings, Gladstone: 1980 Memorial Day agreement (one day for health, 43 days for pension); David Clyde 37 days short Idaho Business Review (Aug 2025): 503 excluded players; pension fund over $4 billion (Gladstone estimate) Canadian Baseball Network: Bruno on the non-vested list; MLBPA’s position that MLB had no obligation to bargain Pitcher List: MLB revenue $12.1 billion in 2024 theScore: CBA expires 11:59 p.m. ET Dec 1, 2026 MLB glossary, service time Max Effgen, “Short History of the MLB Players’ Pension Plan” (Feb 2026): Feller as first MLBPA president; 1969 retroactivity; current benefit levels ...