Читать книгу Rage. The Legend of "Baseball Bill" Denehy онлайн

9 страница из 92

I was fired from my job at a golf shop for trying to strangle one of the other workers and because I wouldn’t deliver his illegal drugs to him. Without a job, things got so bad that I had to ask the nonprofit Baseball Assistance Team (BAT) to pay my rent and give me money for food. They provided for me for a year and a half. I had to ask for help because baseball has royally screwed about 850 of us out of our pensions.

In 1981, the Major League Baseball Players Association made a deal with the owners not to include any players in the union who played before 1980 and who didn’t play for five years or more. I played part-time in three seasons between 1967 and 1971. Since I don’t qualify to join the union, I can’t get a pension. Marvin Miller and Bob Boone conspired to really fuck me but good.

That would be enough to enrage anyone, but now I’m blind, and baseball is the reason. When I tried to get workman’s comp, I was told, “You don’t have any records of your fifty-seven cortisone shots. How do we know you had them?”