by Brad Snyder
Players, old and new, found their own ways to recognize Flood. Before a 1984 old-timers game at Busch Stadium, relief pitcher Bruce Sutter found Flood and said, “Thanks for all of us.” After the 1984 season, Sutter signed a six-year contract with the Atlanta Braves worth nearly $10 million. Five years later during an old-timers game at Fenway Park, opposing pitcher Bill “Spaceman” Lee showed his appreciation by serving up a fat pitch. “I thought, ‘Here was the one guy who did as much for baseball as anyone else,’ so I just said, ‘Here, hit it,’ ” Lee said. Flood hit a home run.
These were happy times for Flood. He worked at Randy Hundley’s fantasy camps, played in old-timers games, and signed autographs at card shows and All-Star Game fan festivals. He drew sports cartoons that he wanted to publish and claimed to be writing a sequel to The Way It Is. He also started the Curt Flood Youth Foundation, a nonprofit organization that helped underprivileged youngsters in foster care, with HIV, or simply in need of sports equipment. He invited former major leaguers Ernie Banks and Tommy Davis to serve on the foundation’s board.
Flood never forgot where he had come from or who had helped him along the way. In October 1987, his beloved American Legion coach, George Powles, died of a heart attack at age 77. Flood was the only former major leaguer to attend the memorial service. He surprised his coach’s family by asking to speak. He related how no one ever gave Powles any trouble when he drove in and out of the ghetto to teach and coach at McClymonds because “he was part of the family.” He remembered the hours Powles had spent hitting him ground balls in the school’s gymnasium. “I didn’t appreciate it until three World Series later all of the things he ingrained in me as a youngster,” Flood told the audience. “His legacy will live on. It will live on with me in my heart.” Just six years earlier, Flood had been too drunk and destitute to attend Powles’s induction into the California Coaches’ Hall of Fame in Anaheim. Karen had been forced to send a telegram in his name to the banquet hotel. Flood’s heartfelt eulogy showed how far he had come.
In 1989, Flood was named commissioner of the new Senior Professional Baseball Association (SPBA). An eight-team league originally based around Florida’s spring training ballparks, the SPBA was supposed to be baseball’s version of the senior golf tour for players 35 and over (and catchers over 32). Earl Weaver and Dick Williams managed; Bobby Bonds, Rollie Fingers, Graig Nettles, Tony Perez, and Luis Tiant played.
The person who had recommended Flood as the SPBA’s commissioner was Joe Garagiola. Garagiola apologized to Miller for his “terrible mistake” in testifying against Flood. Years later, Garagiola publicly confessed his sins. “I thought if the reserve clause went, baseball was going,” he said. “I was so wrong, I can’t begin to tell you. It took a lot of guts to do what he did.”
Flood’s job as SPBA commissioner inspired an old friend to show up at the league’s opening press conference at Gallagher’s Steak House in New York City—Howard Cosell. After the press conference, Cosell ate lunch with Curt, Judy, Dick Williams, and league founder Jim Morley. Cosell regaled the table with stories about Flood. He said Bowie Kuhn lacked “the balls” to stand behind Flood and make him a free agent.
Flood’s senior league commissionership was mostly ambassadorial. The league owners rented him a Miami apartment from September to February and paid him a $60,000 salary. He signed autographs for fans. At Opening Day in Pompano Beach, he ushered Mickey Mantle to the mound to throw out the first ball. He deferred to Major League Baseball commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti on any major controversies, such as the then-uncertain status of Pete Rose. The senior league struggled to survive beyond that first season. As a cost-cutting measure, the owners decided not to renew Flood’s contract, though he received another $60,000 to $65,000 in severance pay. The league limped along for one more season. Some people speculated that Flood’s presence hurt the SPBA’s standing with Major League Baseball.
Flood never fell out of favor with Marvin Miller. In June 1991, Miller published A Whole Different Ball Game, a caustic retort to Kuhn’s autobiography. If history is written by the victors, then Miller deserved to tell his version of the players’ repeated victories over the owners. Thanks to Miller, baseball players have the strongest union in professional sports. Don Fehr honored Miller that summer by inviting former players to New York for a book party at Mickey Mantle’s restaurant. Curt and Judy flew in for the event. They ate breakfast before the party with Marvin; Marvin’s wife, Terry; baseball guru Bill James, who had written the introduction to Miller’s book; and former union general counsel Dick Moss. After the party, Curt and Judy joined the Millers for dinner. Miller’s admiration for Flood ran deep. The two men saw each other for the last time in Colorado Springs in 1992, when Miller accepted an award from the Major League Baseball Players Alumni Association, but they stayed in frequent contact.
