Curt Flood: Baseball's Great Emancipator
by A. Asadullah Samad

Former St. Louis Cardinal outfielder Curt Flood was buried [last year], sent off well in the midst of former players and executives .singing the praises of his legacy—free agency.

There's a sort of sadness to such recognitions. Bravery and valor for principled stands often take years to recognize. Recognition by those of a lesser bravery, who didn't stand with you, even takes longer. There's a saying in the Black community, "Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die." Curt Flood may have died physically on the 21st of January 1997, but he went to heaven in 1969, when he refused to report to the Philadelphia Phillies.

With that stand, he killed his baseball career. But the message Curt Flood left wasn't about playing baseball, which he loved to do. It was about maintaining his humanity, which he had to do. And in the end, professional sports may have killed the career of the messenger, but they couldn't kill his message: A man is not a slave to a game. nor is he chattel. His services are his own to be tendered, at his own discretion, to the highest bidder.

Thus, baseball's slave clause was challenged, and free agency was born.

Yes, Curt Flood was a baseball player, and a very good one—three time all- star, championship player for his team. But before his death, most people, even contemporary sports buffs, probably couldn't tell you who Curt Flood was or what his legacy represents. Some of the younger ballplayers who are benefiting today from the stand Flood took evidently didn't know who he was or they would've been there to pay their respects to the man who caused a player like Albert Belle to get $11 million a year.

Flood put up decent numbers, but contrary to the Los Angeles Times postscript, he wasn't the best centerfielder in the game during the 1960s. Willie Mays was. There was nothing that anybody could do to match Willie Mays on the field. But off the field, Willie Mays wasn't Curt Flood. and nobody, including the great Willie Mays, chose to match what Flood did off the field—stand up against baseball's reserve clause, which said a team owned a player for life and could trade those rights to another team who would own him for life.

When the St. Louis Cardinals traded Flood, he refused to report and sat out the whole 1970 season. Flood's position was that loyalty cuts both ways and that he had earned the right to determine how, when and where his career would end. My reason for raising the Willie Mays comparison is just to reinforce the depth of this point. In 1971, the San Francisco Giants traded the greatest player of all-time, after 20 years of the greatest career anyone had seen (to that point) since Babe Ruth, to the lowly New York Mets no less. If anyone deserved playing his career out with his team of choice, it was Willie Mays with his 641 home runs, 3,178 hits, 1,856 RBIs and a 305 lifetime batting average—all with the Giants (Years later Mays expressed his hurt over the Giants' disloyalty to him).

Yet. in 1972, Willie Mays reported to New York for spring training, choosing to accept his fate and end his career with the Mets. Willie Mays was baseball then, but he was still a slave to baseball. He was no Curt Flood, who was then sitting on the sideline in the prime of his career waiting for the Supreme Court to decide his fate. They rejected his case in 1972.

But two years later, two white boys' case was accepted on the exact same principles and merits that Flood advanced earlier. Don't ya' just love the consistency of the American justice system (then and now).

Another benefit that players received from Flood's stand is the no-trade clause in contracts. Once free agency was accepted, ballplayers could determine their own fates, and owners had to seek permission to trade a player. Yes, Curt Flood brought that in, too. He was a pioneer of the modern day contract but never received one for himself.

Former Dodger Maury Wills was quoted as saying that Flood was "a man who dared to live by the strength of his conviction," admitting that he and others were not. But isn't that always the case when a messenger comes from among us. The messenger gets taken down but the message of truth lives on.

Curt Flood's message gave Oscar Robertson courage to stand up and challenge basketball's reserve clause and football's fell soon after. Curt Flood was a true pioneer and pioneers deserve to be enshrined. Wanna' talk about how great Curt Flood was? Wanna' talk about his impact on the game? Put Curt Flood in the Hall of Fame, with the inscription, "Baseball's Great Emancipator."

All professional athletes, regardless of sport (Barry Bonds, ShaquilleO'Neal, Dieon Sanders), need to thank Curt Flood for their freedom to be able to sell their talents. Thank Curt for "showing y'all the money," because he never got what money he deserved.

(A. Asadullah Samad is a columnist from Los Angeles.)

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