<Archive Obituaries> Curt Flood (January 20th 1997)
Bill Schenley
the Hall of Fame ... And a lot whom I think shouldn't be there. Curt
Flood is near the top of my list of players who should be there ...>
Quite Simply, A Hero
Photo: http://www.blackathlete.net/Images/blackbox/cflood4.jpg
FROM: The Washington Post (January 22nd 1997) ~
By Thomas Boswell
Every few years, Curt Flood would reappear. Maybe that was
so we could compare his fast-aging and haggard face with the
laughing ballplayer's mug that he'd worn in the 1960s,
before he took baseball to the Supreme Court.
We won't be able to read the cost of making history in that
face any more. Flood died of throat cancer Monday at 59. It
was Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Of all the figures in sports
in the last generation, perhaps only Flood could die on the
anniversary of a martyr's death and have it seem a fitting
memorial.
For a few days perhaps we can remember the difference
between a real rebel -- one who takes risks for the sake of
a genuine cause -- and our phony, look-at-me rebels who only
stand for the cover shoot of their next autobiography.
Rebellion that's worthy of the name isn't about attitude.
The rebel to whom our respect and our heart goes out is the
one, such as Flood, who never in this world wanted such a
job. He just had the mixed fortune to see what was right and
act on it, knowing the cost to himself.
"Baseball players have lost a true champion," said players
union head Donald Fehr on Monday. "A man of quiet dignity,
Curt Flood conducted his life in a way that set an example
for all who had the privilege to know him. When it came time
to take a stand at great personal risk and sacrifice, he
stood firm for what he believed was right."
Flood had the brains and the sense of justice to understand
that baseball's employment system was basically unfair.
However, by temperament, he was completely unsuited to a
public brawl that lasted for years. He was as distressed by
conflict as Fehr is invigorated by it. And Flood's torment
always showed.
When he arrived in Washington in 1971 after sitting out a
season, he played only 13 games for the Senators. You
couldn't tell if his Gold Glove, all-star skills were just
fading fast or whether the Flood case was eating him inside.
At RFK Stadium, some of us cheered. But enough booed to let
Flood know that, for him, no place was home. On the road, he
was vilified as a traitor who wanted to ruin the national
pastime.
Back then, memories of Black Power salutes were in the air.
So Flood, thoughtful but never extreme, was pigeon-holed as
radical. All he said was that he was sick of being
treated -- and traded -- "like a piece of meat." How could
America sanction a system where a team owned a man for his
whole career?
After batting .200 in 35 at-bats, Flood fled. Hard as it may
be to believe these days, Flood didn't want fame. He
flinched when talking about himself and even admitted that
he loathed the thought that he might be hurting his sport.
For years, Flood disappeared from the public scene, often
living in Europe. In 1972 in Flood v. Kuhn, the Supreme
Court upheld baseball's right to antitrust immunity. Flood
had fought the law and, temporarily, the law won.
"You have to understand that if you do what I did to
baseball, you are a hated, ugly, detestable person," he
said, explaining his self-imposed exile. This week, Hank
Aaron said simply, "Flood was crucified for taking his
stand."
By 1976, free agency had arrived and the justice of Flood's
stand against the reserve clause was vindicated. But Flood
stayed on the island of Majorca. Finally, two years later,
he put his toe back into baseball gingerly, as a radio
announcer for the Oakland A's for one season. He looked like
a shy, hyper-sensitive ghost of himself. Though only 41, he
seemed far older. His wounds were deep. His sense of
isolation was almost palpable.
Many in the game respected Flood's pain, regarding him like
a soldier who'd suffered shell shock in a necessary battle.
Nobody, however, had a name for his fragile condition. He
hadn't exactly become an eccentric. But whenever you saw him
at a ballpark, he seemed raw-nerved and weighted down, like
a man who'd seen something -- seen it clearly and
undeniably -- and couldn't begin to get over it.
Finally, in 1994 Flood stood before the cameras again
briefly during the players strike. Ostensibly, he was part
of a possible new league called the United Baseball League.
Really, he took the stage to give modern players some
backbone. The message was subliminal: This guy bucked the
system for all of you. Maybe baseball put him on the rack
and cracked him to a degree. So when an owner sneers about
breaking the union, have a little guts. The money in your
bank account came out of this guy's peace of mind.
