Jim Golden’s golden hour got lost in the confusion of baseball pensions

Signed 1961 Jim Golden rookie card from Topps. // Courtesy Baseball Almanac

85-year-old Jim Golden, who resides on SW 10th Avenue in Topeka, appeared in 69 Major League Baseball (MLB) games during his career. Over parts of four seasons, with the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Colt .45s, he won nine games, including five complete games. He also threw two shutouts.

Golden was also a good hitting pitcher: he batted .217 for his career, getting 13 hits, three doubles and two triples, and collected eight runs batted in.

Golden, who was born in the “Show Me” state of Missouri, in a town called Eldon, enjoyed what could be termed a respectable career, but nothing that would earn him induction into the Hall of Fame (HOF). His time playing Major League Baseball (MLB) might otherwise be forgotten were it not for the fact that he is among over 600 retirees who aren’t receiving MLB pensions.

I mention this because one of the greatest pitchers in the history of the national pastime, the Washington Nationals’ Max Scherzer, who was born in Chesterfield, Missouri, is in a position to help Golden and the other men get MLB pensions.

Nicknamed “Mad Max” after the movie character played by Mel Gibson and Tom Hardy, and the fact that he’s arguably an intense guy (during a game) who isn’t afraid to speak his mind, Scherzer is a generational talent who has won three Cy Young Awards, pitched two no-hitters, appeared in nine All-Star Games and won a world championship with the Nats in 2019. He is a near certainty to enter the HOF on his first try, whenever that day comes.

Given all his success, Scherzer has been deservingly compensated. He is in the sixth year of a seven-year, $210 million deal he signed with the Nats in 2015.

And I don’t begrudge him one penny.

No, my problem with him is that Scherzer is on the eight-man executive committee of the union representing current ballplayers, the Major League Baseball Players’ Association (MLBPA), and hasn’t lifted a finger to help all the men like Golden, who earned $10,500 in his final season with the Houston Colt .45s in 1963.

The men like Golden paved the way for today’s players like Scherzer to command the salaries that are being handed out these days. They’re the ones who stood on picket lines, endured labor stoppages, and went without paychecks so that the 25th man riding the pines this year could earn a minimum salary of $565,600. The average salary in the game is approximately $4 million.

But for sheer outrageousness, according to its own 2015 Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the MLBPA paid its 72 staff salaries totaling $16 million. The union’s executive director, former Detroit Tigers All-Star Tony Clark, receives a compensation package, including benefits, totaling more than $2.2 million.

Let that sink in. Unions are supposed to take care of working people. But the MLBPA is too busy doling out top-shelf salaries to itself at the expense of octogenarians like Golden.

What’s wrong with this picture?

See, the rules for receiving MLB pensions changed in 1980. Since 1980, all you’ve needed is 43 games on an active MLB roster to earn a pension. But Golden and all the other men do not get pensions because they didn’t accrue four years of service credit. That was what ballplayers who played between 1947-1979 needed to be eligible for the pension plan.

Instead, they all receive nonqualified retirement payments based on a complicated formula that had to have been calculated by an actuary.

In brief, for every 43 game days of service a man has accrued on an active MLB roster, he gets $625, up to $10,000. That payment is before taxes are taken out. Meanwhile, a vested retiree can earn a pension of as much as $230,000, according to the IRS.

What’s more, the payment cannot be passed on to a spouse or designated beneficiary. So none of Mr. Golden’s loved ones will receive the bone he is being thrown when he dies. These men are also not eligible to be covered under the league’s umbrella health insurance plan.

And because the league is under no obligation to collectively bargain about this item, if the retired men are to be helped, it is the union that has to go to bat for them.

Is Sherzer mad about this situation? Is he mad enough to speak out about it?

Show me Sherzer. Please show me. For the sake of the men who came before you. Like Jim Golden.

Douglas J. Gladstone is the author of “A Bitter Cup of Coffee: How MLB & The Players’ Association Threw 874 Retirees a Curve.” He and his family reside in the Capital District of New York.