This book is about Curt Flood’s lawsuit against major league baseball to have the reserve clause declared a violation of federal and state law. Want a book that has heroes and villains and a happy ending? Read a Western. Want a dose of reality, circa, 1970, in American sports? Read this book. While sympathetic to Curt Flood, Brad Snyder uncovers the missteps, failings, and prejudices of the participants and reflects the era in which it all happened. There are no heroes; only a long list of failed characters that might have worn the mantle. And they are: Flood the person, Flood as a symbol of the civil rights era of the time, Arthur Goldberg, the inability of the federal judiciary to suppress its sentimental and syrupy attachment to baseball lore, Bowie Kuhn, and the baseball union’s reluctance to go all out for Flood. And the final chapter of it all, a crop of ingrates who play the game today, not one of whom attends Flood’s’ funeral or even know who Curt Flood was.
Curt Flood was a flawed human being and a very talented baseball player. It is safe to say that if God did not bestow upon him the ability to hit major league pitching, he would have ended up on skid row, a drunken whoremonger and ne’er do well. Even with his considerable skills, he almost ended up there anyway. To understand Flood, one has to appreciate the era in which he played: a combination of vitriolic bigotry from fans and fellow players and the condescending racial attitudes of management. Snyder touches upon the struggles not only of Jackie Robinson but of countless others who experienced cruel hatred in the minor leagues of the 1950’s and early 60’s (for a more thorough treatment of the subject, one should read David Halberstam’s October, 1964). Flood was a strong willed person who came up in the Cincinnati Reds’ organization in the late 50’s. The Reds signed Vada Pinson and Frank Robinson; Flood would have comprised the third black man in the outfield, a fact that baseball may not have been willing to accept or so Snyder implies. He was traded to St, Louis where he struggled under a bigoted manager until Johnny Keane took over, at which time Flood blossomed into one of the league’s best centerfielders. But, as with his teammates Bob Gibson and Bill White, Flood never forgot the road he traveled to get where he was. After 1969, the Cardinals traded Flood to the Philadelphia Phillies. And here the story begins.
Flood refused to report to Philadelphia. Ostensibly, he claimed the reserve clause made him feel like a “well paid slave.” Hence the eye catching title. But did Flood really object to the reserve clause or did he just not want to play for a losing team in a city that was not known for its hospitality to black players (i.e., Richie Allen)? Snyder dances around this subject but one wonders why Flood never made any waves when he was with the Cardinals. He was making $90,000.00, a huge sum then. Arguably he could have made much more on the open market. Why did he not declare his independence in say, 1964 or 1967, after the Cardinals won the World Series. And let us suppose that he were traded in 1960 to the Orioles for Paul Blair or the Mets for Tommie Agee, or the Reds for Pete Rose. Would he have minded playing for those pennant contenders? Probably not.
Flood, through his local St. Louis lawyer, starts to plot a legal challenge to the reserve clause. He meets with Marvin Miller, the brilliant baseball labor strategist, to weigh the pros and cons of such a maneuver. Miller, who comes across as determined as he is pessimistic, tells Flood that his case is a long shot; his main question is whether Flood has the commitment necessary to make such a sacrifice. After all, Flood’s career, win or lose, will effectively be over. He is the proverbial sacrificial lamb being offered up to promote the careers of players who can reap the benefits of his gamble and yet remain publicly indifferent to his cause. But Flood persists and insists. Snyder tries vainly to ascribe Flood’s years of experiencing racial bigotry as the reason for his determination but the reader cannot help but wonder if there is something else that motivates Flood. He is 31, a pathological womanizer, an alcoholic, and aspiring artist (although even here Snyder points out that his prints were more often than not fakes). One wonders if Flood was just tired of being a baseball player and wanted to become a celebrity martyr instead.
Nevertheless, the decision is made to move ahead. Now, a legal team must be assembled. Enter Arthur Goldberg. America has no royal lineage; in its place we have substituted a collection of older men whose accomplishments in politics, law, business, and diplomacy have put them above reproach and who have earned the respect of their peers, mainly because the people who know what they were really like are dead and the rest are too young to remember or too respectful to speak the truth. One can think of such people as Henry Kissinger, James Baker, and Dean Acheson, Truman’s former Secretary of State, whom Kennedy called upon for counsel during the Cuban missile crisis. Adjectives such as revered, esteemed, distinguished, astute, go hand in hand with their names. In legal circles, circa 1970, Goldberg was such a luminary. A former United States Supreme Court Justice, Secretary of Labor, and United Steel Workers lawyer, he was now a partner at a large New York law firm. He insisted on being called “Mr. Justice” by his colleagues. Whatever he was then is not as relevant as what he becomes at the end of this book: egomaniacal, unprepared, and not a man of his word.
But the reader might ask an obvious question: why is Goldberg a “former” United States Supreme Court justice? Is not that like being a former Pope or mafia don? The answer is it should be but is not, at least when two super egos collide. Snyder does a wonderful and almost humorous job weaving the tale of how this circumstance came to be. In 1968, Lyndon Johnson, a man who was known to personally employ physical intimidation to persuade his political allies to do what he wanted, convinced Goldberg to resign his Supreme Court seat and become Secretary of the United Nations. In return, he offered Goldberg the possibility of the vice presidential nomination in 1968 and appealed to his patriotism because the country desperately needed him at this crucial juncture in history. Goldberg fell for it hook, line, and sinker. He actually believed that, by taking LBJ’s word at face value, he was headed for bigger and better things as a public servant. One year later he was a private citizen. Miller, who knew Goldberg from his union days with the steelworkers and called him “Arthur,” had one condition before he was hired: that Goldberg promise him that he would not run for governor of New York in 1970 so that he could devote full time to the case. Goldberg assured him it would not happen.
