Weaver: David Clyde kept baseball in Arlington — and missed an MLB pension by 37 days
From Levi Weaver at The Athletic on February 1, 2019:
David Clyde balks at the suggestion that he once saved the Texas Rangers. “You can’t say that I saved the franchise,” he counters in his South Texas drawl. “Because in the entire history of Major League Baseball — and I don’t think I’m wrong on this — there has never been a franchise that has folded. They have moved, but (the league has) never had one put on their door, ‘going out of business’. So, I cannot take credit for that.
“Now, (if) we want to rephrase that and say I had a big hand in keeping baseball in Arlington? I will agree to that.”
Clyde is 63 years old now, and more than 45 years after his big-league debut, he is hoping that the Rangers — or MLB, or the Players Association, or anyone, really — will consider returning the favor. He is one of around 640 players who, by virtue of a bit of red tape, some technicalities and one incredibly ill-conceived lawsuit, are without a pension or access to MLB’s health insurance program as they hit retirement age.
A 2011 concession by the commissioner’s office did grant the players some financial reprieve in the form of non-pension payments that, in some cases, are equivalent to the lower end of a pension payment. Yet Clyde and others believe the majors and the MLBPA could be doing more to take care of a generation of players who are entering their vulnerable late years.
Read the full article here (subscription required): https://theathletic.com/766944/2019/01/31/david-clyde-kept-baseball-in-arlington-and-missed-an-mlb-pension-by-37-days-does-the-sport-owe-him-anything/
Originally published: February 1, 2019. Last Updated: February 1, 2019.