![]() Few pro athletes appreciate Flood’s profoundcontribution to their bank accounts and working conditions. Today, the public grapples with $200 millioncontracts, not $90,000 salaries. For there to be asalary cap, there had to be free agency. The NBA took this partnership to perhaps its ultimate levelwith buy-in from the players association on the salary cap. While labor issues in pro sports have remained contentious, free agencyhas helped foster a partnership between players and management that did notpreviously exist. So have franchise values, suggesting the former has outpaced thelatter. Since then, revenue and expenseshave soared. Free agency has enlivened, rather than killed, professional sportsleagues in ways that few predicted.įree agency in MLB began in 1975 with AndyMessersmith signing with the Atlanta Braves. While many have forgotten - or more likely neverknew - Curt Flood, his legacy shines today despite all the doomsdaypredictions. Kuhn(Commissioner Bowie Kuhn) the Supreme Court ruled against Flood, the case pavedthe way for what we now know as free agency.įlood recognized the injustice of the reserve clauseand risked his professional career for economic and social fairness. In challenging MLB’s reserve system, Flood did theunthinkable: He was the first and (sadly) only Major League Baseball player totake on the powerful institution of owners. As a human being, he felt baseballplayers deserved the right, like all other citizens, to choose where theyworked and lived. For Flood free agency was about freedom he didn’t want to bebought, sold and traded like property. Paltryby today’s standards, it was substantially higher than the salary of theaverage American worker, making it hard to enlist public support against thereserve clause. In 1970, the average MLB salary was $29,303. Thatprompted Flood’s famous response: “A well-paid slave is nonetheless a slave.”The public parsed Flood’s response: It’s all about the money. Sports broadcaster Howard Cosell asked Flood howsomeone making $90,000 could accuse team owners of employing slave labor. (Flood believed that Philadelphia had atradition of racism and he did not want to live there.) Flood refused to go, sitting out the 1970 seasonand forsaking his $90,000 salary. After the 1969 season, the Cardinals traded Floodto the Philadelphia Phillies. He compared the reserve clauseto the shackles of slavery. In fact, many believedthe argument perpetuated by owners and sportswriters that free agency woulddoom professional baseball.įlood didn’t buy it. ![]() Playersdid little to collectively work to change the system. Supreme Court, in 1922 and again in 1953,agreed were “purely state affairs,” and therefore not subject to the act.Through the 1960s, MLB used this legal windfall to suppress salaries. ![]() ![]() The clause made it impossible for aplayer to establish his value in a free market.Įarlier lawsuits (by a team versus a league, a minorleague player, and an unsigned player) claimed that the clause violated theSherman Antitrust Act of 1890, which made it illegal to conspire to restrain“trade or commerce among the several states.” Baseball argued that it wasengaged in exhibitions which the U.S. The clause bounda player to his team for his career, allowing him to be traded or sold withouthis approval, like a piece of property. Snyder describes how Flood took on the reserveclause, which had been a feature of MLB contracts since 1876. The context provides a fascinating backdrop for animprobable, largely bungled lawsuit that ultimately increased solidarity amongMajor League Baseball players and paved the way for free agency in baseball andother professional sports. Snyder’s book illuminates Flood’schallenge of the reserve clause through the events that shaped Flood, includinghis childhood in desegregated Oakland, playing minor league baseball in thesegregated South, his participation in the civil rights movement, and histroubles with alcohol.Ĭurt Flood’s challenge of MLB’s reserve clause in Thanks to “A Well-Paid Slave,” by Brad Snyder, weget a new look at Flood’s life and times. His decision to challenge the power of thebaseball establishment is still largely misunderstood. Curt Flood’s contribution to baseball and society,however, remains in the shadows. Although Jackie Robinson sufferedmany indignities when he broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier in 1947,his legacy is enshrined. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |