The Impact of Curt Flood's Minor League Baseball Experiences on His Lawsuit against Bowie Kuhn

Abstract

On October 8, 1969, Curt Flood, the St. Louis Cardinals star center fielder for more than a decade, received a telephone call from Jim Toomey, an assistant to St. Louis general manager Bing Devine, to inform him that he had just been traded to the Philadelphia Phillies. (1) A trade in Major League Baseball was not unusual. It had happened many times before and to some of baseball's greatest stars. (2) Curt Flood, however, vowed not to accept what he considered an affront to his basic human dignity. Instead of swallowing his pride and moving to Philadelphia, decided to sue Major League Baseball and its commissioner, Bowie Kuhn. The U.S. Supreme Court had already upheld Major League Baseball and its reserve system in two cases, Federal Baseball Club of Baltimore, Inc. v. National League of Professional Baseball Clubs and Toolson v. New York Yankees. (3) Although Marvin Miller, the executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, honestly explained to that his lawsuit had little chance of success, would not be discouraged. (4) Facing an almost certain end to his playing career, spent three years pursuing his crusade to the U.S. Supreme Court. Despite the assistance of former Supreme Court justice Arthur Goldberg, Flood's legal team could not persuade the Court to overrule its two prior decisions. Curt Flood, however, had struck a blow for basic human dignity. He players who refused to support him at his trial in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to the fundamental unfairness of a system that disallowed them the basic decision as to where and for whom to work. (5) Although lost his quest, two white ballplayers would win free agency from a panel of arbitrators in 1975. (6) The modern era of free agency for professional athletes was born. Today's players enjoy salaries that far exceed the average American worker. However, few understand the sacrifice that Curt made on their behalf. What motivated to file his lawsuit and pursue it with such vigor? The self-professed child of the sixties was a complex and sensitive man. (7) Judy Pace, Curt Flood's widow, offered her insight on why her husband, an African American man, would challenge baseball during the decade of the Civil Rights Movement: When you think about it, it's not surprising that a black man did this. A white man was not going to have that consciousness. A white man was not walking around thinking, my rights are always being penalized. That's what Curt called it--the penalty of being black. There were always penalties for being black. If you never had that inflicted on you, then you might think everything was okay. (8) Curt Flood's crusade, however, transcended race. William C. Rhoden explained this eloquently: What made Flood's fight resonate is that at one level his battle went beyond race. said he was filing this suit against a situation that was improper for all ballplayers. Many white players never thought of themselves as being on a plantation or as being only so much chattel. But the legacy of black people in sports had Flood; that history had tuned him in to a different frequency than white players had access to. He used the insight of that legacy to help all players, black and white, fight a corrupt system. (9) A major part of what sensitized Flood was his two years of Minor League baseball in the Jim Crow South. Flood, like so many baseball players who faced a climb through Minor League baseball in the decade after Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball's racial barrier, endured the brunt of white Americans who refused to accept the basic rights of an African American to play the national pastime on the same field as white players. (10) possessed complex reasons for not accepting a trade from one employer to another. However, it would probably be an error to discount his Minor League experience as anything less than a significant factor in his decision to write Commissioner Bowie Kuhn: After twelve years in the major leagues, I do not feel that I am a piece of property to be bought and sold irrespective of my wishes. …