MLB Players Who Went Broke

UAE Moments

Think private jets and luxury living are the ultimate success symbols? Think again! For some MLB stars, a fortune of millions evaporated faster than a pop fly in a hurricane.     This video dives deep into the cautionary tales of baseball legends who went from batting practice with billionaires to bankruptcy courts. We explore how careers that promised lifelong financial security crumbled under the weight of extravagant spending, failed business ventures, and some truly questionable decisions.   Discover how a World Series hero ended up in prison after blowing $58 million on a lavish lifestyle and a failed magazine venture. Learn about another pitching powerhouse who invested his entire $50 million fortune into a video game dream, only to see it vanish and leave taxpayers footing the bill. We'll even touch on how a beloved but infamous player's post-retirement business plans went south.  These stories aren't just about lost money; they're about lost opportunities and the harsh reality of financial mismanagement, even for those who reached the pinnacle of sporting success.  #MLBPin$, #BaseballFollies, #BrokeBallers

Transcript

00:00For all you people out there, don't buy a private jet. You want to go broke, buy a private jet.

00:04I mean, because, like, dude, I thought women were the most powerful thing in the world.

00:08Lenny Dykstra blew through $58 million on luxury and ended up in prison. Kurt Schilling's dream

00:13business wiped out his fortune, and Jose Canseco, he fell from living in mansions to crashing in

00:19garages. In this video, we're looking at MLB players who went from millions to zero dollars.

00:24Lenny Dykstra, this scrappy three-time all-star who helped the Mets win the 1986 World Series

00:30earned himself a cool $58 million over his playing career, which in today's money would be around $84

00:36million. But here's where the story gets juicier than a ballpark hot dog, friends. By 2009, Dykstra

00:43was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy with over $10 million in debts, and that was just the beginning

00:48of his troubles. You see, Nails had this brilliant idea to buy Wayne Gretzky's $18.5 million

00:54mansion in Thousand Oaks, California, financing it with six loans totaling $21 million that required

01:00monthly payments of $135,434. Now, I don't know about you, but that's more than most folks make

01:07in a year, and old Lenny was supposed to cough that up every 30 days like clockwork. But wait,

01:11there's more. Our boy launched something called The Players Club magazine, threw a $600,000 launch

01:17party at the Mandarin Oriental with Donald Trump and Jim Cramer in attendance, and then watched it all

01:22crumble faster than a stale cookie when the 2008 recession hit like a fastball to the ribs.

01:34The kicker, and oh brother is this a kicker, came when federal prosecutors started digging

01:39into Dykstra's finances and discovered he'd been selling assets and lying about it under oath,

01:43including hawking baseball memorabilia for $15,000 to a Las Vegas dealer while claiming he had nothing

01:49left. They slapped him with charges for embezzlement, grand theft auto, identity theft,

01:54and bankruptcy fraud, and in December 2012, a judge sentenced him to six and a half months in the

01:59big house plus 500 hours of community service and $200,000 in restitution. Now here's where it gets

02:05really wild. When the cops raided his Encino home in June 2011, they found cocaine, ecstasy,

02:11and human growth hormone just lying around like party favors. Today, at age 62, Dykstra's living in some

02:18flophouse in New Jersey, got evicted for owing $50,000 in back rent, and his net worth is hovering

02:23somewhere near $0, which is a far cry from those glory days when he was crashing into outfield walls

02:28and making highlight reels. Speaking of Hall of Fame pitchers who threw away their fortunes on foolish

02:33dreams, Kurt Schilling. Here we had one of baseball's greatest clutch pitchers, a man who earned $114 million

02:39over his 20-year career and won three World Series rings, including that legendary 2004 Bloody Sock game

02:46that helped the Red Sox finally break the curse of the Bambino. But Schilling, bless his heart,

02:51decided he was going to become the next great video game mogul, and boy oh boy did that decision

02:55come back to bite him harder than a Randy Johnson fastball to the ribs. In 2006, while still collecting

03:01paychecks from the Red Sox, he founded 38 Studios, named after his jersey number, naturally, with dreams

03:06of creating a massive multiplayer online game called Project Copernicus that would rival World of

03:12Warcraft. Now, most folks would dip a toe in the water before diving headfirst into the deep end,

03:17but not our man Kurt. He dumped $50 million of his own money into this venture, which was pretty much

03:22every penny he'd saved from baseball after taxes and expenses.

