If Nick Ahmed Really Wants to Help People’s Lives....

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On May 4, East Longmeadow’s Nick Ahmed – the Gold Glove award-winning shortstop and players’ representative for the Arizona Diamondbacks – tweeted the following quote from the English cleric John Wesley, who later became a leader of the Methodist movement:

“Do all the good you can,

By all the means you can,

In all the ways you can,

In all the places you can,

At all the times you can,

To all the people you can,

As long as ever you can.”

What a great sentiment. I subsequently learned that Mr. Ahmed, who grew up attending St. Michael’s Parish, is one of the most publicly devout Christian athletes in sports today. For instance, he is active with Baseball Chapel, an organization that brings the Christian faith into major league and minor league clubhouses across the country.

So that same day, I tweeted him about my passion project: the 600+ retired ballplayers who don’t receive Major League Baseball (MLB) pensions because the union representing current ballplayers like Mr. Ahmed, the Major League Baseball Players’ Association (MLBPA), refuses to go to bat for them.

The very next day, on May 5, he replied to me via Twitter that he “wasn’t really sure what I was referring to.

“Can you make yourself a bit clearer please?”

Imagine that, I thought. An actual big leaguer and players’ representative wanted to learn about this issue, which I’ve been writing about for more than one decade. I was delighted, especially since, only a day or two before, after tweeting him about the issue, pitcher Jameson Tallion – the Pittsburgh Pirates players’ representative — blocked me.

So I replied to Mr. Ahmed via Twitter with some details about the issue.

In order to avert a threatened 1980 Memorial Day Weekend walkout by the players, MLB made the following sweetheart offer to union representatives: going forward, all a post-1980 player would need to be eligible to buy into the league’s premium health insurance plan was one game day of service; all a post-1980 player would need for a benefit allowance was 43 game days of service. At the time, the threshold was four years to be vested in the pension plan.

The problem was, the union failed to insist on retroactivity for all those players who had more than 43 game days but less than four years of service.

So men like former Red Sox players Steve Barr and Carmen Fanzone, as well as Worcester native Pat Bourque, Reading’s John Doherty, and Teaticket’s Bob Allietta, are only receiving a payment of $625 for every 43 game days of service they accrued on an active MLB roster, up to $10,000.

Meanwhile, a vested player can earn as much as $230,000, according to the IRS.

Mr. Ahmed, who was inducted into the East Longmeadow High School Hall of Fame in 2018, has never responded to me since May 5. Despite this slight, it is my understanding that he is quite the standup guy. In an article written by journalist Mark Volain, the Senior Pastor for the Lifeacre Church in Chicopee, Kevin Whitacre, said that Ahmed is the kind of individual “who wants to do more than just show up in church on Sundays. He wants to share his faith and help people’s lives.”

Help people’s lives, huh?

Ahmed might want to know that many of these non-vested retirees are filing for bankruptcy at advanced ages, having banks foreclose on their homes, and are so sickly and poor that they cannot afford adequate health care coverage.

In early September, Ahmed said it perturbed him (well, let’s just say that he used a bit of a stronger term) that Diamondbacks GM Mike Hazen had written off the season by trading Starling Marte to the Miami Marlins.

You know what perturbs me? That a good man like Nick Ahmed either isn’t being told about this issue by the MLBPA leadership, or he doesn’t want to lift a finger to help those 600 retirees. Because somewhere I read a good book that says that men who believe in grace, charity, and kindness should help their fellow man.

Douglas J. Gladstone is the author of the book, “A Bitter Cup of Coffee; How MLB & The Players’ Association Threw 874 Retirees a Curve”