A Well-Paid Slave (28 page)

Greenberg testified that “the reserve clause as it is constituted now and has been is obsolete and antiquated. . . . It seems to me that the times have changed and that the owners and the players are going to have to get together and work more harmoniously and with a more cooperative spirit so that the game can go forward, and the first step or the last step is the reserve clause in the contract.”

Judge Cooper asked Greenberg why the reserve clause was not in the best interests of baseball.

“[I]t's a unilateral contract, Judge,” Greenberg replied. “The ballplayer has no choice other than accept the terms offered to him, because he can't play elsewhere.” Greenberg had been rankled by the Tigers organization's callousness in selling him to the Pirates. After 17 years with Detroit, Greenberg felt that he deserved some consideration about where the Tigers were going to send him. Greenberg empathized with Flood: “I think that baseball must recognize that, that the player has built up some equity in playing with the club over a period of years, that he has a family, has friends, has business associations in the city, and they can't just arbitrarily say, ‘You play in Philadelphia next season.' ”

“That is the kind of testimony I want you to give,” Cooper remarked. “I am not passing on the weight of it, but that is really the sort of thing I seek.”

Greenberg, who believed that the reserve clause should be replaced by a contract for a term of years, helped both the owners and players on cross-examination. He conceded that both sides should sit down and negotiate reserve clause modifications—undercutting Flood's lawsuit and supporting the owners' argument that this issue should be resolved through labor negotiation. Greenberg, however, added that he was not a member of the Players Association and had met Marvin Miller for the first time that day. Greenberg also admitted that the owners had some equity interest in the players they developed and that it had taken him three minor league and two major league seasons to round into peak form. But, as a former owner, Greenberg said: “I would be perfectly willing to invest in baseball tomorrow if we had no reserve clause.”

After Greenberg's testimony, Marvin Miller retook the witness stand to testify about the owners' refusal to negotiate about the reserve clause. American League counsel Sandy Hadden cross-examined Miller after lunch. Miller conceded that the owners had compromised on a number of other issues in the upcoming basic agreement, just not on the reserve clause.

Flood's legal team called one more star witness on this second day of Flood's trial: pitcher-turned-author Jim Brosnan. A major league relief pitcher for nine years, in 1954 and from 1956 to 1963, Brosnan spent his offseasons working for a Chicago advertising firm but really wanted to be a writer. He dared to read books in the clubhouse. His teammates called the bespectacled pitcher “Professor.” After writing several magazine articles for Robert Creamer at
Sports Illustrated
, Brosnan kept a diary while splitting the 1959 season between the St. Louis Cardinals and Cincinnati Reds. The result was
The Long Season
, the first baseball book to capture the way ballplayers really talked. Although tame by modern standards,
The Long Season
pulled back the curtain on life inside the clubhouse. Brosnan cast a critical eye on his fellow players and coaches. One of his main targets was Flood's old nemesis, Cardinals manager Solly Hemus. Brosnan wrote that Hemus “tried too hard. He tends to overmanage and he gets panicky for no good reason at all.” Hemus later said of Brosnan: “He's the first pitcher I ever heard of who won nine games and felt he had to write a book about it.” Literary critics loved
The Long Season
, which became a bestseller. Brosnan followed it up with
Pennant Race
, a diary of the Reds' 1961 season.

Brosnan's literary success curtailed his baseball career. The Reds' new general manager, Bill DeWitt, objected to Brosnan's books and magazine articles. NBC offered Brosnan $4,000 to be miked for a baseball documentary. DeWitt demanded prior approval of the script. NBC said not even President Kennedy received prebroadcast approval. DeWitt prevented Brosnan from doing the documentary by invoking paragraph 3(c) of the Uniform Player Contract, which said:
DeWitt withheld his consent. Brosnan wrote to commissioner Ford Frick, National League president Warren Giles, and Players Association part-time adviser Judge Robert Cannon for help. No one responded.

“You're being censored,” a New York columnist told Brosnan. “That's unconstitutional.”