03:25When I say what you want me to apologize for, I'm seriously asking in the sense that I didn't

03:30plan on and I never did anything malicious or illegal. When everything happened and we ended,

03:35the company ended, we lived in that building for a year, year and a half.

03:39The company hired fantasy author R.A. Salvatore and comic legend Todd McFarlane employed 379 people

03:46and moved operations to Providence, Rhode Island in 2010 after the state dangled a $75 million loan

03:52guarantee in front of them like a carrot on a stick. They managed to release one game, Kingdoms

03:57of Amalur, Reckoning, in February 2012, which sold 1.3 million copies. Pretty decent numbers, right?

04:03Wrong. They needed 3 million sales just to break even, and by May 2012, the whole operation was

04:08running on fumes, missing a $1.1 million interest payment to Rhode Island and laying off all 379

04:15employees without severance or health coverage. When 38 studios filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in June

04:212012, they had $22 million in assets against $151 million in debts, leaving Rhode Island taxpayers

04:28holding the bag for up to $110 million in losses. Schilling himself was completely tapped out,

04:34telling WEI Radio that his entire $50 million baseball fortune had evaporated, forcing him to

04:40auction off his famous bloody sock for $92,713 and sell his gold coin collection to cover debts.

04:47The state of Rhode Island sued him for fraud, and in 2016 he settled for $2.5 million, though he

04:53called the whole thing political persecution. Today, shillings net worth sits at roughly $1-2 million,

04:59sustained by occasional media appearances and charity work, which is quite the comedown for a

05:04guy who once had a Gulfstream jet parked in his hangar. But if you think video game fantasies are bad

05:09investments, wait until you hear about the car dealership disaster that claimed our next entry,

05:14Bill Buckner. This poor soul, already haunted by that infamous ground ball that slipped through his

05:20legs in the 1986 World Series, earned himself around $15 million during his 22-year playing career,

05:26which translates to about $35 million in today's money, and retired to Boise, Idaho with dreams of

05:32becoming a successful businessman. Buckner, being the hardworking grinder he always was on the diamond,

05:37invested heavily in a car dealership operation that bore his name, leveraging his local celebrity

05:42status to move inventory and build a customer base that trusted him. For a while there in the early

05:462000s, things were humming along nicely, with Buckner's friendly face on billboards and his dealership

05:52doing steady business in a growing Idaho market that seemed ripe for expansion. But then, and you can

05:57probably see this coming like a curveball hanging over the plate, the 2008 financial crisis hit America

06:02like a ton of bricks, and the auto industry got absolutely clobbered when credit markets froze tighter

06:07than a catcher's mitt in a Minnesota winter. Buckner's dealership, like thousands of others across

06:11the country, found itself drowning in floor plan financing. Those are the loans dealers used to stock

06:16their lots with vehicles, while sales plummeted 40% nationwide, and customers vanished faster than fans

06:22at a rainout. By late 2008, with the business hemorrhaging cash and banks demanding their money back,

06:27Buckner had no choice but to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy with $3.6 million in liabilities,

06:33including substantial debts to the IRS that had been piling up as he desperately tried to keep

06:38the doors open. The bankruptcy trustee liquidated everything, the dealership property, the inventory,

06:43personal assets including homes and vehicles, leaving Buckner and his family to start over

06:48from scratch during one of the worst recessions in American history. But here's where Buckner's story

06:52diverges from our previous entries, because this wasn't some reckless gambler or delusional entrepreneur,

06:57this was a decent man who got caught in macroeconomic forces beyond his control and, unlike Dijkstra's

07:04fraud or Schilling's hubris, you almost can't blame the guy for trying to build a legitimate business.