Flood needed the support of his own union, a not so united collection of players with their own agendas and prejudices. The baseball player’s union was in its infancy in 1969, a mere shell of what it is today. Miller had just begun developing a strategy to bring more parity to the bargaining table. But his venue was just that: the bargaining table. It is doubtful that he or anyone else seriously contemplated using the courts to eliminate the reserve clause. First, there were two previous cases that held that baseball was not subject to the antitrust laws that all other business had to comply with. Second, finding someone who was willing to put his neck on the line and incur the wrath of the owners was difficult. When Flood volunteered for the role, for whatever reason, Miller was willing to obtain the union’s support albeit with severe reservations about the ultimate success of the venture. The union agreed to fund Flood’s lawsuit (this was made a little easier by Goldberg’s unilateral decision, which caused strife with his partners, to do it pro bono except for his underlings who were paid their hourly rate). But the players, many of whom were adamantly opposed to Flood’s case, never gave it their all. No one showed up at the trial or at the appellate arguments; and finally, not one living player attended Flood’s funeral. This case originated not with them but was the brainstorm of Flood’s local St. Louis attorney that was referred to Miller. One gets the impression it was foisted upon them almost unwillingly. And after all, why not fund it? What did they have to lose? Nothing. If Flood won, they won and would reap greater salaries and if he lost, it was his loss and not theirs. It would not be a loss anyway since they had nothing to lose. The union was making progress anyway on other fronts: the arbitration decisions of Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally were but a few years away.
The history of Flood’s litigation is a study of judicial overkill. There was only one seriously contested issue: should the so-called Sherman Act apply to major league baseball? There was no need for testimony. The case should have been disposed of at the trial level on a preliminary motion and then wound its way through the appellate and supreme courts, where a decision to overrule previous cases could properly have been argued. But that was not to be. Instead we have the spectacle of a frail Jackie Robinson testifying about what he thought about the reserve clause fifteen years before and Flood himself bumbling through his mostly irrelevant testimony by forgetting when he started to play or what his batting average was in his rookie year. Throughout the trial, Goldberg is preoccupied with his run for governor, having gone back on his word to Miller, and is incredibly unprepared. Flood loses at the trial level. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirms the trial judge’s ruling and issues a decision that genuflects at the altar of baseball mythology, placing baseball outside the reach of the Sherman Act not because it is not interstate commerce, an absurd position, but because Congress must have consented to such an arrangement because it never passed any legislating correcting the ill advised court decisions. The appellate opinion is written in language that elevates baseball to a religious experience and the reserve clause akin to the Ten Commandments. Snyder does a good job portraying the silliness of grown men losing perspective as they substitute their childhood fantasies for sound legal reasoning. The case actually makes it to the Supreme Court, a long shot even with the strongest of cases. Contrary to his own expectations, Goldberg is not treated with reverence by his former colleagues. He is again unprepared. Flood loses. Snyder treats the reader to an interesting behind the scenes look at the jockeying for votes by various justices but the result stays the same.
Flood returns to baseball thanks to Robert Short, then the owner of the Washington Senators, who were managed by Ted Williams. Flood does not last long. He goes AWOL in the middle of the season after it becomes painfully obvious he has lost his talent. He flies to Spain where he takes up residence somewhere as a bartender/tavern owner. He meanders through life here and there until he dies in 1997.
Could the players’ union have done more to support Flood? Yes. Would it have mattered? No. Time was on their side no matter what the outcome. With the advent of arbitration, the union would get its way. But the interests of Flood and his union were not always the same. At the trial, most players, while supporting Flood, testified that they wanted a limited reserve clause, a position that they hold today. Flood wanted to be treated like a Burger King cashier: to work wherever and whenever he wanted. If Flood were white, would the union have cared more? That all depends. Baseball, circa 1970, was no different from society at large. It pitted an older generation of conservative players against a newer breed of black hipsters and white counter-culturalists. If a black player such as Willie Mays or Hank Aaron bucked the system and filed suit, there may have been more sympathy; if a renegade white player such as Denny McLain or an egomaniacal Reggie Jackson filed suit, it is doubtful the union would have offered any help regardless of each person’s skin color.
The owners and Marvin Miller come through as astute and predictable. The case ended exactly as Miller thought it would. But at the same time he was opening up another front and winning so this case, for him and his union, was the equivalent of betting on an exacta when you knew you had a sure fire winner in the next race. And what of the owners? Sure, they won the legal battle. They hired top-flight lawyers to protect their narrow self-interests; that is what business people do when they get sued. After winning this landmark victory, the owners spent the next thirty years losing one battle after another while at the same time seeing the value of their franchises skyrocket. Every year, owners complain that they are losing money and beg politicians to finance their “losing” ventures with new stadiums and the like. It is as funny as it is contrived. But there is a final and ironic footnote to this story: Flood, and hundred of black players of his generation, saw themselves as trailblazers for younger blacks who could succeed in professional baseball without experiencing the brutality of rabid racism. From the early 50’s to the late 80’s, the percentage of blacks in baseball increased dramatically. Now, it has decreased just as precipitously. And why? For one reason: money. A good black athlete can make more money playing football or basketball at a younger age than he can playing baseball where a player does not reach his prime until his late 20’s. In other words, there are no more barriers. Call it progress.
