Skok and other retired ballplayers unsuccessfully tried to persuade team owners to help fund benefits for players whose careers predated the 1980 rule change. The attempt was derailed, Skok said, after a separate group of players unsuccessfully sued Major League Baseball for pension benefits.
Former Montreal Expos pitcher Steve Rogers, who now oversees pension issues for the MLBPA, said the union recognizes its obligation to past players. "Each time we negotiate, we try to reach back a minimum of 10 years to get current benefits extended back in time," Rogers said. "There are now guys from the 1950s and 1960s who are earning benefits that are five or 10 times higher than what they earned while they were playing."
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.
Miller, the baseball union's longtime executive director, said that he constantly reminded younger players of the need to care for past generations. During the 1960s, Miller invited widows of former baseball greats to speak to young players about their daily struggle to make ends meet with their then-miserly pensions.
"Along with creating self-interest, I wanted to establish an ironclad precedent that this is what you do -- you take care of older people who came before you," Miller said.
Athletes who've been fortunate enough to be paid to play their beloved games acknowledge that it often is difficult for fans and today's players to empathize with aging athletes.
"The fallacy is that these guys played in the big leagues, so they must all have money," said Robert A. Elliott, a former center with the New Jersey Nets who is now a Phoenix accountant and investment advisor.
Elliott, now 55, earned $22,500 during his rookie year in 1977 and never earned a six-figure salary during his three-year NBA career. Elliott's monthly check will grow beyond the $3,200 he has been promised at age 62, thanks to the newly reworked pension. But many former athletes fall upon hard times financially and opt to take pensions earlier -- a practice that dramatically reduces monthly benefits.
"An awful lot of guys never thought about what they'd do after playing football," said Olsen, the Hall of Fame defensive tackle who enjoyed post-football success in sports broadcasting and Hollywood. "For many, that turns out to be a fatal mistake. They never found anything to replace the incredible chunk of life that was the game. Emotionally, it leaves them crippled ... and, financially, many of them never catch up."