07:08Buckner picked himself up, dusted himself off, and pivoted into real estate development in Boise,

07:13where he managed to rebuild a modest fortune estimated at $8 million by the time he passed away

07:18in 2019 from Lewy body dementia at age 69, having finally made peace with Boston fans who gave him

07:24standing ovations in his final years. Speaking of players who lost millions to circumstances

07:29partly beyond their control, Jose Canseco. Sweet mother of pearl, this certified wild man,

07:36who earned every penny of that $45 million during his 17-year career, which would be roughly $90

07:42million in today's money, managed to blow through it all faster than a fastball down the middle,

07:47and brother, the way he did it reads like a textbook on how not to manage your finances.

07:51First off, Canseco estimates that 40% of his earnings, roughly $18 million, went straight to

07:57taxes right off the top, which is a bitter pill to swallow but not exactly shocking for someone

08:01making millions in the high-tax 1990s. But here's where things get spicy. His two divorces absolutely

08:07demolished what was left of his nest egg, with his first wife Esther taking home somewhere between $6

08:12to $8 million in settlements, plus two six-figure supercars, while his second marriage to Jessica

08:18Secoli added even more legal fees and settlements to the pile. Now, Canseco being Canseco, he couldn't

08:24just live a normal life. No sir, he had to maintain that rockstar lifestyle with Ferraris, mansions,

08:30and parties that would make Hugh Hefner blush, all while supporting an extended family that had fled

08:35Cuba's poverty and relied on his generosity to survive. He stopped paying taxes for seven straight

08:40years in the early 2000s, letting penalties and interest balloon his IRS debt to over $500,000,

08:46which was part of a total $1.2 million tax liability when he filed for bankruptcy. But wait,

08:51there's more. Remember that tell-all book, Juiced, that Canseco wrote in 2005, exposing widespread

08:57steroid use and naming names like Mark McGuire and Jason Giambi? Well, that book initially earned him

09:03some decent royalties, enough that he invested the proceeds into Southern California real estate,

09:07only to watch it all evaporate in the 2008 housing crash like Morning Dew under a desert sun. By 2008,

09:14he'd lost a $2.5 million mansion in Encino to foreclosure and was literally living in a friend's

09:20garage with 20 bucks in his pocket, which is about as far as you can fall from the penthouse, folks.

09:25The bankruptcy filing in 2012 listed just $21,000 in assets against $1.7 million in debts,

09:33mostly owed to the IRS, and painted a picture of a man who'd completely run out of rope. His daughter

09:38Josie, who became a Victoria's Secret model, publicly stated in 2023 that the family was

09:43essentially broke by the time she was six or seven years old, and that she worked for $100 a week

09:48early in her career, which tells you everything you need to know about how far the mighty had fallen.

09:54Today, at age 61, Canseco scrapes by with an estimated net worth of $800,000 to $900,000, cobbled

10:01together from running a Las Vegas car wash, doing podcasts, signing autographs at card shows, and

10:06maintaining his Twitter presence for 469,000 plus followers who can't get enough of his conspiracy

10:12theories and hot takes. Now, if you think gambling on real estate and divorces is bad, wait until you

10:17hear about the Ponzi scheme that wiped out our next player, Johnny Damon. Now, Damon never filed for

10:23bankruptcy like some of these other knuckleheads, but boy oh boy, did he come dangerously close to losing

10:29everything in one of the most spectacular financial frauds in American history, and it all happened

10:33during spring training 2009, when he should have been worried about nothing more than getting his

10:37swing ready for the season. You see, Damon had invested a significant chunk of his wealth through

10:42an advisory firm affiliated with his agent Scott Boris, and this firm happened to use services provided

10:47by Stanford Financial Group, run by Texas billionaire Alan Stanford, who was orchestrating an $8 billion

10:53Ponzi scheme that made Bernie Madoff look like a street corner hustler. When the SEC froze all

10:58Stanford-related assets in February 2009, Damon suddenly found himself unable to access his

11:04accounts at Pershing LLC, and I'm not talking about pocket change here, this was his primary

11:08savings and investment vehicle, the money he'd been counting on to support his wife and children

11:12for the rest of their lives. The 35-year-old outfielder, then earning $13.5 million with the

11:18Yankees, publicly admitted he couldn't pay his bills, including basic expenses like his personal

11:23trainers fees and household costs, because everything was locked up tighter than a bank vault while

11:27regulators sorted through Stanford's fraudulent empire. Now here's the part that probably kept

11:32Damon up at night. Court documents revealed he had about $70 in interest from Stanford-linked accounts

11:37that the bankruptcy receiver wanted to claw back, though the SEC eventually intervened in July 2009,

11:42arguing that innocent investors like Damon shouldn't be penalized for the crimes of others.

