Rozner: MLB's simple answer is they were expendable

The same queries arrive with each discussion.

How could Major League Baseball and the players association abandon 630 men without pensions, the same men who helped build the game?

Why doesn't baseball do something to help when it clearly has the money to take care of them?

Why doesn't Tony Clark, a former player and the current MLBPA boss, concern himself even a little, especially knowing some of the 630 lost crucial service time to work stoppages as they fought for players' rights in labor battles?

Where is the outrage from the current players, and where are the agents who care so much about their clients?

What about all the former players getting big pensions, many of them after making big money?

Where are all the former players who work for the commissioner or the MLBPA in cushy no-show jobs, some of whom played with those who were expendable?

With so many billionaire owners and so much to go around, why hasn't one of them taken up this cause?

And how about the national media, which seems to have zero interest in the subject?

All good questions.

Major League Baseball doesn't care because, simply, it doesn't have to, and apparently there's no one in the commissioner's office interested in helping the 630 retired players without a pension.

That's OK, many will die over the next decade and MLB won't have to hear about it, won't have to worry about dipping into that $10 billion in revenue it brags about.

Many are ill and without proper medical care, and many have lost their homes.

For those just catching up, anyone who played in the majors after 1980 is eligible for health coverage after a single game day and pension-eligible after 43 days.

The union did not make that retroactive when it agreed to a labor deal in 1980, leaving behind the rest. Those with less than four years' service, pre-1980, can't buy into the health care plan and receive no pension.

The players association has to do precisely nothing for these ex-players, as was the case in 1980 when it ignored them. It has no legal obligation to these 600-plus players, so the union merely waits for annoying stories about them to go away.

And it waits for the retirees to wither away, the number dwindling each month.

The players association welfare and pension benefits fund is valued at more than $3.5 billion. It could do plenty. But it doesn't have to, so it patiently waits for these ex-players to disappear.

Clark gets an MLB pension from his years as a player and his current salary is $2.1 million a year as head of the union. The 72 people who work for the union in New York are paid a collective $16 million a year, an average salary of $222,000.

They can afford to be patient. The 630 players won't live forever.

Current players are too worried about the free agency squeeze caused by the salary tax - their own foolish agreement with the owners - to care about former players.

Ask them or their agents about The Expendables and you get a lot of palms to the air and blank stares.

Many of the biggest name former players now work for MLB teams, some in meaningless jobs and some with significant roles, but it's a cash cow and they're not going to bite that hand.

Besides, how's that affect them?

The billionaire owners are busy maximizing revenue and looking for taxpayer-funded stadiums. A few old men are not on the agenda.

The national media feeds from the same huge trough, an income stream direct from MLB at their network, from individual clubs, from networks associated with the game and merely in the fashion in which they're fed information - information they sprint to give away for free on Twitter.

Think they're going to jeopardize all those dollars to help some old guys no one cares about anyway?

MLB is like an organized crime family. Mess with that business and you'll find your career buried in the desert 30 miles outside Vegas.

No, the national media wants nothing to do with this story.

Besides, these 630 men won't live forever. The sick ones without decent medical care will go faster, as will the ones heartbroken, having suffered through bankruptcy and foreclosure.

It's been said over time that you have to be selfish in baseball, that you must eschew all else in order to spend the requisite time on your game, to think constantly about your craft if you want to be great.

The attention to being great must be great, or suffer mediocrity.

But the game need not be so utterly selfish in protecting a grand treasure, the spoils endless, the greed without limits.

There is so much the game could do for these 630 men.

If only someone cared.