A Tale of Two Wyomingites

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Not too many big leaguers hail from Wyoming, like the New York Mets’ Brandon Nimmo, who the team recently re-signed to an eight-year, $162 million free agent contract.

Tom Browning, 62, pitched a perfect game while he was with the Cincinnati Reds. He’s from Caspar.

Then there’s pitcher Dennis DeBarr of Modesto, California. Like Nimmo, he is from Cheyenne.

Unfortunately, that’s where the similarities end.

When DeBarr played for the Toronto Blue Jays, in 1977, he earned $19,000. In the new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) ratified this past Spring, the union representing today’s players, the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA), made sure that the minimum salary for current players went up 23.8 percent, from $565,500 to $700,000.

A vested retiree such as Browning can earn as much as $245,000. But DeBarr? He’s among the 500 retirees who played before 1980 who are being thrown a bone during their years on golden pond.

Men such as DeBarr don’t receive pensions because of a vesting change in 1980. So in April 2011, an awards program was started by the late Michael Weiner, of the MLBPA, and former Major League Baseball (MLB) Commissioner Bud Selig to give these men some money: $625 for every 43 games they accrued on an active MLB roster.

In the new CBA passed this March, that formula was amended: for every 43 games, the man now gets $718.75, up to a maximum of $11,500.

While DeBarr is happy to be getting a little bit more in retirement, he’s hardly jumping for joy. Literally, because in 2018, DeBarr, who suffers from Type 2 diabetes, developed a blister that wouldn’t heal; it later morphed into sepsis. Gangrene followed and, as a result, his left leg was amputated below the knee on August 13 of that year.

Nimmo, on the other hand, is so old school he sprints down to first base every time he gets a walk. That’s why he was the Mets’ winner of the Heart and Hustle Award this past season. The award recognizes one player on each team who demonstrates a passion for the game of baseball and best embodies the values, spirit, and traditions of the game.

And while that’s certainly commendable, in my opinion, the business of baseball does not embody those values, spirit, and traditions. If they did, the players’ association rank and file certainly wouldn’t allow the men like DeBarr to be thrown under the bus as they have by the union’s executive leadership.

That’s assuming they even know what these old-timers are going through. Fact is, the wife of one current Mets pitcher told me last December that neither she nor her husband knew anything about how badly these retirees are being treated. “If it weren’t for them,” she wrote me, “my husband would not be in the position he is today.”

Men like DeBarr stood on picket lines, went without paychecks, and endured labor stoppages all so free agency could occur.

All so Brandon Nimmo could cash in.

A freelance magazine writer, Douglas J. Gladstone is the author of two books, including “A Bitter Cup of Coffee: How MLB & The Players’ Association Threw 874 Retirees a Curve.”