Curt Flood (Jan 18, 2018)
Today would have been Curt Flood’s 80th Birthday, but he died from cancer over two decades ago at essentially my current age.
To honor my boyhood hero, one of the best baseball players I ever saw, and a man of great principle and intellect on the anniversary of his birthday, I reprint a story I wrote about him in my book A Common Sense Enema:
There have undoubtedly been many great athletes who have not received their fair due. But I can’t imagine a more underappreciated player than my boyhood hero, Curtis Charles Flood – the great center-fielder for the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1960s who is mostly known, if at all, for taking the owners to court over their claim to own a player for his entire career.
Even among those who saw him play, few I suspect remember how great a baseball player he was. At only 5 foot 9 and 165 pounds, he naturally was not a home run hitter. Although very quick, he did not possess the great base stealing attributes of his more acclaimed teammate Lou Brock. But sometimes in sports, as in life, the sum of the parts greatly exceeds the individual pieces.
Flood was an outstanding hitter, especially for the era in which he played. From 1961 through 1969, before abruptly giving up the game he loved to challenge baseball’s antiquated reserve system, Flood hit over 300 six times, including a high of 335 in 1967, and was one of only six players in all of baseball to do so in hitting-starved 1968. In 1964 he led the entire league with 211 hits.
Moreover, he was a truly exceptional center-fielder. Playing in an era that included the great Willie Mays during part of his career, Curt won a Gold Glove as the league’s best center-fielder seven straight years. In 1966 he played the entire season without making a single error and his consecutive error-less streak of 226 games and 568 total chances was a National League and Major League record, respectively, which stood for more than 25 years. He not only made the routine play consistently, but had outstanding range as well, and led the league in putouts by an outfielder four times. And he was an excellent base runner. Despite his limited stature, Flood was tough and durable. He led the league with an impressive 662 at bats in 1963 and 679 at bats in 1964.
But more than pure statistics, Curt was a winner. In a shamefully shortened career, his teams went to the World Series 3 times in 5 years, winning 2 of those series against the AL powerhouse Yankees and Red Sox. When many think of the great Cardinal teams of the 60’s they naturally think of Bob Gibson and Lou Brock (or perhaps other pretty exceptional players like Bill White, Steve Carlton, Roger Maris, Ken Boyer, and Orlando Cepeda).
The real leader of that team, I submit, was Gibson’s road roommate, Curt Flood (and not just because he could get along with the often irascible Gibby). Flood was an articulate and extremely intelligent man who when he spoke, like E.F. Hutton, people listened. But his primary leadership was the best kind – by example. Aside from his steadiness, durability, and consistency at the plate and in the field, Flood was the consummate team player. Batting generally second behind the best base stealer of his day, Flood repeatedly took pitches for strikes to give Brock a chance to steal (rare today among the game’s more selfish hitters since the statistical chance of getting a hit is reduced considerably once a batter is down one or two strikes in the count).
But Curt’s goal was not an individual one; he knew the team’s formula for success was to allow Brock to steal and then either drive him in or move him over to third base so that others could score him. One run was often all it took to win, especially if Gibson was on the mound in 1968, with his astounding 1.12 ERA for the entire season. And no player “gave himself up” more (the act of hitting the ball to the right side with a runner at second and no outs to enable the runner to advance to third and score on a fly ball by the next batter). Few hitters in the modern era even try to do that, since a ground ball out to the right side to advance a runner only shows up as an out on their statistics. Indeed, I recall that in Game 1 in the 1967 World Series, when he twice “gave himself up” and advanced Brock to third. Brock scored on both occasions, the only two runs in a 2-1 victory.
In short, Flood was the kind of player that is every coaches’ dream at any sport and at any level: always prepared to play, always hustling, always thinking of the situation, making his teammates better, treating defense and base running as every bit as important as hitting, never showboating when making a great catch or getting a clutch hit, and always trying his best to win, but doing so with sportsmanship, dignity, and class.
Yet as much as his on-field accomplishments have been underestimated, it is embarrassing how much Flood’s effort to immeasurably improve the lives of other baseball players (and all professional athletes by extension) has been largely ignored, especially by those who have benefited the most thereby. When Flood decided to oppose a trade to Philadelphia at the end of the 1969 season while still in his prime, he understood that this would likely be the end of his playing career. The odds of successfully taking on Major League Baseball as a player at that time was, to say the least, a huge long shot given the power disparity, baseball’s revered status in the courts, and the prevailing public view at the time (that a ballplayer should be happy he is earning a living playing baseball and just shut up and do what he is told). Moreover, even if his challenge was successful, Flood knew it would take a long time to have his case heard, which would greatly impair his chances of returning to the game, assuming blackballing him didn’t do the trick.
But Flood felt that the reserve system was wrong and unfair, and that there was no other occupation, short of indentured servitude, where one was “owned” by his employer and could be banished from working for a competitor forever. When the legendary and confrontational Howard Cosell asked him in an interview how he could possibly compare himself to a slave given the $100,000 salary he was making at the time, Flood calming and eloquently responded: “a well-paid slave is nonetheless a slave.” Flood knew that even a successful outcome to his case would not likely inure to his personal benefit; he wanted to help future generations of players avoid his fate.
The great Jackie Robinson and Hank Greenberg (pioneers against racism and anti-Semitism in the game) stood by Flood’s side and testified on his behalf at trial, but not a single active player, including his closest friends on the Cardinals, stood up to testify, fearful of retribution.
Not surprisingly, Flood lost his case, which went all the way to the United States Supreme Court. As noted in the classic behind-the-scenes look at the Supreme Court, The Brethren, the 5-3 decision actually could easily have gone the other way. Chief Justice Berger reportedly changed his mind and voted against Flood at the 11th hour as part of a closed-door trade with Justice Blackmun for delaying his abortion opinion in Roe v Wade. Justice Powell, from all accounts a supporter of Flood’s position, decided that he had a conflict of interest because he owned stock in Anheuser Busch, the owner of the Cardinals at the time (though it is hard to see how voting against one’s potential financial interest could be a conflict of interest).
Although Flood lost his own court battle, his bold action chartered the course for others to successfully challenge the reserve clause shortly thereafter and produced the free agency system, which has enabled subsequent ballplayers to enjoy a lifestyle that no one could have imagined. And yet, few ballplayers today are aware of Flood’s efforts and there is little recognition of his role in changing players’ lives dramatically for the better. Jackie Robinson is universally known and has had his number retired by every major league team. Roberto Clemente has an annual humanitarian award named after him. Both are well deserving, but Curt Flood is someone who belongs in this kind of company.
Postscript: Following his court defeat, Flood tried a brief comeback in 1971 with the then Washington Senators, who had obtained his rights from Philadelphia. But after only 13 games he called it a career; his heart, probably more than his skills, irreparably damaged by this arduous and painful ordeal. An accomplished artist, who once painted a celebrated portrait of Dr. Martin Luther King, Flood moved to Spain for a while, tried his hand as an announcer for the Oakland A’s (only rebel A’s owner Charlie Finley would employ him) and was Commissioner of the abbreviated Senior Baseball League. He died at the age of 59 from throat cancer; the owners could not shut him up but cancer did.
The last time I saw my childhood hero was a few years before that at an old-timer’s game in St. Louis, where the Cardinals had finally forgiven him enough to invite him back for an appearance. He looked a lot shorter than I remembered him as a youngster and had put on some pounds, but it was great to see him. Best of all: he received the largest ovation of anyone there.
