Former Atlanta Braves outfielder missed qualifying for an MLB pension by one…….

hey said he was the fastest man in baseball.

In the summer of 1980, in the midst of a historic presidential campaign and the infamous Atlanta child murder mysteries, Jimmy Carter was serving his one and only term as president while fellow Georgian Gary Cooper was playing his one and only season in the MLB. Some of the fastest ballplayers of the era – Rickey Henderson, Ron LeFlore and Willie Wilson – were fast becoming household names.

But for Cooper, baseball held a different fate.

“If he wasn’t the fastest man in baseball,” said Paul Snyder, longtime scouting director for the Atlanta Braves, who died Nov. 23, 2023. “he was right up there with the next guy.”

Cooper, then a 23-year-old rookie outfielder, spent 42 days on the Braves’ roster that summer as a pinch-runner and leftfielder for manager Bobby Cox. He played in 21 games and went to the plate twice.

Just a week after a rainout against the San Francisco Giants on Sept. 29 that year, a game the Braves were not required to make up, Cooper was sent back to the minor leagues and never made it back to the show. After one more season in the Braves’ farm system with the 1981 Durham Bulls, Cooper decided to hang up his cleats.

“I didn’t have nothin’ to prove back in the minors,” he said. “I just felt like it was time to call it quits.”

But what Cooper didn’t fully realize until many years later is that he had come within 24 hours — just one day on the Braves’ roster — of qualifying for a pension from the Major League Baseball Players Association.

RELATED STORY
Michael Harris’ baseball life has always been in Braves Country
Read now
The MLB Players Association, according to Rod Nelson, chairman of the Society for American Baseball Research Scouts Committee, is “the most successful and well-endowed labor union in the history of mankind.” As of its latest filing in 2021, the MLB Players Benefit Plan had 9,847 participants and more than $4.5 billion in assets. But since 1980, the union’s minimum amount of major-league service time needed to qualify for a pension has been 43 days.

“It’s a game of inches,” Steve Butts of the Institute for Baseball Studies said. “But when we’re talking about millionaires and billionaires, the rank and file get lost in the shuffle.”

In Cooper’s era, Black players who were regarded as marginal prospects would only get one chance in the show, said Gary Gillette, co-editor of the ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia and founder and chairman of the Friends of Historic Hamtramck Stadium.

“And if they didn’t perform well,” Gillette said, “they would be sent back to the minors and often never got a second shot to prove themselves.”

And while Cooper might be a day short of qualifying for MLB’s minimal pension stipend, Nelson said, “the real injustice is that he’s been denied the quality health care benefits he was entitled to receive for decades.”

Gary Cooper from his Atlanta Braves playing days.
Outfielder Gary Cooper from his Atlanta Braves playing days.ATLANTA BRAVES
Cooper first discovered baseball through his father, Nathaniel, who made a name for himself as a shortstop on the sandlots of Savannah, Georgia, in the 1950s.

“My daddy should’ve been in the majors,” Cooper said. “He was awesome. That’s all our family did — we just eat, s— and played baseball.”

As a three-sport star at Robert W. Groves High School in Garden City, Cooper also excelled at football and track and once ran the 100-yard dash in 9.7 seconds. As a starting pitcher for Groves, he went 19-3 and threw three no-hitters. In his senior year, he batted .454.

Cooper was selected by Atlanta in the third round of the 1975 MLB draft. He spent seven seasons in the minors, hitting .234 and stealing 211 bases. And before he got called up to the majors, he played three seasons with the AA Savannah Braves, whose home games took place at Grayson Stadium, now home of the Savannah Bananas exhibition team.

At the time, the Braves’ vice president and director of player personnel was Bill Lucas, the first Black general manager of an MLB team.

“Luke was like a father figure to me,” Cooper said. “When he passed, it was a huge loss for the Braves.”

Cooper spent much of his time in the minors playing with catcher Brian Snitker, who’s been the Braves manager since 2016 and led the team to a World Series title in 2021. But while Cooper got a taste of the big time back in the day, Snitker never made it past AAA.