Flood's legacy remains a tangled one. You could say he did
the groundwork so athletes could make more money than
anybody deserves. Flood laid the cornerstone of the Shaq Fu
mansion, so to speak. Flood helped make a world where Brett
Favre knows nobody will mock the Superman tattoo on his
biceps; self-infatuation is so routine, nobody even notices
anymore. Could Dennis Rodman be as "Bad As I Wanna Be"
without his $ 7 million salary? If you kick somebody, peel
off a big stack of Grover Clevelands. No problem. Thanks,
Curt.
Cynics will say that Flood stood for something so that those
who followed him could afford to stand for nothing.
That, however, is not Flood's fault. By helping athletes
make market salaries for their services, he allowed them to
live on a bigger scale. We hear about the jerks. But the
fools are still in the minority. More athletes are like
Darrell Green of the Redskins, who was chosen this week as
the NFL's Man of the Year for his charity and community
work.
For some of us, Flood should be a daily tonic. Maybe he'll
shame us into using the language more precisely when we
describe our famous athletes.
When we use "courage" to describe a quarterback who takes a
pain-killing shot, maybe we'll blush. When we call someone
who makes a jump shot at the buzzer a "hero," maybe we'll be
just a bit abashed. If that is heroism, what word have we
reserved for people such as Flood?
And when we say losing the World Series is "tragic," perhaps
we'll think of the last 28 years of Flood's life -- and the
price he paid for following his conscience. Then, our
perspective sharpened, maybe we'll choose a better word.
---
Photo: http://www.nndb.com/people/083/000085825/curtflood02.jpg
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Curt Flood Is Dead At 59; Outfielder Defied Baseball
FROM: The New York Times (January 21st 1997) ~
By Joseph Durso
Curt Flood, the All-Star center fielder for the St. Louis Cardinals in
the 1960's who became a pioneering figure in the legal attack on
baseball's reserve clause that foreshadowed the era of free agents,
died yesterday in Los Angeles. He was 59.
Flood died at the U.C.L.A. Medical Center, where he had been a patient
in recent months, after developing pneumonia. He had been suffering
from throat cancer since last spring.
At bat and especially on the field, Flood was an outstanding player
for a dozen years, a center fielder who won the Gold Glove for
fielding excellence seven years in a row and batted over .300 six
times.
But it was his stiff resolve in challenging the unfairness and the
perpetuation of a baseball system that kept players tied to their
teams year after year unless traded or sold that carried Flood beyond
the game.
It all crystallized when the Cardinals traded Flood to the
Philadelphia Phillies after the 1969 season and Flood refused to go.
Represented by Arthur J. Goldberg, a former Associate Justice of the
Supreme Court and United States Ambassador to the United Nations,
Flood triggered a legal war that shook baseball.
Flood actually lost the battle in Federal District Court in New York
when the judge suggested that the players and club owners negotiate
the issue. But almost six years later, he won the war when other
baseball players successfully sued and broke from the reserve system,
which for almost a century had bound a player to his team year after
year.
As a result, before another generation had passed, salaries in all
sports soared, teams sought salary caps to contain their payrolls and
large cities were required to pay small cities millions in
compensation.
The solitary figure who prompted this revolution, Curtis Charles
Flood, was born in Houston on Jan. 18, 1938, but was raised in
Oakland, Calif. He was short and skinny, but he signed his first
professional contract while still a senior at Oakland Technical High
School.
After two years in the minor leagues and briefly with the Cincinnati
Reds, he was traded in 1958 to St. Louis, where he played for the next
12 seasons and three times played in the World Series -- against the
New York Yankees in 1964, the Boston Red Sox in 1967 and the Detroit
Tigers in 1968.
His talents were unquestioned. During a career that lasted from 1956
to 1971, he batted .293 and reigned in center field for the Cardinals.
During one span, he played in 226 consecutive games without committing
an error and in 1966 went the entire season without making a misplay.
He even became a portrait artist of some talent who was commissioned
to paint August A. Busch Jr., the owner of the Cardinals, and his
children in oil.
At the peak of his career, though, the man with the flawless glove
misjudged a line drive and supplied a regrettable footnote to the 1968
World Series against Detroit.
The Tigers and Cardinals were tied at three games apiece with Bob
Gibson facing Mickey Lolich in Game 7. They were scoreless for six
innings. Then in the Tiger seventh, Gibson retired the first two
batters. But after two singles, Jim Northrup followed with a hard
drive to center.
