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Very interesting article here...I'm looking forward to getting the book, although it will be more of a social book than a baseball book, from what I'm reading.
Curt was a very good OF in the 50s and 60s- and his refusal to play in Philly- partly based on racism, partly based on the fact that he did not see himself as a commodity, but a worker with rights- really do suggest he should be in the Hall of Fame.
**********
Stan Hochman | Flood of emotions
BOOK CHRONICLES HISTORIC FIGHT FOR FREE AGENCY
THE CARDINALS swapped Curt Flood to the Phillies in 1969 and Flood said,
hell no, he won't go. On principle. Said he'd been in the big leagues 12
years and he was not a piece of property to be bought and sold irrespective
of his wishes.
John Quinn, the Phillies general manager who threw quarters around like
manhole covers,
offered Flood a $90,000 contract. Then he sat back, thumbs hooked in those
suspenders he
always wore, figuring principle would melt like a popsicle in July.
He didn't know Curt Flood. Hardly anybody did. We knew he could run like a
gazelle and that it was nearly impossible to hit a ball over his head in
centerfield, although he did botch a line drive in the 1968 World
Series against the Tigers.
Seventh game. Huge play.
We knew he was black and had survived, playing minor league baseball in
bigoted Southern towns. We sensed he was tough enough and stubborn enough
and principled enough to want to abolish the reserve clause, to bring down
baseball's plantation mentality, torch the mansion, set the field hands
free.
Howard Cosell interviewed Flood on television and screeched, "It's been
written, Curt, that
you're a man who makes $90,000 a year, which isn't exactly slave wages.
What's your retort to that?"
Flood paused and said, "A well-paid slave is
nonetheless a slave."
"We weren't ready for that," Bill White said at a brief encounter recently
at the memorial service for Frank Dolson. "We weren't ready for that back
then."
We? America? Baseball? The greedy men who owned the teams? The passive men
who played the game? Congress? The courts?
Back then? This was 22 years after Jackie
Robinson, 106 years after the Emancipation
Proclamation.
And now, Brad Snyder has written "A Well-Paid Slave," a book about Flood's
fight for free agency in professional sports. Snyder is a lawyer and the
book is heavy with legal mumbo jumbo, sprinkled with Latin phrases, inside
stuff about how the
Supreme Court works, how Congress granted baseball exemption from antitrust
laws, how that injustice survives.
It is the quintessential warts-and-all book
because Snyder tells us of Flood's unquenchable thirst for vodka and his
lust for one-night stands. He also tells us that Flood's reputation as a
portrait painter was a sham, that a guy in California would dab paint on a
photographic image of the subject.
Fair and balanced yes, but some readers might have a problem with the
portrait Snyder paints
because he never met Curt Flood. Somewhere he has found a quote from Flood
calling Philadelphia "the northernmost southern city" but then goes on to
debunk the idea that the outfielder did not want to play in a racist city,
on a pitiful team, before
hostile fans and harsh media.
He would not have gone to New York, to Chicago, to Xanadu.
Well, maybe the Los Angeles Dodgers because he revered Jackie Robinson.
Robinson fought for racial justice, and Flood
put his career on the line, fighting for economic
justice.
Henrik Ibsen, the playwright, said it best: He is strongest who stands most
alone. Let the record show that Robinson testified at the trial, but that no
active player testified. No active player even
attended the trial, held in New York. And no active player attended Flood's
funeral when he died at 59 of throat cancer, broke and battered.
Sure, the players association under Marvin
Miller agreed to bankroll Flood's legal costs. And
a former Supreme Court justice named Arthur Goldberg was hired to represent
Flood. But Goldberg soon found himself in a clumsy, distracting, fruitless
race for governor of New York. Snyder scorches the lawyer for his bumbling
performance when the case reached the Supreme Court.
Flood lost by a 5-3 vote, on the grounds that it was up to Congress to
repeal its antitrust exemption for baseball, and that changes in the reserve
clause could be hammered out in labor-management negotiations. One justice
excused himself
because he owned Anheuser-Busch stock and Gussie Busch owned the Cardinals.
Snyder traces the whole process in scholarly prose, saving his passion to
mock the majority opinion written by Justice Harry Blackmun.
In Part I of his opinion, Blackmun traced the history of the game and then
listed 79 players in baseball history, starting with Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth,
Tris Speaker and then naming Goose
Goslin, Paul Waner and Fred
Snodgrass, who dropped a fly ball in the 1912 World Series.
It was a ridiculous list (no Mel Ott) and it was the catalyst for
controversy and ridicule. Snyder writes, "Blackmun's opinion called
attention to the Court's past blunders and portrayed
the justices as a bunch of
sychophantic baseball fans."
Writing the dissenting opinion, Justice William Douglas
described baseball as "big
business" guilty of "predatory practices."
Take that, Fred Snodgrass!
Miller had warned Flood of the long odds he faced. But the players
association did nothing to try to rescue Flood from alcoholism, nor did it
find him work, nor did it honor him for his courageous fight when it was
over.
Miller wrangled approval of
an arbitrator from the owners in the next bargaining process. That
arbitrator ruled in favor
of Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally a couple of years later when they
challenged the
reserve clause. Shazam, the
ruling begat free agency, which begat Catfish Hunter, which
begat Reggie Jackson, which
begat Alex Rodriguez.
Flood belongs in the Hall of Fame as a baseball "pioneer" but it's never
going to happen. The players ought to say a prayer of thanks to Flood on the
first and 15th of every month when they get their fat paychecks.
Somehow, the owners and the players swiftly and silently reached accord on a
new basic agreement while the World
Series was unfolding.