11:47Unlike some of his teammates who lost 99% of their savings, I'm looking at you,

11:51Mike Pelfrey and Scott Ayer. Damon's assets were gradually unfrozen over several months without

11:55permanent losses, but the whole ordeal cost him sleep, peace of mind, and probably a few points

12:00off his batting average that season. What saved Johnny Damon from complete ruin was timing. He was

12:04still earning those big league paychecks and could redirect his Yankees' salary to cover immediate

12:08expenses, plus the fact that his money wasn't directly invested in Stanford's fraudulent certificates

12:13of deposit, but rather held in accounts that used Stanford services. Today, at age 52, Damon sits

12:18comfortably with an estimated net worth of $60 to $70 million, built through prudent post-crisis

12:23management including real estate holdings in Florida, coaching youth baseball, and occasional

12:28media appearances that keep his name in the public eye without exposing him to more financial landmines.

12:33He's voiced regret over the Stanford scare in interviews, telling Fox Sports in 2009 that

12:38hopefully all this stuff gets resolved, I'm still good. And thankfully for him and his family,

12:43it did get resolved before disaster struck. But not everyone caught in the Stanford

12:46web was so fortunate. Which brings us to our next entry, Scott Ayer.

12:52Now folks, if Johnny Damon dodged a bullet with the Stanford Ponzi scheme, Scott Ayer caught that

12:57bullet right between the eyes, and let me tell you, this story is enough to make you weep for the

13:01common man just trying to save for retirement. Here we had a journeyman left-handed relief pitcher,

13:06who spent 13 years in the big leagues from 1997 to 2009, appearing in 617 games for teams like the

13:12White Sox,

13:13Cubs, and Phillies, and earning himself a respectable $15 to $20 million in salary over that span.

13:19Not superstar money by any means, but enough to set up a comfortable life if you're smart about it.

13:23Ayer, being a good teammate and trusting soul, invested most of his life savings through a broker

13:28who just happened to be a former teammate. Which seemed like the safest bet in the world,

13:32because who wouldn't trust a guy you'd shared a locker room with, sweated with,

13:37and celebrated victories with over cold beers after the game? Well, that former teammate steered Ayer

13:42straight into Allen Stanford's web of lies, and when the $8 billion fraud collapsed in February 2009,

13:48his final season in professional baseball, mind you, the SEC froze every penny Ayer had saved,

13:54leaving him with access to just one bank account containing $3,000 and $13 in cash.

13:59Picture this if you will, you're a 36-year-old reliever in spring training with the Phillies,

14:03you've just signed a $2 million contract for what might be your last year in the majors,

14:07and suddenly you can't pay your mortgage, can't cover your kids' expenses, can't do anything except

14:12watch helplessly while banks threaten foreclosure, and creditors come calling,

14:16like vultures circling a dying animal in the desert. Ayer publicly admitted he was broke,

14:21despite having that $2 million contract on paper, because the Phillies' salary wouldn't start flowing

14:26until the season began, and in the meantime he had bills that couldn't wait for baseball's

14:30bureaucratic payment schedule. The Phillies' organization, God bless them, stepped up with a

14:34salary advance to tide him over, and teammates offered loans, which Ayer declined because,

14:39as he told ESPN, there are people out there who don't have access to money, if they're a bank,

14:43they're just going to foreclose on the house, showing more concern for regular folks caught

14:47in the same trap than for his own predicament. Unlike Damon, whose assets eventually unfroze

14:52without major losses, Ayer's recovery process dragged on for years through lawsuits and partial

14:56settlements, and nobody really knows exactly how much he got back versus how much vanished forever

15:01into Stanford's black hole of fraud. After announcing his retirement shortly after the 2009 season,

15:07Ayer transitioned into coaching high school baseball in South Carolina, focusing on teaching

15:11life lessons to kids at Landrum High School, rather than chasing the big money he'd lost.

