Baseball has been very good to Larry Dierker.
The right-hander tossed a no-hitter late in his 14-year career with the Houston Astros before moving to the broadcast booth and eventually becoming the team's manager. He also wrote books, newspaper columns and a blog about the game.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Thursday March 01, 2007 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 54 words Type of Material: Correction
Sports pensions: An article in Tuesday's Sports section said former NBA player Bob Elliott was 55 and lived in Phoenix. He is 51 and lives in Tucson. The article also said Elliott earned $22,500 in his rookie year, matching the league minimum in 1977. But Elliott never disclosed his salary for that rookie season.
And in two years, Dierker, 60, will begin to receive $180,000 in annual retirement benefits -- payback for sacrifices made in 1972, when, as a young union representative, he rallied support for baseball's first strike, over a pension funding dispute with owners.
"Nothing is what most 20-somethings know about pensions," said Dierker, who earned $125,000 at the height of his playing career and credits longtime players' union executive Marvin Miller for educating him about the importance of retirement planning. "I didn't realize how much the time value of money would change things for me over the years."
Baseball's pension -- funded in 1947, two years before steelworkers won their pension -- is the gold standard for union-represented athletes. But even its plan, which is relatively lucrative when compared with those offered by the NFL and NBA, has drawn criticism from former players who failed to win benefits or have seen the value of their monthly checks eroded by time and inflation.
The resentment now spans those three major American professional sports leagues and has only grown in recent years as franchise owners and current athletes enjoy the financial wealth created by lucrative broadcast rights deals.
Contrast what baseball will pay Dierker to what the NFL will provide former lineman Conrad Dobler, who at 56 would receive $24,000 annually if he were to immediately begin taking his pension -- or $48,000 if he could unsnarl his finances and delay retirement until age 62.
The 10-year NFL veteran, who has had several knee operations and other ailments, maintains that he can't afford to take his relatively small pension now because doing so would preclude him from pursuing a long-contested disability claim with the NFL Players Assn.
"We're not begging, and we're not trying to take something we don't think we deserve," Dobler said. "We're simply trying to get back something that we worked so hard to get in the first place."
The bad blood is the result of a generational conflict that is unique to the sports world.
