Blackballing Curt Flood

Quite often when an event of significant importance occurs, other noteworthy happenings tend to be overshadowed, are quickly lost in the shuffle of time and never garner the attention they deserve. Last week, the entity of Major League Baseball (MLB) provided the classic example of such an instance.

At 11:59 last Wednesday night, the five-year Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) between the owners of the 30 MLB teams and the players expired. At 12:01 am, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred announced that the owners had enacted a lockout, thus bringing the game to a screeching halt. No business can be transacted; teams cannot make deals with each other, nor can free agents enter into discussions with teams. This is the fourth lockout and ninth work stoppage for MLB since the Major League Baseball Players Union became effective in 1966, when the players hired Marvin Miller from the steelworkers union, where he was the chief economist and negotiator, as the first full-time director. Of significant note, it is the first labour disruption in baseball in 26 years.

Over the last month, MLB, uncharacteristically, experienced a flood of free agent signings, as teams rushed to beat the expiration of the CBA. With several top free agents still unsigned, teams have already committed US$1,708,600,000 to new player contracts, with more than likely, another US$1 billion in guaranteed money to be spent. Leading the charge was the Texas Rangers (whose win-loss record in the 2021 season was a disappointing 60-102), who signed two of the six big winners to receive nine-figure contracts by 1st December. Previously, only four players had ever been rewarded with such sizable contracts so early in the postseason.

As the hoopla surrounding this, brief, but albeit mind-blowing spending splurge, captured baseball fans, they now have to sit and wait patiently whilst the labour negotiations drag on, as the two sides haggle over the distribution of the economic benefits, beyond the basic revenue streams. Yes, this is not only about the splitting of the ever-rising revenue pie which has seen the players receive a declining proportion of their teams’ revenues since the signing of the last CBA five years ago. MLB teams’ incomes have expanded from ticket sales to include local and national television deals, publicly-funded stadia, real estate development, and more recently, gambling. One major source of contention is the issue of free agency, whereby a player with six seasons of experience is eligible to be a free agent and can negotiate with any team. The union is claiming that the owners are manipulating the system by weeks, or in some cases, months, to prevent players from meeting the required threshold, which the union would like to see shortened.

The fans, of course, just want the matter to be expedited before the start of spring training in February. Older fans still remember the devastating long-term effect of the last players’ 232 days strike which saw the loss of the entire 1994 postseason, and 938 regular season games between August 1994 and March 1995.

Meanwhile, the man who played a pivotal role in the creation of modern-day free agency and the ensuing super salaried sportsman, remains invisible in the current proceedings. The name Curt Flood is never mentioned, it’s as if he never existed. In fact, the powers that be, are still doing their utmost to deny him his rightful place in history.

On Friday, 5th November, the Baseball Hall of Fame (BHOF) released the long-awaited (the announcement had been delayed one year due to the pandemic) ten-name list of candidates for the Golden Days Era (1950 – 1969) Committee to consider for election to the Hall, when they met last Sunday. Once again, the name of Curt Flood was conspicuous by its absence from the ballot. Who was he and why do the powers that be continue to blacklist him?

In 1969, Flood was the centrefielder for the St Louis Cardinals of the National League. Thirty-one years old, Flood was at the height of his athletic powers. He was an integral part of the Redbirds line-up which won the World Series in 1964 and 1967. He had won seven consecutive Gold Gloves (awarded to the best fielder at the position) and had finished in the top ten of batting, five times, during an era dominated by pitching. Held in high regard by his teammates, Flood was elected by them as co-captain every season from 1965 to 1969. At the end of the 1969 season, Flood asked for an increase in salary, which may have prompted the Cardinals to trade him, along with several other players to the Philadelphia Phillies on 7th October. Flood refused to report to Philadelphia.

The Phillies were terrible at the time, and Flood, who considered Philadelphia “the nation’s northernmost Southern city” was also wary of their fans, whom he thought were racist. This was at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. Muhammad Ali had refused the military draft for the Vietnam War, preferring to face jail time, and Tommy Smith and John Carlos had lost their Olympic medals for their protests on the medal podium at the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games. Flood’s wife, Judy Pace Flood, a well-known actress of the 1960s and 1970s, noted that for Flood, who was inspired by Jackie Robinson, “Players’ rights and civil rights were part of the same idea.”