15:15Today, at age 53, Ayer's estimated net worth sits under $1 million, which is a far cry from where he

15:21should be after 13 years of major league service. But he's stable, he's employed, and most importantly,

15:26he's found meaning in molding young ball players, rather than obsessing over the millions that slipped

15:31through his fingers. Now, if you think trusting teammates with your money is risky, wait until

15:35you hear about the Hall of Famer who trusted the wrong business partners, Raleigh Fingers.

15:40Holy smokes, folks, now we're getting into the old timers, and let me tell you about Raleigh Fingers.

15:45That's right, this baseball icon earned roughly $5 million in salary during his playing days,

15:50which, adjusted for inflation, comes out to somewhere between $15 and $20 million in today's money.

15:55Not bad for a guy who started out making league minimum and ended up as one of the

15:59highest paid closers of his era. Shortly after retiring in 1985, Fingers started throwing money

16:04at what his advisors promised would be foolproof passive income streams, including Arabian horse

16:09breeding operations during the 1980s boom, when wealthy folks were buying thoroughbreds like they

16:14were going out of style. The horse market crashed harder than the stock market in 1929, and suddenly,

16:19those valuable breeding stock were worthless hay burners that banks seized to offset Fingers' mounting debts,

16:25leaving him with nothing but stables full of regret and empty promises. But wait, there's more.

16:29Our mustachioed friend also invested heavily in a 10-acre pistachio orchard in Madera, California,

16:35betting on agricultural profits during California's farming boom, only to watch drought and low yields

16:40turn his dream of being a gentleman farmer into a nightmare of unpaid loans and foreclosure notices.

16:46Not content with just those disasters, Fingers also threw money at wind turbine investments

16:50during the alternative energy craze of the mid-1980s, Hawaiian timeshares that promised vacation

16:56rental income but delivered oversupply and tourism dips, plus 120 acres of Arizona land and a Palm

17:02Springs condo, all of which got liquidated at a fraction of their purchase price when his empire

17:07collapsed. By 1989, just four years after hanging up his cleats, Raleigh Fingers found himself filing for

17:13Chapter 7 bankruptcy with $4.2 million in debts against assets under $50,000, a humiliating fall

17:20for a man who'd been elected to the Hall of Fame just three years earlier in 1992. The bankruptcy

17:25stripped him of everything, the 5,000-square-foot house in El Cajon, California, the luxury cars,

17:31the business ventures. Even his dignity, as friends abandoned him and Fingers later, reflected that we

17:36could count them on one hand after the filing became public. At age 43, the Hall of Famer had to

17:42take a $50,000-per-year office job, a humiliating comedown from his million-dollar playing salary,

17:48just to keep food on the table for his wife Susie and their four kids. And when Susie was hospitalized

17:52for months after a 1986 car accident, the medical bills added insult to injury while Fingers had no

17:58employment to cover the costs. But here's the kicker. In 2007, Wisconsin's Department of Revenue

18:03listed Fingers as owing $1.4 million in back income taxes from his Milwaukee Brewers playing

18:09days between 1981 and 1985, though his attorneys claimed it was a clerical error and resolved it by

18:142008 without penalties. Today, at age 79, Fingers lives modestly in Las Vegas, with wife Lori, his

18:20third marriage, golfing in charity events, signing autographs, and maintaining an estimated net worth

18:25of $3-5 million built through endorsements, royalties, and prudent real estate investments that

18:31came too late to save him the first time around. Speaking of Hall of Famers who lost fortunes to

18:35failed business ventures. Harmon Killebrew

18:37Great googly moogly folks, now we're talking about a true baseball legend who fell victim to

18:42the oldest con in the book, trusting the wrong people with your hard-earned money. Killebrew's

18:46downfall accelerated in the mid-1980s when he diversified into entrepreneurial pursuits that

18:52turned out to be elaborate frauds and business disasters wrapped in promises of easy money and

18:57passive income. He partnered with a California developer in a Rancho Mirage real estate deal

19:01that promised lucrative property flips, only to discover the developer was a con artist who got

19:06convicted of fraud after swindling Killebrew and other partners out of investments exceeding $200,000.