Flood lost sight of the ball momentarily, took a couple of steps in
toward home plate, reversed direction and slipped while the ball
carried over his head for a triple and two runs. The Tigers won, 4-1,
and captured the Series.
A year later, the Cardinals slid into fourth place and Busch cleaned
house. In one blockbuster trade, he sent Flood, Tim McCarver and Joe
Hoerner to Philadelphia for Richie Allen, Cookie Rojas and Jerry
Johnson. But Flood sued for his freedom from a system that
''reserved'' players to their teams and that had won exemption from
the antitrust laws as far back as 1922.
The trial opened May 19, 1970, before Judge Irving Ben Cooper in the
United States Court House in lower Manhattan. The defendants included
Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, the presidents of the National and American
Leagues and the chief executives of all 24 teams then in the big
leagues. They were being challenged by a 32-year-old outfielder who
was making $90,000 a year but was determined not to be traded without
his consent. When he was asked which team he wanted to play for, he
testified, ''The team that makes me the best offer.''
The reserve clause in contracts was not toppled during the trial, but
it came under sustained attack. The trial consumed 10 weeks, 2,000
pages of transcript and 56 exhibits. Judge Cooper suggested that
''reasonable men'' could find a solution outside court and ruled, ''We
are convinced that the reserve clause can be fashioned so as to find
acceptance by player and club.''
Flood, who sat out the 1970 season, did not think so. He signed with
the Washington Senators in 1971 for $110,000, but after two months
suddenly quit and flew to Europe.
When the case was appealed to the Supreme Court, the justices -- in a
5-3 ruling in 1972 -- supported the District Court and the Court of
Appeals and left the reserve clause undisturbed. But Curt Flood had
set the stage for the revolution that followed in 1976, and
generations of free agents poured through.
''Every major league baseball player owes Curt Flood a debt of
gratitude that can never be repaid,'' pitchers David Cone and Tom
Glavine -- the current A.L. and N.L. player representatives -- said in
a joint statement yesterday. ''With the odds overwhelmingly against
him, he was willing to take a stand for what he knew was right.''
Flood never was voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. But to Marvin
Miller, who served as executive director of the players union during
Flood's legal fight, it hardly matters.
''There is no Hall of Fame for people like Curt,'' Miller said.
Flood is survived by a wife, Judy, and a son from a previous marriage.
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Photo:
http://sportsmed.starwave.com/classic/2000/1027/photo/c_flood_i2.jpg
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Cardinals Recall Flood Excelling On, Off The Field;
'He Never Got His Just Due' For Taking Stand, Brock Says
FROM: The St. Louis Post-Dispatch (January 21st 1997) ~
By Brock Hummel, Staff Writer
Hall of Fame outfielder Lou Brock called his Cardinals
teammate, Curt Flood, a pioneer in baseball labor relations.
But Brock said Flood's reward was the same as many other
pioneers.
"It's sad," said Brock on Monday night from New York after
he had heard of Flood's death from cancer. "Most of the
pioneers wind up with an arrow in their backs. And he
certainly was one of those who had an arrow in his back. As
a pioneer, he never got his just due.
"God will amend that."
Flood's career effectively ended in baseball - both on and
off the field - when he took his 1970 stance against
baseball's reserve clause, which bound players to teams
without giving them recourse to free agency.
Flood, having been traded to the Philadelphia Phillies by
the Cardinals in the offseason of 1969, sat out the 1970
season, and his case went all the way to the Supreme Court,
where he was defeated. Nevertheless, the face of baseball
changed because of his challenge.
Bill White, the first baseman on the 1964 world champion
Cardinals, agreed that Flood didn't reap any of the benefits
for which he struggled.
"Curt was a fighter," said White, former National League
president. "But he also sacrificed quite a bit so that
today's player can be where he is today financially. And
it's too bad that most of these players today, probably 99
percent, don't know that."
Brock learned about - and from - Flood long before Brock
reached the major leagues. "My relationship with Curt goes
back to college," said Brock. "He was one of the speakers at
a clinic in Baton Rouge, La., and I was in the front row
listening. Everything he said I'd had one of my coaches try
to get across to me, but it didn't make sense until Curt
confirmed that."
Though Flood will be remembered nationally for his labor
stance, his teammates will remember him as a six-time .300
hitter and a Gold Glove outfielder.
