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“Dollar Bill” Denehy celebrated his 78th birthday last month. The Middletown native, who attended Middletown Woodrow Wilson High School, is reportedly the second-ever Middletown Little Leaguer to play Major League Baseball.
Regrettably, that’s probably not what he’s most famous for.
Though he managed Hall of Famer Jeff Bagwell at the University of Hartford, Denehy is arguably best known for appearing on the same rookie card as the late HOFer Tom Seaver. He was subsequently traded from the New York Mets to the then-Washington Senators, along with $100,000, in the deal that brought manager Gil Hodges to Queens.
Hodges was inducted into the Cooperstown shrine himself two years ago,
Though Denehy has been around a lot of Hall of Famers – he was also a teammate of the late Al Kaline when he was with the Detroit Tigers, and he was managed by the late Ted Williams when he was with the Senators– none have helped him get a MLB pension. In fact, he is one of 517 retirees being hosed out of pensions by the league and the Major League Baseball Players’ Association (MLBPA), which is the union that represents both current players and minor leaguers. All men like Denehy receive are yearly non-qualified retirement stipends of $718.75 for every 43 game days they were on an active MLB roster, up to a maximum payment of $11,500.
Contending that his time in the game could have been longer had it not been for the 57 cortisone shots he received during the course of his career, Denehy was one of the most vocal plaintiffs in a 2004 class action lawsuit against the league. The shots, he argued, facilitated his vision loss.
Now a resident of Orlando, “Dollar Bill” is legally blind.
You can hardly blame Denehy for being upset that he played during a time of such low salaries. These days, the minimum salary for the 26th man riding the pines is $740,000.
By comparison, Denehy never made more than $15,000 playing in “The Show.”
Meanwhile, the maximum IRS pension limit is $275,000. The annual stipend Denehy gets is worth approximately $4,000 per year. And that’s before taxes are taken out.
As you might know, New York Yankees pitcher Gerrit Cole, who is a former member of the MLBPA executive subcommittee, made sure to thank the late Marvin Miller and Curt Flood at a news conference five years ago held to trumpet the $324 million contract he signed with the Yankees. Both Miller and Flood were instrumental in free agency finally happening in 1976.
Neither MLB nor the MLBPA want to retroactively restore the non-vested men like Denehy into pension coverage. And to make matters worse, the bone Denehy is being thrown each year cannot be passed on to a surviving spouse or designated beneficiary, such as his daughters, Kristin and Heather.
Is this fair? Of course not. Yet the executive director of the MLBPA, Tony Clark, refuses to go to bat for men like Denehy.
Unions are supposed to help hard working women and men in this country get a fair shake in life. Denehy may be legally blind, but he definitely sees that the so-called MLBPA labor leader doesn’t want to help anyone but himself —Clark reportedly receives a yearly salary of $4.25 million.
That’s why stars like Cole should tip their caps to Dollar Bill. And say thank you for paving the way for free agency to occur. It’d be the right thing to do. Just like it’d be the right thing for Denehy and all the other retirees to get more than what they’re now receiving.
Douglas J. Gladstone (@GLADSTONEWRITER) is the author of “A Bitter Cup of Coffee: How MLB & the Players’ Association Threw 874 Retirees a Curve.”