Reunited with Moss at Miller’s book party, Flood was invited to join an even bigger threat to the baseball establishment than another anti-trust lawsuit: a rival league. An August 12 strike and subsequent lockout aborted the 1994 baseball season and canceled the World Series. Base-ball’s antitrust exemption once again came under attack in Congress. Criticism over the Supreme Court’s decision in Flood’s lawsuit reached a fever pitch. Even Justice Blackmun began to question the wisdom of his decision. “It may be that had the baseball case gone the other way, in the long run, it would have been just as well, if not better,” Blackmun said in April 1995. “But it wouldn’t surprise me if baseball were to lose its anti-trust exemption.”
Rather than try to avenge past legal defeats, Moss, Smith College economics professor Andrew Zimbalist, former representative Bob Mrazek (D-NY), and Representative John Bryant (D-TX) decided to mount an on-field challenge to Major League Baseball—the United Baseball League. They wanted to create a competitive market for the players’ services. They promised to field 10 teams in 1996 and named Flood a stockholder and vice president.
On December 6, Flood and Moss met in Atlanta with 80 striking players, including future Hall of Famers Paul Molitor, Eddie Murray, and Kirby Puckett, and other stars including Frank Thomas, Fred McGriff, Orel Hershiser, and David Cone. Moss discussed the proposed league. Flood, wearing large wire-rimmed glasses, balding, about 20 pounds heavier than in his playing days, was unprepared for his reception. The players gave him a standing ovation. He got so choked up that he almost forgot what he was going to say. Silence filled the room as he told the players about his fight against the reserve clause. It had been nearly 25 years since he addressed the player representatives in Puerto Rico. He gave the current group of players lasting advice about dealing with the owners regarding free agency: “Don’t let them put the genie back in the bottle.” Don Fehr did not think enough of Flood to give him a job with the union but welcomed him as a unifying force during the strike. “Curt Flood remains an extraordinarily powerful symbol even to the players of this generation, many of whom have never seen him before,” Fehr said. “The players talked to him and shook his hand, and I suspect they will remember it for some time.”
Flood wrote a first-person account of his reasons for backing the new league in the April 1995 issue of Sport magazine:
Major League Baseball returned in 1995; the United Baseball League never came to fruition.
I’m entering into this venture with goodwill and without malice toward the established leagues. There is no animosity or revenge on my behalf resulting from my 1969 [sic] Supreme Court case. However, I must say this: Major league baseball owners have enjoyed unchallenged supremacy for 80 years. In recent memory, despite strong and resilient fan support, the baseball business has been ruptured by [a] succession of destructive crises, culminating in the most recent strike.
Ken Burns’s nine-part Baseball documentary in 1994 reminded fans of Flood’s continued significance. With questions prompted by Judy, Burns interviewed Flood at length and made him one of the documentary’s featured commentators. Flood discussed the influence of Jackie Robinson, the civil r
ights movement, the opposition to the Vietnam War, and the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King on his decision to sue baseball.
At the documentary’s premiere in Washington, D.C., Curt and Judy toured the White House and met President and Mrs. Clinton. The premiere also reunited Flood with other former players interviewed for the project. Tim McCarver watched Flood glide down the red carpet in a sharp-looking suit. McCarver teased his former Cardinals co-captain that he looked regal. “I am in the process of living happily ever after,” Flood confessed in a three-page Christmas letter in 1994 to friends and family.
The fairy-tale ending came to an abrupt halt in Flood’s Arlington, Texas, hotel room at the 1995 All-Star Game. He fainted and blamed it on the heat. He consulted an ear, nose, and throat doctor about what he thought was a sinus infection. He soon “sounded like Louis Armstrong.” At that point, doctors discovered a lump in his throat—throat cancer. They initially gave him a 90 to 95 percent chance of recovery. He had quit smoking in 1979 and drinking in 1986. Over the next year, he underwent chemotherapy, radiation treatment, and operations on nodes on both sides of his throat.