"He didn't possess a great arm," said Brock, "but for
all-round outfield play, there were few better."
Shortstop Dal Maxvill, another staple of the 1964, 1967 and
1968 champions, said that Flood, "besides his being a good
ballplayer, was a real professional all the way. He did what
had to be done. If Brock led off with a single and stole
second and if you needed a ground ball to get him to third,
Curt would do that, so Roger Maris could hit a 320-foot fly
ball and we'd be ahead 1-0.
"He didn't have the greatest arm in the world but he was
feared because he played so shallow and guys didn't want to
take any chances. He's going to be missed by a lot of
people. I don't know of any enemies he had. I don't know
that Curt Flood had anybody who didn't like him.
"He was one of the first (players) to rock the boat. But the
players playing today ought to owe him a great deal of
gratitude for his courage. He changed the system and the
system changed forever."
Flood was, in White's words, "a sensitive person. He was a
painter. He was different from other people."
While his teammates would be out after a game, Flood would
be in his room painting.
But Flood could be a cutup, too. Maxvill remembered Flood
entertaining Japanese fans on a five-week Cardinals tour of
Japan after the 1968 season. "He would go over and start
talking to two or three Japanese players and act like they
understood him and then they'd talk to him and act like they
understood him," said Maxvill. "Nobody understood anybody
but everybody was laughing all the time."
Joe Torre, the New York Yankees manager, joined the
Cardinals in 1969, the last year Flood played for the
Cardinals. Torre said he was certain that today's players
don't realize how much Flood had contributed to their status
now.
"I know I mentioned in meetings in spring training when I
was managing the Cardinals about knowing the history of the
organization - not only what Curt Flood meant to this
ballclub but for all major-league players," said Torre.
"He broke the ice and it's been very lucrative ever since.
He lost his case but it called attention to the situation
and the owners were warned to do something about it."
Torre said Flood could have played for several more seasons
at a high level.
"But he had a principle," said Torre. "He was a very highly
principled individual.
"He had a lot of class. He was a great center fielder and a
hard-nosed player. He was fun to watch play and he was a
nice man. I'd be at several old-timers' games with him and
he'd always call me 'Joey' and come up and give me a hug."
Bing Devine, the Cardinals' former general manager, recalled
the first deal he made was for Flood in December 1957.
Devine sent pitchers Marty Kutyna, Willard Schmidt and Ted
Wieand to Cincinnati for Flood and outfielder Joe Taylor.
"I made that trade with a great deal of fear and
trepidation," said Devine.
"A lot people refer to the fact that undoubtedly the best
trade I ever made was for Lou Brock because he's in the Hall
of Fame and that's certainly true. But in my mind, the Curt
Flood trade was probably equal to that because of it being
my first deal. If that hadn't worked out, I probably
wouldn't have lasted as long as I did."
Devine was also the general manager who sent Flood to
Philadelphia in the winter of 1969 along with catcher Tim
McCarver, pitcher Joe Hoerner and outfielder Byron Browne
for first baseman Dick Allen, second baseman Co okie Rojas
and righthander Jerry Johnson. When Flood didn't report, the
Cardinals then had to give up promising first baseman Willie
Montanez and pitcher Bob Browning.
"By his going to court," said Devine, "it showed his
dissatisfaction with and disbelief of the reserve clause. I
don't know if he knew what he was going to get out of it or
if he figured he was going to get more out of it than he
did.
"But I knew he was a strong individual and the minute it
happened, it proved he had the courage of his convictions."
Then, a musing Devine said, "It's interesting he died on
Martin Luther King Day. In their own way, they probably had
the same goal in mind."
While most others talked freely about Flood, Hall of Fame
righthander Bob Gibson, one of Flood's closest friends,
unsuccessfully tried to check his emotions as he spoke from
a hotel room in New York where he was to attend a dinner for
a baseball charity.
"Ordinarily, I'd talk to you," said Gibson, his voice
choking, "but I'm having a very hard time with this.
"This is very personal. And I don't think I need to share
this with anybody. Right now, I can't do it."
