Hall push renews for trailblazer Flood
Judy Pace-Flood, 80, a trailblazing Black actress, celebrated Juneteenth on Sunday, just as she and her family have done since growing up in Los Angeles.
Only on this day, June 19, 2022, the date takes on much greater historical significance.
This is the 50th anniversary of the Curt Flood decision, a Supreme Court ruling that ultimately was proved wrong, but forever changed the course of baseball and all sports with the advent of free agency.
It’s one of the most important dates in baseball history, with a man sacrificing not only his baseball career but his entire life. Players no longer had to work their entire careers for the team that first signed or drafted them. They could become free agents and have the right to choose their place of employment.
There is Jackie Robinson, who broke baseball’s color barrier in 1947. There is Larry Doby, who did the same in the American League a few months later. And there is Curt Flood, whose act of bravery will never be forgotten and an integral chapter in the Civil Rights era.
If Marvin Miller, former executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, can be inducted into the Hall of Fame last year, if Buck O’Neil, whose prominence brought national attention to the Negro Leagues, can be inducted next month, certainly Flood should enter the sacred grounds of Cooperstown.
“I think it’s disgusting and delusional that he’s not in the Baseball Hall of Fame,” Pace-Flood told USA TODAY Sports. “There’s a phrase that I hear that I just hate. It says, ‘Well, he was a pretty good player.’
“There’s no person of African descent who played baseball in the ’50s and ’60s that were pretty good players. There was no such thing as a pretty good Black player sitting on the bench. You had to be outstanding.”
“The hardest place to be as an African American player at that time was a cen
ter fielder,” Pace-Flood said. “You had the Jim Crow laws and those fans behind you calling you every racial slur, throwing beer cans and things at you, and you didn’t know what was going on behind you.
“This is a time we lost Martin Luther King. We lost Robert Kennedy. He always thought someone was going to kill him, too. He got so many death threats.”
So, trying to argue whether Flood, a seven-time Gold Glove center fielder, three-time All-Star and two-time World Series champion, is worthy of a Hall of Fame plaque based purely on his statistics is idiotic.
The man changed baseball, and all of sports, forever.
He sacrificed his life to make it a greater place for every professional athlete who put on a uniform, with Time magazine calling him, “One of the 10 most influential athletes of the century.” Pitcher Gerrit Cole thanked him during his introductory press conference with the Yankees after signing his historic, nine-year, $324 million contract. And now he has Congress pushing for his Hall of Fame candidacy.
“Curt Flood was a trailblazer in the world of professional sports and workers’ rights,” Maryland Congressman David Trone said in 2020 when he organized a bipartisan and bicameral coalition of 102 members of Congress to campaign for Flood’s Hall of Fame election. “Flood stood up for what he believed in, even though he knew it would mean the end of his career. If it wasn’t for Flood, professional athletes wouldn’t have free agency to own their own career.”
Flood was traded from the St. Louis Cardinals to the Philadelphia Phillies in 1969. He had already spent 12 years in the big leagues. He refused to go.
He informed Miller of his intentions, and while Miller told him it was admirable he also warned him that if he sent that letter on Christmas Eve 1969 it would effectively end his career. He was earning $90,000 at the time, $45,000 less than Willie Mays, and perhaps could cost himself at least another $300,000 in career earnings.
Flood didn’t blink. He sent the letter, triggering the start of freedom for players.
“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.”
Commissioner Bowie Kuhn dismissed the letter, saying MLB would not comply with the request. Three weeks later, Flood filed suit against MLB and Kuhn, seeking relief from the reserve clause.
“It cost him everything, he had no money, completely losing everything,” Pace-Flood said. “But it was breaking his heart to walk away. He was going to do this no matter what happened.”
Flood was virtually alone in his mission. Players were afraid to join the fight, without a single active player supporting him. Sure, a few were supportive privately but feared repercussions if they came out publicly. Some, like Joe DiMaggio and Joe Garagiola, were vehemently against his actions and chastised him publicly.
“I can understand the process for nobody doing anything, or saying anything, just so happy to be playing the game,” Pace-Flood said. “He was just ahead of his time. But he just kept pushing and pushing. The Civil Rights movement gave him more strength. “And, finally, it happened.”
The Supreme Court ruled in 1972 in favor of baseball, leaving Flood devastated, she said, but the torch was lit. Three years later, pitchers Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally took up the battle against the reserve clause and won, with arbitrator Peter Seitz making the historic ruling.
There now are more than 200 free agents a year. There was more than $3 billion spent in free agency last winter, with 11 players receiving contracts worth at least $100 million.
Athletes are speaking out now, unafraid of the consequences, whether it’s Colin Kaepernick in the NFL, LeBron James in the NBA or Max Scherzer in baseball.
“If Curt was here, the young man who took the knee (Kaepernick), he’d be standing up and applauding,” PaceFlood said. “If he were here, he’d be standing up and applauding LeBron James. He’d be so proud of these young men.”
Flood is an integral part of the twohour documentary by James’ production company “After Jackie,” discussing the challenges of Black players who entered baseball after Robinson. Robinson, who retired in 1957, testified on Flood’s behalf in court while every active player refused.
“The problem with the reserve clause is that it ties one man to one owner for the rest of his life,” Flood said in an interview with Howard Cosell. “There is no other profession in the history of mankind, except slavery, in which one man was tied to another for life.”
Flood, who died at the age of 59 in 1997, will again be eligible to be in the 2025 Hall of Fame class. Yet in the meantime, Pace-Flood refuses to sit idly. She’ll keep pushing. She’ll keep fighting. She fought her own battles in the acting business trying to find work as a dark-skinned Black woman and has never been afraid of challenges.
She landed groundbreaking roles on “Peyton Place,” “Bewitched,” “I Spy,” The Mod Squad” and “The Young Lawyers” and was Gale Sayers’ wife in the Emmy Award classic “Brian’s Song,” the first film cited in the U.S. Congressional Record.” Pace-Flood, a two-time NCAACP Image award winner and five-time nominee, will be honored in two weeks by the prestigious Essence Magazine at Essence Fest in New Orleans.
She fought her own battles of racism in the entertainment industry but recoiled in horror hearing the stories that Flood shared throughout his career.
There was the time he was the Carolina League player of the year in the minors leagues but had to stay in the back of the bus instead of entering the hotel to receive his award. There were the times he and his Black teammates sat alone in the clubhouse waiting for their uniforms to be washed on the other side of town by Black cleaners, with team clubhouse attendants refusing to use the same washers and dryers. There were all of those years he couldn’t eat in the same restaurants as his white teammates, sleep in the same hotels or even get in the same cabs.
So, considering what Flood endured, and how he sacrificed everything, including his life, just what would the Hall of Fame election mean to Judy-Pace?
“The truth!” she said. “It would mean the absolute truth. It would mean stopping the stories and tell the truth. When an activist like him comes in here and changes an absolutely wrong situation that goes against the constitution, everyone should know about this. “He’s part of American history. “He should be in the Hall of Fame.” It’s Juneteenth, the day when more than 250,000 slaves in Texas were told they were free in 1865, two years after slavery was abolished.
While we celebrate the federal holiday, remember the legacy of Flood, too, who brought an overdue freedom in baseball and the sports world.
And the day Curt Flood is enshrined into Cooperstown, we will all be asking ourselves the same question. What took so damn long?