Perhaps it’s the length of the season, or the fact that every player leaves a statistical record, or that the every-day nature of the sport leads to a wealth of stories. Whatever it is, baseball lends itself to full length books more than any other game.
Two new books in particular lend expose opposite ends of the baseball prose spectrum. One, Defining Greatness by Michael Hoban, a retired mathematics professor, is an analytic review of the requirements for entry into the Baseball Hall of Fame with conclusions regarding who should be in that isn’t and who was erroneously enshrined. The second, A Bitter Cup of Coffee by Douglas Gladstone, is the story of about 900 players whose major league careers were too short to qualify for baseball pensions despite others in similar circumstances who have received pension-like grants. Gladstone writes of the struggles of these players since their careers ended and the advocates trying to right what the author purports to be an injustice.
For those who enjoy thinking about baseball’s greats and near greats and comparing the virtues of differing degrees of excellence, Hoban’s book is for you. The author’s primary hypothesis is that the Baseball Hall of Fame is overpopulated, some of those on the outside should be in, and that there should be strict objective standards for player admission.
“Over one-third of the players who are in the Hall of Fame should not be there,” Hoban says. “Those who should be in there are the ones who have earned the right to be there.” In his book, Hoban has come up with a formula that assigns a numerical value to a player’s career. The system, called Career Assessment Wins Shares (CAWS) ranks all the players of the twentieth century according to their career numbers. And it establishes career benchmarks for each position to determine if players have Hall of Fame numbers.
Of course there is no debating players like Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Ted Williams and Tom Seaver. The controversy comes when evaluating the cases of players like Don Mattingly, Bill Mazeroski and Kirby Puckett. A baseball fan reading a book like Hoban’s will naturally reflect back on favorite players and moments from the past. He or she will also evaluate Hoban’s method and the case he makes for it. Finally, the big fan will consider whether membership in the Baseball Hall of Fame should be strictly objective, or if subjective standards like sportsmanship or character should come into play.
Gladstone’s book is entirely different. He postulates that since Major League Baseball generates more than $7 billion per year that it should take care of all its former players. As it stands, there is a window of players whose careers ended between 1947 and 1980 who had to accrue a minimum of four years of service to qualify for post-career benefits. Major Leaguers active since 1980 need only one day of service to qualify for lifetime medical benefits and 43 days of service to receive a monthly stipend.
Players from the era captured in Gladstone’s book played for a minimum salary of $6,000 per year as opposed to the $500,000 annual minimum today. Average salaries for most of this period were under $20,000 per season, as compared to about $3 million today. Therefore, says Gladstone, these players need the pensions and stipends, and many have endured financial hardship since their playing days ended.
The situation Gladstone described is complicated by a grant Major League Baseball made to Negro League Players of the 1940s and 1950s. He says that the 1947-1980 Major League players not receiving pensions are therefore victims of discrimination. Much of the book covers the pursuit of that case and castigates MLB and the Players Association as skinflints for not making allowances for the pre-1980 players.
The stories of hardship and near-misses in A Bitter Cup of Coffee are compelling and open a window for readers to tales not normally captured in popular sports media.
Both books are available in hard copy and e-reader formats from amazon.com.
While I am grateful to Mr. Hirsch for writing an unsolicited, positive review of my book, at no time have I ever insinuated that the pre-1980 players were being racially discriminted against. How could I, when several of them, including Wayne Cage, Bill Harrell, Aaron Pointer and, most notably, Herb Washington are African Americans themselves?
A 2004 lawsuit attempted to frame the issue in terms of reverse discrimination, and this class action suit was subsequently dismissed and, on appeal, later upheld. But, strictly speaking, I have always argued that this is an issue about equity in employment benefits, not Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. In a nutshell, you cannot give people who didn’t have a contractual employment relationship with MLB life annuities and health insurance benefits w/o also giving similar or comparable benefits to men who did have a contractual employment history with the employer.
Again, thanks to Mr. Hirsch for attempting to shed light on this matter, which has been largely overlooked by the mainstream media.