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Photo:
http://www.baseballhalloffame.org/education/units/images/Curt_Flood.jpg
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Today's Greedy Baseball Players Likely Unaware Of Curt Flood's Legacy
FROM: The Philadelphia Daily News (January 22nd 1997) ~
By Bill Conlin
New Orleans - It was vintage ballplayer whining. Mike
Piazza, the Dodgers' All-Star catcher, announced he was
going for Fort Knox, a record arbitration settlement. Hours
after Piazza filed for $ 7.65 million Tuesday and the
Dodgers countered with a niggardly $ 6.1 million, the
catcher settled for a $ 15 million contract _ $ 7 million
this season, $ 8 million next.
Hey, did you think Piazza was going to sit there while Texas
Rangers catcher Ivan Rodriguez earned the richest one-year
contract in history? The Rangers avoided their own
arbitration nightmare by giving "Pudge" a record $ 6.65
million deal for 1997.
So there it is: The salary king this year is going to be a
catcher with bad knees who hits for average with a bundle of
home runs and RBI.
Hopefully, somebody out there in the Brain Dead Generation,
or their Generation progeny, can see the bitter irony of
this latest insufferable round of posturing and whining.
While the agents of Rodriguez and Piazza pushed the salary
structure of the greed-stricken national pastime to the next
obscene level, Curt Flood was quietly finishing the long,
painful and lonely process of dying. Just about the same
time Piazza's heart-tugging wails hit the sports wire, the
bulletin moved that Flood had died at age 59 of throat
cancer.
I wonder if Piazza's representatives contacted their client
and said, "Mike, the player who made you a millionaire many
times over, the guy who gave you this tremendous hammer of
free agency and its double-edged sword, salary arbitration,
is dead."
I'm certain that all over baseball, wherever .240 hitters
were preparing the arbitration figures that will triple
their salaries, guys dropped to their knees. They embraced
their families, then kneeled in front of their 70-inch
projection TVs, turned down the sound on the eight-speaker
The Dolby Surround systems, and chorused, "Thank you, Curt ... "
Not!
Most of the strutting pretenders who pass themselves off as
today's major league baseball players wouldn't know Curt
Flood from Curtis Ford.
And if Philadelphia is proud of its heritage as the cradle
of liberty, it can be just as ashamed over the role it
played 193 years after the Declaration of Independence as
the cradle of free agency.
The year 1999 will be a time of looking back and summing up,
of inventorying the most violent, dynamic and progressive
century in history. There will be lists galore. And in every
inevitable Top 10 list of the most influential Supreme Court
cases of the 20th century, Flood vs. Kuhn will be right
there with Brown vs. Board of Education and Rowe vs. Wade.
Unlike those landmark cases, however, Curt Flood lost. It
remained for others to taste the sweet fruits that came to
ballplayers three years after Flood's bid for free agency
was turned down. The plantation owner game the lords of
baseball had played through their reserve-clause exemption
to the antitrust laws did not officially end until a federal
arbitrator named Peter Seitz ruled after the 1975 season
that pitchers Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally were free,
if they wished, to offer their services to the highest
bidder.
Flood's suit guaranteed the reserve clause would eventually
be overturned. It was only a matter of when.
In 1969, Dick Allen was the most feared power hitter in
baseball. But his life was out of control. The night he
scrawled "Mom," "Boo," "Coke" and "Oct. 2" in the dirt
around first base, the Phillies called National League
president Chub Feeney and asked what they should do. "Tell
him to stop," Feeney said. It was like telling the wind to
stop blowing.
At the same time, Curt Flood was the game's best
centerfielder, a .300 hitter born to lead off. That he
played an exceptionally deep centerfield was perhaps
symbolic. Beer baron Gussie Busch was increasingly
disenchanted by Flood's holdouts and salary demands. He
complained bitterly, off the record, that his highest-paid
player was an African-American.
So, after the 1969 World Series, the Phillies made the first
of their my-problem-for-your-problem deals. In 1972, the
Cardinals would trade holdout lefthander Steve Carlton for
Phillies holdout righthander Rick Wise.
Now, in a deal that would be all but impossible by today's
rules, the Phillies acquired Flood, catcher Tim McCarver,
lefthanded relief ace Joe Hoerner and outfielder Byron
Browne from St. Louis for Allen, second baseman Cookie Rojas
and righthander Jerry Johnson.
I have always held that if Flood had been traded to the New
York Yankees, the Los Angeles Dodgers, to a number of teams,
he would have accepted the deal. But his initial reaction
was not that he did not wish to have his life uprooted
without his consent. It was not that his lucrative offseason
business as a portrait painter would suffer.