Word leaked out about Flood’s illness in October 1995 when he missed the funeral of his good friend Vada Pinson. Pinson was not found for three days after suffering a stroke. Flood still had a message from him on his answering machine. Eight months earlier, Pinson had driven all the way from South Florida to San Francisco to present Flood for induction into the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame. Flood could not attend Pinson’s funeral because of a radiation treatment but made good on his promise to present Pinson for induction a year later.
The Players Association quietly helped Flood with his medical bills. Having been dropped from the players’ health plan years earlier, Flood did not have adequate insurance to pay for his cancer treatments. The union dipped into its own coffers to pay about $400,000 of his health care costs. The Baseball Assistance Team (BAT), an organization created to help ex-ballplayers in need and spearheaded by Joe Garagiola, also supported Flood and his family.
The chemotherapy, radiation treatment, and multiple throat operations eventually robbed Flood of his ability to speak. But Bill White made sure that Flood could still be heard. The former Yankees broadcaster had ascended to National League president in 1989, making him baseball’s highest-ranking black official. Aside from Gibson, White was Flood’s closest former teammate. In 1993, Rawlings discovered that Flood had never received his 1969 Gold Glove Award because he had sat out the following season. White presented the award to Flood at a black-tie event in New York City. After Flood could no longer speak, White arranged for the purchase of a special computer that voiced Flood’s typewritten thoughts. White kept his contribution quiet, just as he had downplayed his role in integrating spring training camps in Florida.
Marvin Miller frequently called Flood’s home. Like most people, Miller spoke with Judy as Curt typed on his computer or wrote down what he wanted Judy to say. He communicated the same way with filmmaker Spike Lee, whose 15-minute segment on Curt for HBO’s Real Sports featured Judy reading from Curt’s journal and interviews with ballplayers from his era. Flood wanted Lee to make a feature-length film about his life.
Flood did not want anyone’s pity. At the end, he instructed Judy not to allow any weepy visitors into his room at UCLA Medical Center. He wanted to enjoy the time he had left. In his one-page Christmas letter to family and friends in 1996, he acknowledged “mixed feelings of joy and sadness” but quoted advice that his late mother, Laura, who had died three years earlier, used to give him: “Start counting your blessings, Squirtis, by the time you finished, you won’t have time for anything else!” Flood’s iron will and indomitable spirit came from his mother. Even near death, he sounded like a survivor: “Say this: ‘Curt accomplished every goal that he set for himself, and simply moved on.’ ”
Curt Flood passed away on January 20, 1997—Martin Luther King Day. Two days earlier, he had turned 59. He died a proud and happy man.
At his memorial service a week later at First African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Los Angeles, 300 people paid tribute to Flood in what the program called “Curt’s 9th Inning.” He received two standing ovations. Oscar Brown Jr. sang an original work about his departed friend. President Clinton sent a telegram that was read at the funeral service. Nine baseball people spoke.
One of the toughest and proudest men ever to step on a pitcher’s mound struggled with his emotions that day.
“My name is Bob Gibson,” he said. “This is not easy.
“I think I knew Curt as well as anyone. We were roommates for ten years, and I knew him for 40 years. And in those 40 years, I could never remember being unhappy or having a mean thought about him. And that’s unusual for me. . . . Curt had a way of bringing you back to reality when you got a little too high. When you were down and didn’t think anything could be funny, he could make you smile. . . .
“I’ve been sad for a while, but I’ll get over it,” Gibson concluded. “When I do, my next thoughts about Curt Flood won’t make me sad; they’ll make me smile.”
Conservative columnist and baseball author George Will also spoke that day. In November 1993, Will had written a glowing Washington Post column about Flood. Flood never forgot it and made sure that Will spoke at his funeral. In his eulogy, Will compared Flood to Rosa Parks. He criticized the Supreme Court’s decision in Flood’s case and analogized it to the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision denying the freedom of a St. Louis slave who had escaped north on a train. “It was one of those rare occurrences,” Will recalled, “where George Will and Jesse Jackson were sharing the same podium.”
