Chapters (48)
- Cover
- PRAISE FOR ALEXA MARTIN’S PLAYBOOK SERIES
- Titles by Alexa Martin
- Dedication
- AUTHOR’S NOTE
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Epilogue
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- About the Author
- What’s next onyour reading list?
This is hard for me to wrap my head around for so many reasons, but the main one is how often the League throws around the term “legends” and “honors” at past players. I just assumed that meant they were taking care of these men as well.
“Well, not exactly.” She picks up her glass and takes a small sip and I feel like she’s just giving me a few extra seconds to prepare. “You have to remember the pre-’93 players were also playing before they had full free agency, so the men also weren’t making nearly as much as Quinton and his teammates are today. So while the men who qualified for a pension—about four thousand still living today—get one, it’s not enough.”
“You see on the news these stories about CTE being discovered. You might see a little blurb here or there about a former player passing away, but what you aren’t seeing is the actual suffering that’s going on.” Bill leans forward. The smile he walked in with is gone, his jaw is set, and his mouth is a straight line. Talking about this clearly brings him no joy. “You don’t hear about the dementia or the Alzheimer’s or the ALS. You’re not seeing the surgeries or the proud men who have been brought down to their knees and can’t afford to even pay their bills. We fought for the guys to get what they’re getting today and they deserve that. We just want to be able to take care of ourselves as well, to not be forgotten.”
I look over at Quinton and I swear I can see the rigidness through every line in his body. His hands are balled in fists so tight, it’d be a miracle if he doesn’t draw blood.
“The pension pre-’93 players are receiving is about one-third of what today’s players are receiving. To put it this way, a basketball player who played for ten years and retired after 1965 receives around two hundred and fifteen thousand dollars a year at age sixty-two. A football player who played for ten years and retired before 1993 will receive a little over forty-three thousand dollars, pretax, at age fifty-five.” Patty scoots to the edge of her chair; her kind eyes look tired. I know she has to be tired of feeling ignored. “Like Bill said, these are men who are suffering. They played the game when it was at its most vicious. The little money they are getting is going right back out of the door for medical bills and medicine, and some of them can’t even afford to get the proper care. All we want is a pension for these men that’s equal to those players are receiving today. Nothing else.”
“More and more of us are dying every year,” Bill says. “We want pension parity before we all disappear.”