In his autobiography, A Whole New Ballgame, Miller recalled: “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.’”įlood’s defiance-with the financial backing of the players union-threatened the owners. Even if he won the lawsuit, Miller said, the owners would blacklist him as a player and as a future coach or manager. Miller warned that the odds were against him. Flood said that “a well-paid slave is, nonetheless, a slave.”įlood asked for Miller’s advice about suing Major League Baseball. When Hall of Fame pitcher Nolan Ryan broke into the major leagues in 1966, he spent the winter months working at a gas station.Īfter the 1969 season, the Cardinals owners decided to trade Flood to the Philadelphia Phillies, but he didn’t want to move to what he called “the nation’s northernmost Southern city.” The Phillies offered him a $100,000 salary for the 1970 season, a $10,000 boost from his Cardinals salary. Most players had jobs during the off-season to make ends meet. Each year, the team owners told players, “Take it, or leave it.” Even superstars went hat-in-hand to owners at the end of the season, begging for a raise. The players had no leverage to negotiate better deals. Contracts, which were limited to one season, “reserved” the team’s right to “retain” the player for the next season. That year, players also won the right to hire agents to negotiate their contracts.Įvery MLB player had in his contract what was known as “the reserve clause,” which tethered players to their teams. From that point on, disputes would be settled by independent arbitrators rather than the MLB commissioner, who worked for the owners. Then, in 1970, the MLBPA established players’ rights to binding arbitration over salaries and grievances.
CURT FLOOD MADE AGENCY PRO PROFESSIONAL
Two years after Miller took the union’s reins, the MLBPA negotiated the first-ever collective bargaining agreement in professional sports. Miller instructed ballplayers in the ABCs of trade unionism: Fight for your rights stick together against management work on behalf of players who will come after you prepare yourself-professionally and financially-for life after playing ball and don’t allow owners to divide players by race, income, or their place in the celebrity pecking order. That began to change when the MLBPA hired Marvin Miller, who’d been the steelworkers union’s chief economist and negotiator, as its first full-time director in 1966. Players had no rights to determine the conditions of their employment. His teammates selected him as their co-captain each year between 19.ĭuring most of Flood’s career, the MLBPA was a toothless tiger.
CURT FLOOD MADE AGENCY PRO SERIES
Louis Cardinals’ three National League pennants and two World Series victories in 19. He played in three All-Star games and was a catalyst for the St. He won the Gold Glove Award, as the best defensive outfielder, seven years in a row. During his Major League career, which lasted from 1956 to 1969, Flood batted. In many cities, Black players couldn’t stay in the same hotels or eat in the same restaurants as their teammates.Ĭardinal outfielder Curt Flood leaps to make a spectacular catch in a game on Septemat Wrigley Field in Chicago.įlood used his anger at that bigotry to fuel his performance on the field. During his playing days in the minors and majors, Flood, like other Black ballplayers, faced racist taunts from fans and ostracism from some teammates. He told the crowd of 3,800 that he felt a personal responsibility to fight racial injustice. In February 1962, at Robinson’s invitation, the 24-year-old Flood traveled to Jackson, Miss., to speak at a rally organized by NAACP leader Medgar Evers. For Curt, players’ rights and civil rights were part of the same idea.” He was particularly interested in the fact that SAG members had their own agents and lawyers, could negotiate with film studios over salaries, and could move to different studios-all things prohibited in Major League Baseball at the time.įlood, whose first season in the majors was a year after the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, “was one of the first ballplayers to get involved with the civil rights movement,” said Pace Flood. “On our first date, over dinner in 1964, he quizzed me about the Screen Actors Guild,” recalled his widow, Judy Pace Flood, who was a well-known actress during the ’60s and ’70s.
Actress Judy Pace Flood attends the Los Angeles Premiere of HBO’s “The Curious Case of Curt Flood” at Museum Of Tolerance on Jin Los Angeles, California.Įven before the Major League Baseball Players’ Association (MLBPA) had any influence, Flood was an eager trade unionist.
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