May Curtis Charles Flood rest in peace.
Curt was a very good OF in the 50s and 60s- and his refusal to play in Philly- partly based on racism, partly based on the fact that he did not see himself as a commodity, but a worker with rights- really do suggest he should be in the Hall of Fame.
**********
Stan Hochman | Flood of emotions
BOOK CHRONICLES HISTORIC FIGHT FOR FREE AGENCY
THE CARDINALS swapped Curt Flood to the Phillies in 1969 and Flood said,
hell no, he won't go. On principle. Said he'd been in the big leagues 12
years and he was not a piece of property to be bought and sold irrespective
of his wishes.
John Quinn, the Phillies general manager who threw quarters around like
manhole covers,
offered Flood a $90,000 contract. Then he sat back, thumbs hooked in those
suspenders he
always wore, figuring principle would melt like a popsicle in July.
He didn't know Curt Flood. Hardly anybody did. We knew he could run like a
gazelle and that it was nearly impossible to hit a ball over his head in
centerfield, although he did botch a line drive in the 1968 World
Series against the Tigers.
Seventh game. Huge play.
We knew he was black and had survived, playing minor league baseball in
bigoted Southern towns. We sensed he was tough enough and stubborn enough
and principled enough to want to abolish the reserve clause, to bring down
baseball's plantation mentality, torch the mansion, set the field hands
free.
Howard Cosell interviewed Flood on television and screeched, "It's been
written, Curt, that
you're a man who makes $90,000 a year, which isn't exactly slave wages.
What's your retort to that?"
Flood paused and said, "A well-paid slave is
nonetheless a slave."
"We weren't ready for that," Bill White said at a brief encounter recently
at the memorial service for Frank Dolson. "We weren't ready for that back
then."
We? America? Baseball? The greedy men who owned the teams? The passive men
who played the game? Congress? The courts?
Back then? This was 22 years after Jackie
Robinson, 106 years after the Emancipation
Proclamation.
And now, Brad Snyder has written "A Well-Paid Slave," a book about Flood's
fight for free agency in professional sports. Snyder is a lawyer and the
book is heavy with legal mumbo jumbo, sprinkled with Latin phrases, inside
stuff about how the
Supreme Court works, how Congress granted baseball exemption from antitrust
laws, how that injustice survives.
It is the quintessential warts-and-all book
because Snyder tells us of Flood's unquenchable thirst for vodka and his
lust for one-night stands. He also tells us that Flood's reputation as a
portrait painter was a sham, that a guy in California would dab paint on a
photographic image of the subject.
Fair and balanced yes, but some readers might have a problem with the
portrait Snyder paints
because he never met Curt Flood. Somewhere he has found a quote from Flood
calling Philadelphia "the northernmost southern city" but then goes on to
debunk the idea that the outfielder did not want to play in a racist city,
on a pitiful team, before
hostile fans and harsh media.
He would not have gone to New York, to Chicago, to Xanadu.
Well, maybe the Los Angeles Dodgers because he revered Jackie Robinson.
Robinson fought for racial justice, and Flood
put his career on the line, fighting for economic
justice.
Henrik Ibsen, the playwright, said it best: He is strongest who stands most
alone. Let the record show that Robinson testified at the trial, but that no
active player testified. No active player even
attended the trial, held in New York. And no active player attended Flood's
funeral when he died at 59 of throat cancer, broke and battered.
Sure, the players association under Marvin
Miller agreed to bankroll Flood's legal costs. And
a former Supreme Court justice named Arthur Goldberg was hired to represent
Flood. But Goldberg soon found himself in a clumsy, distracting, fruitless
race for governor of New York. Snyder scorches the lawyer for his bumbling
performance when the case reached the Supreme Court.
Flood lost by a 5-3 vote, on the grounds that it was up to Congress to
repeal its antitrust exemption for baseball, and that changes in the reserve
clause could be hammered out in labor-management negotiations. One justice
excused himself
because he owned Anheuser-Busch stock and Gussie Busch owned the Cardinals.
Snyder traces the whole process in scholarly prose, saving his passion to
mock the majority opinion written by Justice Harry Blackmun.
In Part I of his opinion, Blackmun traced the history of the game and then
listed 79 players in baseball history, starting with Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth,
Tris Speaker and then naming Goose
Goslin, Paul Waner and Fred
Snodgrass, who dropped a fly ball in the 1912 World Series.
It was a ridiculous list (no Mel Ott) and it was the catalyst for
controversy and ridicule. Snyder writes, "Blackmun's opinion called
attention to the Court's past blunders and portrayed
the justices as a bunch of
sychophantic baseball fans."
Writing the dissenting opinion, Justice William Douglas
described baseball as "big
business" guilty of "predatory practices."
Take that, Fred Snodgrass!
Miller had warned Flood of the long odds he faced. But the players
association did nothing to try to rescue Flood from alcoholism, nor did it
find him work, nor did it honor him for his courageous fight when it was
over.
Miller wrangled approval of
an arbitrator from the owners in the next bargaining process. That
arbitrator ruled in favor
of Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally a couple of years later when they
challenged the
reserve clause. Shazam, the
ruling begat free agency, which begat Catfish Hunter, which
begat Reggie Jackson, which
begat Alex Rodriguez.
Flood belongs in the Hall of Fame as a baseball "pioneer" but it's never
going to happen. The players ought to say a prayer of thanks to Flood on the
first and 15th of every month when they get their fat paychecks.
Somehow, the owners and the players swiftly and silently reached accord on a
new basic agreement while the World
Series was unfolding.
May Curtis Charles Flood rest in peace.