Nearly 25 years after he had eulogized Jackie Robinson, the Reverend Jesse Jackson delivered a spine-tingling eulogy about Flood. Jackson’s voice rose as he closed his notes, nodded his head, and concluded: “Don’t cry for long, Curt is the winner. The courts lost. Curt won. Base-ball is better. And people are better. America is better. Because God sent an instrument his way. Let him rest. Fought the good fight. Finish his race. He kept the faith. Thank God that Curt Flood came this way. We love you, Curt. You are a winner.”
Jackson called for Flood to go into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Flood’s 1,861 hits, .293 lifetime batting average, seven Gold Gloves, and three All-Star Game appearances alone do not warrant his inclusion, but several sportswriters, including the late Leonard Koppett, have advocatedFlood’s candidacy based on his status as one of the game’s pioneers. Larry Doby, the American League’s first black player, was inducted in 1998 in part on this basis. In his final year on the baseball writers’ ballot in 1996, Flood received 71 votes, his highest vote total. One of 25 players on the Veterans Committee’s 2005 ballot, he received only 10 (out of 80) votes. “You would think that every Hall of Famer who had made millions as a free agent, courtesy of Flood’s lawsuit, would have voted for Flood,” wrote New York Times columnist Dave Anderson. The Hall of Fame, however, is a conservative institution. Bowie Kuhn has been on its board of directors since 1969, and Marvin Miller, whose impact on the game outstrips that of every baseball executive except Judge Landis and Branch Rickey, has still not been inducted. Flood’s chances of election by the Veterans Committee remain slim indeed.
Jackson also called for the Players Association to create a Curt Flood Courage Award, and he called on the players who benefited from Flood’s lawsuit to endow it. That seems as unlikely as his Hall of Fame induction.
Many former players attended Flood’s funeral. Joe Black, Orlando Cepeda, Bob Gibson, Earl Robinson, Bill White, and Maury Wills served as pallbearers; Lou Brock, Lou Johnson, John Roseboro, and Don Newcombe served as honorary pallbearers. Both Black and Newcombe had carried Jackie Robinson’s coffin 25 years earlier. Many other former players dotted the audience, including Don Baylor, Doug DeCinces, Al Downing, Tito Fuentes, Steve Garvey, Lee Maye, and Joe Morgan.
Not a single active player attended Flood’s funeral. Union reps David Cone and Tom Glavine issued a pr
epared statement, and Cone gushed about Flood to at least one New York sports columnist. It was the end of January. Cone, Glavine, and other active players, many of whom lived in Southern California, did not have anywhere to be that day. They seemed to have forgotten all about Flood since his 1994 speech in Atlanta. The absence of active players was a sign that the union leadership had stopped educating its members.
Congress, the institution that had done nothing to correct the Supreme Court’s baseball decisions, finally came to Flood’s aid. Representative John Conyers (D-MI), who had read President Clinton’s telegram at Flood’s funeral, introduced H.R. 21—in honor of Flood’s number—removing baseball’s antitrust exemption as it related to labor issues. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) introduced a similar bill in the Senate. Wanting to send a message after the 1994 baseball strike, Congress passed the legislation as the Curt Flood Act of 1998. President Clinton signed it into law. The owners agreed to relinquish a small piece of their exemption—allowing major league players to file antitrust lawsuits about labor issues—because the legislation lacked any teeth. The Supreme Court had ruled in a 1996 case involving the NFL that labor unions and their members could not sue under the antitrust laws because of the labor exemption. The Players Association, therefore, would have to decertify as a union for a major league player to sue under the Curt Flood Act. Baseball’s antitrust exemption, for all intents and purposes, remained unscathed. Congress gave Flood a posthumous but hollow victory.
Curt Flood’s legacy has nothing to do with congressional legislation or Supreme Court precedents but with starting the fight for free agency in baseball. “Baseball didn’t change Curt Flood,” Jesse Jackson said during his eulogy. “Curt Flood changed baseball.” He changed all professional sports. Flood’s lawsuit sounded the alarm about the players’ lack of economic freedom. Curt may not have won a single player free agency, but he exposed baseball’s system of perpetual player-ownership as exploitative and un-American. He helped usher in a new era that allowed the players to exercise greater control over their careers and to share in the owners’ economic prosperity.