19:12Not learning his lesson quickly enough, Killebrew founded and owned a car dealership in Ontario,

19:16Oregon, his adopted hometown, that collapsed due to poor sales, high overhead, and an economic slowdown in

19:21the rural market, pushing him toward bankruptcy while owing banks around $300,000 in loans.

19:27He also ventured into a Bloomington, Minnesota car leasing company that failed amid competition

19:31and mismanagement, unable to cover operational costs and adding another $150,000 plus in debts that

19:37became what insiders called the final nail in his financial coffin. By July 1988, Killebrew defaulted on

19:43his dream house overlooking the Snake River in Oregon, missing $2,500 monthly payments and ultimately

19:49losing it to foreclosure with total debts hitting $700,000 owed to Fourbank, former Twins owner

19:54Calvin Griffith, and his old teammate Reggie Jackson, who'd loaned him money that Killebrew couldn't

19:58repay. The bankruptcy filing in 1993 liquidated whatever assets remained, though Killebrew's fame

20:04preserved some dignity as he avoided the public humiliation that lesser-known players endured.

20:09But here's where this story gets inspirational, because unlike some of these other cats who stayed

20:13down for the count, Killebrew picked himself up, dusted himself off, and rebuilt his life through low-risk

20:18income streams, including autograph signings that could generate $200,000 per year, old-timers

20:23games paying $3,500 per event, and charity work through his Harman Killebrew Foundation established

20:29in 1998. By his death from esophageal cancer on May 17, 2011, at age 74, Killebrew had stabilized

20:36financially with estimates of $1 to $5 million in net worth from endorsements and residuals. Now,

20:42if you think car dealerships are risky businesses for retired athletes, Jack Clark

20:46Well, butter my biscuit, folks, because we're about to dive into the tale of Jack the Ripper Clark.

20:50This four-time all-star slugger who mashed 340 home runs and drove in 1,180 runs earned over $15

20:57million in career salary, not counting his $1.6 million collusion settlement in 1992 when he was

21:03awarded $800,000 each for the 1986 and 1987 seasons after MLB owners were found guilty of suppressing

21:11free agent salaries, which should have set him up for life if he'd shown even a smidgen of financial

21:16restraint. But restraint wasn't in Clark's vocabulary, especially when it came to his most infamous

21:21obsession, luxury automobiles that consumed money faster than a monster truck at a demolition derby.

21:26By 1992, while still under contract with the Boston Red Sox earning big league money, Clark owned 18 luxury

21:32vehicles including a $717,000 Ferrari F40, a Rolls Royce, and multiple Porsches, with 17 of them

21:39carrying active payment plans that generated over $1 million in monthly obligations he couldn't

21:45possibly sustain. The man traded cars out of boredom like normal people swap shoes, once reportedly

21:51dropping $90,000 on two sports cars while en route to a game, which is the kind of impulse control

21:57that

21:57makes financial advisors wake up screaming in the middle of the night. His spending extended

22:01beyond cars to a $2.4 million mansion in Danville, California purchased during his Cardinals peak,

22:08plus a $55,955 American Express bill that he let ride like it was monopoly money, and in a 1992

22:15New

22:16York Times interview, Clark admitted with remarkable self-awareness,

22:19This shows everybody what can happen to you if you don't manage your money well. I did it to myself.

22:24His post-retirement ventures only dug the hole deeper, including Jack Clark Motorsports,

22:28a drag racing team he launched in the late 1980s that burned through over $2 million of his own

22:34money before collapsing amid unprofitability and forcing liquidation during his 1992 bankruptcy.

