Collier: No royal treatment for King's family
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In this, the first full summer without being able to talk about life and baseball with her father, Amy King still moves confidently in that somehow hollowed out world.
It's a hurting place, an empty place, sometimes, but he has been gone since August and now again she thrives, more because of him than in spite of him.
"He was such a survivor," Nellie King's youngest daughter said over coffee Wednesday. "He always said, 'Make the best of whatever life gives you,' and he was the master of that. I know it's my destiny now to be the caretaker to my mother, but I just think, 'What would he do?' -- and that would be to say, 'OK, let's go, here's what has to be done.'
"It's been transformative."
For a time, Nellie King survived pneumonia, colon cancer and Parkinson's disease, all of which I guess wasn't terribly surprising from a guy who had survived traveling with the late Bob Prince.
But the timing of Nellie's Aug. 11, 2010, death was little short of a pity. It came eight months and 10 days before baseball commissioner Bud Selig stepped to a microphone in New York and announced a decades-overdue player benefit that substantially would have lightened the financial burden of those sickened final years for King, his seriously ill widow, and the three grown daughters whose hearts ached as they watched.
"Sometimes in life, it's just the right thing to do," Selig said that day in April. "I believe baseball is a social institution, and with that comes social responsibilities."
I believe he believes that, but baseball took forever to act on that belief, at least when it comes to players of King's era, players who never drew a pension even as the game's profit margins and salaries grew to obscene levels.
"It's better than nothing, but, in my estimation, it's a partial victory," said Doug Gladstone, whose book, "A Bitter Cup of Coffee" doubtless helped bring about the April announcement. "They announced with great fanfare that all these men who still are not vested, we're going to cut you checks for up to $10,000 for two years contingent upon your service. It's better than nothing, but it's not a real pension. It doesn't provide health-insurance coverage, nor will any player's spouse or loved one receive a designated benefit after the player passes.
"You can call it a guilt payment or reparations or what have you. But the foot-dragging for 31 years -- you didn't do anything about this? It's like telling the Nellie King family, look, he died at an inconvenient time for us. He should have stayed alive for this."
First Published June 9, 2011 12:00 am
