Curt Flood was one of the most important people in baseball history.
On the field, he was a tremendous centrefielder who won seven consecutive Gold Gloves while playing mostly for the St Louis Cardinals during the 1960s. He was a 3-time All Star who batted over .300 six times and led the National League with 211 hits in 1964, when the Cardinals won the first of their two World Series titles in four years.
But Flood is best known for challenging baseball’s reserve clause after he was traded by the Cardinals to the Philadelphia Phillies following the 1969 season. Flood refused to go to Philadelphia. Instead he went to court, with virtually no support from his fellow players as he sought to make history. He lost his case, but it eventually paved the way for free agency six years later.
Flood’s valiant fight is well chronicled in the 2006 book “A Well Paid Slave” by Brad Snyder.
After sitting out the 1970 season Flood returned to the majors to play for the Washington Senators under manager Ted Williams. But he played only 13 games before retiring for good.
He published a memoir “The Way It Is” in 1971.
At the time of this conversation in 1995, MLB was inactive after the players’ strike in August of ‘94 wiped out the rest of the season and the post-season. There was still no settlement to begin the 1995 season.
Sensing an opening, the United Baseball League, led by powerful player agent Richard Moss, was poised to begin play in eight cities, including Vancouver, as an alternative. Flood was the logical choice as its’ commissioner. As you’ll hear he was gung-ho about it.
Overall, it’s a fascinating conversation about a significant moment in baseball history and a look back at Flood’s beginnings in pro ball as a young man from Oakland breaking into the sport during the Jim Crow era in the Deep South. It was ugly.
Sadly, the promise of the United Baseball League was doomed, ironically, after signing a TV rights deal with a media company that was later absorbed by Fox Sports, an MLB rightsholder.
Sadder still was a later attempt to get Flood back on my show a year or so later only to discover that he was fighting throat cancer.
A true renegade and pioneer, Flood was a smart, sensitive blues and jazz loving music fan who was also an accomplished artist. He died in 1997 at the age of 59.
Here is my conversation with Curt Flood that took place late in the late spring of 1995 on CIQC Radio 600.