No . . . His initial reaction was that he did not wish to be
traded to a racist organization that resisted integration
for 10 years after Jackie Robinson. He did not wish to play
in a town that treated Allen with the hatred of a lynch mob
after the Frank Thomas incident in 1965.
History has a way of eroding the sharp edges of a story. If
a Brain-Deader has knowledge of the Allen-Flood trade at
all, he assumes that Flood refused to come here for strictly
racial reasons.
That was only his knee-jerk reaction. I am here to tell the
Brain-Deaders that Flood actually came to town to meet his
prospective overseers. He had a cordial meeting with
Phillies owner Bob Carpenter and general manager John Quinn.
They tendered a handsome salary offer that would have made
him, far and away, the highest-paid player in Phillies
history. They said all the right things a black man wanted
to hear in 1969.
Flood was an educated, articulate and incredibly complex
man. He went beyond ballplayer logic to chart his course.
And that course rejected the concept of a man, any man in
any profession, being treated as "property." Wasn't that
what the 13th and 14th Amendments were all about?
So, Curt Flood's mind was made up when Arthur Goldberg, who
had been a secretary of Labor, ambassador to the United
Nations and Supreme Court justice, took his case. Goldberg
asked him if he was prepared to go the distance, even if it
meant a blackball by major league baseball? Even if it meant
the eventual 5-3 loss to the Supremes?
Go for it, Flood said.
And a quarter of a century after they won by his losing,
these players look at $ 6.1 million for one year as if it
was a steaming insult dropped by a horse on a bank of snow.
I guarantee them that Curt Flood died close to broke.
---
1967 Topps (#245) baseball card:
http://www.strictlymint.com/images/12-12/1967245.jpg
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Flood, The Pro, Shouldn't Be Lost In Deluge Of Anti-Memories
FROM: The St. Louis Post-Dispatch (January 24th 1997) ~
By Dan O'Neill
Curt Flood is not a household name like Babe Ruth or Hank
Aaron. He's not in baseball's Hall of Fame, like Bob Gibson
and Stan Musial. He's always been something more significant
than that, in a personal sense.
He's the first major-league player I ever met, up close and
personal.
I was an 11-year-old kickball freak at St. Joseph's
Elementary School in Clayton in 1964 when a courageous
parish priest carted a gaggle of us to old Busch Stadium on
Grand Avenue one morning. The Cardinals were to play the
Mets, a crucial game in the final series of an eventual
World Championship season.
We arrived several hours before the afternoon start with the
good father and some good connections. We made our way down
to the dugout, up the fence-enclosed runway that rose above
the ballpark concourse and into the never-never land, the
Cardinals clubhouse.
As we awkwardly shuffled around the cozy, cluttered quarters
and gawked at the major-league paraphernalia, a voice called
to us from an adjoining room that served as the trainer's
area. We cautiously inched our way through the doorway and
there, laying on his stomach, and covered only by a towel,
was Curtis Charles Flood. He raised up on his elbows, with
that twinkle he always seemed to have in his eyes, and
pronounced, "Come on in, what's going on guys?"
I was closest to the table, scared, stunned and thoroughly
star-struck. Not only had we traversed the dugout, the
clubhouse, the trainer's room, we were now standing in front
of No. 21, one of the most exciting players in the game and
at that moment one of the least-clothed players in the game.
It doesn't get more up close and personal.
Without a uniform to hide behind or a grandstand to please,
in the privacy of the clubhouse, in the heat of a pennant
race, Flood couldn't have been more vulnerable, or more
heroic to a bunch of scraggly kids. He joked with us about
school, talked about baseball and invited us to come back
when he could introduce us to "more of the guys" - as if we
were some of the guys.
Cherished Memory
Thanks to Flood, it was a warm, positive experience, a
memory I and those alongside can cherish for a lifetime.
Thanks in part to that, many of us grew up embracing the
game and admiring those who played it.
When I practiced leaping catches, against the side of my
brick house, I was Curt Flood scaling the green wall in
center field. When we played "hot box," I'd sneak under the
tag using Flood's patented hook-slide. I idolized Stan
Musial, felt sorry for Harry Caray's whipping post - Ken
Boyer, and was thrilled by Lou Brock. But when I dreamed of
what it might be like playing in the bigs, I pictured Curt
Flood.