Flood decided that he was going to challenge the status quo of baseball and their reserve clause which basically stated that a team owned the lifetime rights to any player it had drafted. MLBPA Union head Miller cautioned him, advising that he would probably be blacklisted from baseball. His career would be over, and there would be no future jobs as a coach or a manager.

On Christmas Eve, 1969, Flood penned his now famous scathing letter to the then MLB Commissioner Bowie Kuhn explaining why he refused to be traded and demanding to become a free agent. “After 12 years in the Major Leagues. I do not feel that I am a piece of property to be bought and sold irrespective of my wishes. I believe that any system which produces that result violates my basic rights as a citizen and is inconsistent with the laws of the United States and of the several states,” Flood wrote. Kuhn, of course, refused to grant his request. The gauntlet had been thrown down, there was no turning back.

In an interview in January 1970, the famous sports broadcaster Howard Cosell asked Flood how he could equate his battle with professional baseball to slavery when he was earning US$90,000 per annum. “A well paid slave is nonetheless a slave,” was Flood’s response

Flood, with the MLBPA Union’s backing filed suit against the league, alleging that baseball’s reserve clause violated antitrust law while seeking US$1 million in damages. Former Supreme Court Judge Arthur Goldberg agreed to appear gratis on Flood’s behalf. During the ten-week trial several former players (no current player wanted to risk his career) including Hall of Famers Jackie Robinson and Hank Greenberg, and maverick owner of the Chicago White Sox, Bill Veeck, testified on Flood’s behalf. The Court ruled in favour of MLB, as did the Second Circuit Court which heard the appeal. In 1972, the Supreme Court voted 5 – 3 against Flood, invoking stare decisis and the court’s existing precedent in Federal Baseball and Toolson. Baseball had survived its third major test before the Supreme Court.

Flood might have lost the battle, but there was now a crack in the dam. In the 1970 CBA, between MLB and the players, a grievance procedure involving a neutral arbitrator was established, allowing the players to test the bounds of their contracts, including the reserve clause. Miller was able to convince the arbitrator, Peter Seitz, in December, 1975 to rule that pitchers Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally, who played for one year without signed contracts, were in fact free agents. Less than four years after Flood had sacrificed his career, free agency had become a reality, the players were unshackled from the reserve clause.

Flood, who took the 1970 season off, during which time, his former teammate, Bob Gibson, estimated that Flood received four to five death threats a day for wanting to break up baseball, never reaped the benefits of his sacrifice. In November, 1970, the Phillies traded him to the Washington Senators, who offered him US$110,000 for the 1971 season. Flood appeared in only thirteen games before retiring from the game. The battle had taken its toll on him.

In 1998, Congress enacted the Curt Flood Act,

which declared that the antitrust laws apply to Major League Baseball’s employment practices. The law was largely symbolic, as free agency was already well established. Last year and again this year, more than 100 members of the United States Congress signed letters to Jane Forbes Clark, chairwoman of the Baseball Hall of Fame and granddaughter of its founder, urging Flood’s election by the Golden Days Era committee; to no avail.

In his autobiography, A Whole New Ballgame, Marvin Miller recalled, after cautioning Flood about the likelihood of being blacklisted: “Curt, to his everlasting credit, said, ‘But would it benefit all the other players and future players?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ And he said, ‘That’s good enough for me.’”

The powers that be kept Miller, who passed away in 2012, out of the Hall of Fame until 2019. They have succeeded in blocking Flood’s election for years.

Today, the Historical Overview Committee, sponsored by the Baseball Writers Association of America has been delegated by the HOF to compile the nominees for the ballot. Their deliberations are held in secret but one member alleges that the committee used the veil of analytics to justify that Flood’s statistics are not worthy of Cooperstown.

These powers cannot rule forever. They may have stolen Flood’s career, no doubt causing great financial and emotional hardship, but they cannot change the fact that he stood up to the establishment and fought for his rights. His actions are still reverberating today, as they have had an economic impact, not only on baseball, but on other professional sport leagues which did not have free agency until Flood started the revolution. Nothing lasts forever, and though he died on January 20, 1997, two days after his 59th birthday, one day, perhaps in the near future, Curt Flood will be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.