Curt flood agency possible athletes2/21/2024 ![]() By helping athletes make market salaries for their services, he allowed them to live on a bigger scale. Thanks, Curt.Ĭynics will say that Flood stood for something so that those who followed him could afford to stand for nothing. Could Dennis Rodman be as "Bad As I Wanna Be" without his $7 million salary? If you kick somebody, peel off a big stack of Grover Clevelands. Flood helped make a world where Brett Favre knows nobody will mock the Superman tattoo on his biceps self-infatuation is so routine, nobody even notices anymore. Flood laid the cornerstone of the Shaq Fu mansion, so to speak. You could say he did the groundwork so athletes could make more money than anybody deserves. The money in your bank account came out of this guy's peace of mind.įlood's legacy remains a tangled one. So when an owner sneers about breaking the union, have a little guts. Maybe baseball put him on the rack and cracked him to a degree. The message was subliminal: This guy bucked the system for all of you. Really, he took the stage to give modern players some backbone. Ostensibly, he was part of a possible new league called the United Baseball League. But whenever you saw him at a ballpark, he seemed raw-nerved and weighted down, like a man who'd seen something - seen it clearly and undeniably - and couldn't begin to get over it.įinally, in 1994 Flood stood before the cameras again briefly during the players strike. ![]() Nobody, however, had a name for his fragile condition. Many in the game respected Flood's pain, regarding him like a soldier who'd suffered shell shock in a necessary battle. His sense of isolation was almost palpable. He looked like a shy, hyper-sensitive ghost of himself. Finally, two years later, he put his toe back into baseball gingerly, as a radio announcer for the Oakland A's for one season. But Flood stayed on the island of Majorca. This week, Hank Aaron said simply, "Flood was crucified for taking his stand."īy 1976, free agency had arrived and the justice of Flood's stand against the reserve clause was vindicated. "You have to understand that if you do what I did to baseball, you are a hated, ugly, detestable person," he said, explaining his self-imposed exile. Flood had fought the law and, temporarily, the law won. Kuhn, the Supreme Court upheld baseball's right to antitrust immunity. He flinched when talking about himself and even admitted that he loathed the thought that he might be hurting his sport.įor years, Flood disappeared from the public scene, often living in Europe. Hard as it may be to believe these days, Flood didn't want fame. All he said was that he was sick of being treated - and traded - "like a piece of meat." How could America sanction a system where a team owned a man for his whole career?Īfter batting. So Flood, thoughtful but never extreme, was pigeon-holed as radical. On the road, he was vilified as a traitor who wanted to ruin the national pastime.īack then, memories of Black Power salutes were in the air. But enough booed to let Flood know that, for him, no place was home. You couldn't tell if his Gold Glove, all-star skills were just fading fast or whether the Flood case was eating him inside. When he arrived in Washington in 1971 after sitting out a season, he played only 13 games for the Senators. He was as distressed by conflict as Fehr is invigorated by it. However, by temperament, he was completely unsuited to a public brawl that lasted for years. When it came time to take a stand at great personal risk and sacrifice, he stood firm for what he believed was right."įlood had the brains and the sense of justice to understand that baseball's employment system was basically unfair. "A man of quiet dignity, Curt Flood conducted his life in a way that set an example for all who had the privilege to know him. "Baseball players have lost a true champion," said players union head Donald Fehr on Monday. He just had the mixed fortune to see what was right and act on it, knowing the cost to himself. ![]() The rebel to whom our respect and our heart goes out is the one, such as Flood, who never in this world wanted such a job. Rebellion that's worthy of the name isn't about attitude. Of all the figures in sports in the last generation, perhaps only Flood could die on the anniversary of a martyr's death and have it seem a fitting memorial.įor a few days perhaps we can remember the difference between a real rebel - one who takes risks for the sake of a genuine cause - and our phony, look-at-me rebels who only stand for the cover shoot of their next autobiography. Flood died of throat cancer Monday at 59. We won't be able to read the cost of making history in that face any more. Maybe that was so we could compare his fast-aging and haggard face with the laughing ballplayer's mug that he'd worn in the 1960s, before he took baseball to the Supreme Court. Every few years, Curt Flood would reappear.
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