When Flood died of cancer on Martin Luther King Jr. Day,
baseball people said it was a shame Flood wasn't appreciated
as a reformist who tes ted the reserve clause and made this
a more just and profitable world for ballplayers. People
remembered Flood for his political stance first and his
elbows-high batting stance last. They eulogized him for what
he did in a courthouse before acknowledging what he did on a
ballfield.
That's a shame. Flood's role as the antitrust trailblazer,
his part in creating a place in baseball for Marvin Millers
and Don Fehrs, never has struck me as inspiring. Flood
didn't come riding in on a white stallion, flashing a silver
shield and golden sword, fighting a holy crusade on behalf
of his baseball brothers.
He didn't make a stand so Roger Clemens could turn his back
on all those Red Sox fans who supported him all those years.
He didn't fight for the right of the abrasive Albert Belle
to leave Cleveland and make bejillions of dollars in
Chicago.
Flood fought to stay, not to leave. He stood up for himself
and his family. He loved playing in St. Louis, had roots
here, and didn't see why those roots could be pulled out
from under him when he was traded to Philadelphia after the
1969 season. He was an individual; he made an individual
stand.
A Seed Planted
The guts it took and the sacrifices it required were
considerable. The circumstances were inevitable, and the
reasons for Flood's posture were perfectly understandable.
But are those events and that legacy something to hold
precious?
Not for me. I find them tragic and pathetically ironic. By
challenging baseball's big hitters, Flood effectively ended
his career and started the process that has all but
eliminated players of his character and commitment. His
action planted a seed that has turned a piece of Americana
into a conglomeration of corporate greed. And the only
portion of the baseball world that has benefited - the
players - never knew he existed.
Curt Flood, my friends, was a ballplayer. Bing Devine, whose
first trade as a Cardinals general managers was to acquire
Flood from Cincinnati, said Flood was "as good a center
fielder as I've ever seen and someone who always played the
same, came to play every day."
Flood swung hard, ran hard, slid hard. And when kids were
around, he laughed hard. He was 5 feet 9 and 160 pounds of
style and substance. He played the most glamorous position,
where the most glamorous names in the game presided - such
as Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays. But nobody played it
better.
Flood's refusal to accept his trade, and his subsequent test
of the reserve clause, came during the prime of his career.
He was two days from his 32nd birthday when he charged
baseball with violating antitrust laws in federal court on
Jan. 16, 1970. But after sitting out the 1970 season, he
wound up playing only 13 games for the Washington Senators
in 1971 before calling it quits. It is perfectly reasonable
to expect he had two to three peak seasons remaining, maybe
more.
Costly Stand
Those lost chapters cost him a lot of money and, perhaps, a
place in Cooperstown. Flood had 1,854 career hits at the
time he took his legal stance. He had averaged 186 hits in
the previous eight seasons. If he had averaged 162 hits over
the next four seasons, he would have reached 2,500 hits
before his 36th birthday. Hall of Famer Brock, who reached
3,000 hits, had only 1,808 hits at the age of 32, by the end
of the 1971 season.
Flood didn't just lose years of what-might-have-beens, he
lost what had been. His trade came after a "disappointing"
season in 1969, when he batted .285 with 173 hits and 31
doubles. In 1968, he batted .301, one of only six
major-leaguers to reach the .300 mark.
From 1961 to '68, he topped .300 six times, including .335
in 1967 and .311 in 1964 - both championship seasons for the
Cardinals. Had he not momentarily misread Jim Northrup's
drive in Game 7 of the '68 World Series, he might have been
a member of three World Series winners. There are residents
of Cooperstown with less-impressive credentials.
Yet, the respect and honor Flood deserves as a player and
ambassador of the game are always obscured. When Flood is
remembered, he is inevitably dressed in pioneer clothing, a
maverick of baseball litigation.
I prefer to remember him wearing only a towel.
Curt Flood's funeral will be 3 p.m. (St. Louis time) Monday
at First African-Methodist-Episcopal Church in Los Angeles.
Donations can be made to: Curt Flood Youth Foundation, P.O.
Box 10921, Beverly Hills, Calif. 90213.
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1971 Topps (#535) baseball card (Senators):
http://www.rustywilly.com/cards/1971ToppsFlood535Large.jpg
1971 Topps (concept) baseball card (Cardinals):
http://www.vintagecardtraders.org/virtual/pseudo/71t_curt_flood.jpg