22:40Clark later attempted house flipping in St. Louis that his attorney described as another money-losing

22:45endeavor, plus he got bilked by unscrupulous advisors, a lawyer and financial planner who,

22:50according to a 2009 New York Daily News report, bilked him out of most of the money he'd been awarded

22:55in the

22:55collusion settlement, leaving Clark to sue them in 1997 for mishandling his affairs.

23:00His first bankruptcy in July 1992 listed debts between $6.7 million and $11.4 million

23:07against assets of just $4.8 million, forcing him to surrender his home, cars, and racing business,

23:12while still technically employed by the Red Sox. He managed to recover somewhat in the late 1990s,

23:17even owning a Mercedes and a 55 Chevy at one point, but then came round two, a March 2018 Chapter

23:237 filing with

23:24wife Angela in St. Louis, listing debts between $550,000 and $568,000, including $210,000 in business

23:32loans and $49,000 owed to the IRS, against assets of just $25,000 despite combined annual income of $120

23:40,000.

23:40Today, at age 69, Clark resides quietly in suburban St. Louis with Angela, drawing Social Security and pension

23:47income that generates roughly $4,488 per month against expenses of $8,110, a deficit that tells

23:55you everything you need to know about a man who twice filed for bankruptcy because he just couldn't

24:00resist the siren song of expensive toys and get-rich-quick schemes. Speaking of pitchers who

24:05threw away fortunes on failed farms, Gaylord Perry. Good lord in heaven, folks, let me tell you about Perry,

24:11being the sentimental soul he was, decided after retirement at age 45 in 1983 that he

24:17wanted to return to his agricultural roots, investing much of his baseball nest egg, likely

24:22$1 to $2 million, into a 400 to 500-acre farming operation near his family's land in Martin County,

24:28North Carolina, where he cultivated peanuts, soybeans, tobacco, corn, and other crops with

24:33dreams of building a labor of love that would sustain him through his golden years. Now, Perry wasn't

24:38dabbling in farming like some rich guy's hobby, this was a serious business venture requiring heavy

24:43upfront capital for equipment, seeds, fertilizers, irrigation systems, tractors, and silos, plus labor

24:50costs that aid up cash faster than a combine harvester tears through a cornfield. As a first-generation

24:55commercial farmer without formal agricultural training, he borrowed against his baseball assets

25:00to expand operations, and right about the time he was getting everything set up, the mid-1980s farm

25:05crisis hit America like a category 5 hurricane, destroying agricultural operations from sea to

25:11shining sea. The perfect storm included falling crop prices and market volatility as tobacco quotas

25:17got slashed under federal policies and peanut soybean prices plummeted due to global oversupply,

25:22leaving Perry complaining that all they want is a fair price for their product, but they're not

25:26getting that right now, it's just arithmetic and it just caught up with me. In 1985-86, Southeast crop

25:32values dropped 20 to 30 percent, while input costs for fuel and machinery rose in the opposite

25:38direction, creating a financial vice that crushed farmers like grapes in a wine press. A severe drought

25:43gripped the Southeast in 1986, devastating yields and exacerbating Perry's cash flow problems, while his

25:49lawyer Malcolm Howard estimated that 70 percent of farmers east of Raleigh were technically bankrupt due to

25:55five straight years of crop failures and bad markets. By August 4, 1986, at age 47, Perry and his wife

26:01Blanche had no choice but to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilson,

26:07North Carolina, listing 1.2 million dollars in debts from loans, suppliers, and equipment liens against

26:121.1 million in assets that were mostly illiquid, farm equipment, livestock, and their residents that

26:17got auctioned off for pennies on the dollar after creditor claims. Perry lamented that we tried

26:22everything possible, but couldn't win the battle against arithmetic and mother nature, and the bankruptcy

26:26stripped him of his lifelong dream, forcing a move to rally and a humbling job as a sales manager for

26:32Fiesta Foods, a Texas chip and taco producer, where the Hall of Famer found himself peddling snacks

26:37door-to-door at age 48. In 2007, Wisconsin listed Perry as owing 1.4 million dollars in back income

26:44taxes

26:44from his years with the Milwaukee Brewers. We've come to the end, folks. If you enjoyed this clip and

26:50wouldn't mind more of such content, click on the card showing on the screen.

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