Tell Tony Clark to Do What is Right Once and For All
If the friends and loved ones of Dolores Glynn are reading this, please let them know how sorry I am.
Now I have no idea whether Dolores Glynn, who once served as the secretary to Buzzie Bavasi, the former president of the San Diego Padres, is still alive. But I do know that her late husband Bill died four years ago, at 91.
If the name rings a bell, it’s because Bill Glynn is part of baseball history. He’s the former first baseman who smacked three home runs in one game in 1954, when he was a member of the Cleveland Indians team that won 111 games during the regular season and represented the American League in the World Series against the New York Giants that year.
Very few men have hit three homers in a game. Glynn is in select company.
Glynn was also among the pre-198o, non-vested players who weren’t receiving MLB pensions. “It’s just not fair,” he told me when I last spoke to him in 2009. “When a husband dies, a pension is supposed to take care of his wife.”
By now, readers of this webzine know I’ve made attempting to upgrade the compensation that retired Padres like Bill Champion, Jim Wilhelm, and Joseph McIntosh have been receiving since April 2011. A post-1980 player is guaranteed a pension of somewhere between $34,000 and $210,000, depending on his years of service and his final average salary, among other factors. But a man like McIntosh only receives an appalling $625 for every 43 game days of service he accrued on an active MLB roster. And that’s before taxes are taken out. And that’s only up to $10,000. And when the man dies, the payment dies with him.
So when Glynn died on January 15, 2013, after only receiving three years worth of these payments, Dolores — or whoever he named as his designated beneficiaries — got squat.
That’s why I’m sorry. I’m sorry MLB and the players’ union representing today’s players — the Major League Baseball Players Association — are so cheap.
By the way — you know who the executive director of the union is, don’t you?
It’s Tony Clark, who played for the Padres in 2008.
The same Tony Clark who played college basketball at San Diego State, where he was the Aztecs’ top scorer during the 1991-92 season with 11.5 points per game.
He deserves a lump of coal in his stockings, folks.
If you want to let him know that you think it’s a slap in the face to men like McIntosh, Wilhelm, Champion, and Patty Hilton — who lost her husband, former Padre Dave Hilton — on September 17th, that the union won’t go to bat for these individuals, Clark’s address is [email protected].
Tell Tony he should start out the New Year right — by doing right by these retirees and their spouses.
Once and for all.
Freelance magazine writer.
Advocate for MLB players rights