“Obviously,” Brosnan replied, “but so is the reserve clause.” DeWitt traded Brosnan in May 1963 to the Chicago White Sox. White Sox general manager Ed Short met Brosnan at the airport and said: “You can't write here, either.” After Brosnan finished the 1963 season with a 3-9 record, 3.13 ERA, and 14 saves, Short tried to cut Brosnan's contract from $32,000 to $25,000 and refused to allow him to make up the difference by writing two magazine articles. Brosnan turned down the White Sox contract offer. Short responded by releasing him in February and boasting that “Brosnan can be had for a dollar.” No teams called. After deciding against moving to Europe, Brosnan took out a tiny ad in the March 7, 1964, edition of the
Sporting News
. “Situation Sought. Bullpen operator, experience.” After breaking down his statistics, Brosnan's ad concluded: “Free agent. Negotiable terms available. Respectfully request permission to pursue harmless avocation of professional writer.” Only the unconventional Kansas City Athletics owner Charlie Finley responded to Brosnan's ad, but he wanted the pitcher to take a $5,000 pay cut. Brent Musburger, then writing for the
Chicago American
, told Brosnan that he was being blackballed. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) accused the White Sox of censorship. Brosnan worked in 1964 and 1965 as a television and radio sports commentator and after that became a full-time freelance writer. He wrote magazine articles about baseball and had started to write a novel.

Bill Iverson called Brosnan May 1 at his home in Morton Grove, Illinois, and asked if Brosnan would come to New York to testify for Flood. Brosnan agreed. On the plane flight from Chicago to New York, Brosnan questioned his decision. “Why am I doing this?” Brosnan thought. “Our people asked me to do it. And we've got some weapons that we've never had before. The least I could do was put my ten words in, or two words.”

Brosnan barely knew Flood, even though they had been teammates for half of the 1958 and 1959 seasons with the Cardinals and they both detested Solly Hemus, but Brosnan knew how cruel the game could be to players who dared to be different. He saw Flood's fight against the reserve clause as a noble one. “I didn't perceive this as a race thing,” Brosnan recalled. “I perceived it as a player thing. I had been thinking about these things for a long time.” Brosnan spent two delightful weeks in New York City hanging out with sports journalist Dick Schaap but had almost no contact with Flood at the trial except to shake hands with him and wish him luck.

On the day of his testimony, Brosnan ate lunch with Red Smith and Jackie Robinson. Smith and Robinson had not been friends during Robinson's playing days. Smith thought that Robinson was “fiercely racist” and “saw racism and prejudice under the bed.” Inviting Robinson to lunch showed how progressive Smith had become. Smith also was a great admirer of Brosnan's books. The two men spent most of lunch discussing writing and art. Smith worked for the “Famous Writers School,” a group of renowned writers who critiqued the work of people who paid to send them weekly submissions. Brosnan wanted to get his daughter, an aspiring artist, into the “Famous Artists School.” Robinson, a political and social activist who knew little about writing or art, found it difficult to get a word in as Brosnan and Smith discussed their craft, and thus said almost nothing.

Brosnan was eager to testify by the time he approached the witness stand. He needed no more incentive than to see Bowie Kuhn taking notes on a yellow legal pad in the front row. At lunch, Smith informed Brosnan what Kuhn had been telling people: “What has [Brosnan] done in baseball that he can be involved in this?”

Brosnan responded with his wit. Six feet four, lanky, and wearing large black horn-rimmed glasses, he spoke with a slow midwestern accent. He enlivened every story with his writer's eye for detail, easygoing smile, and wry sense of humor. “He is a large, amiable, four-eyed, pipe-smoking martini man out of Xavier College in Cincinnati, whose literary leanings made his employers nervous,” Red Smith wrote. Brosnan explained how he had bounced around the minor leagues and nearly quit the game after the 1953 season until the Chicago Cubs invited him to spring training. He spent half the year with the Cubs in 1954, was sent to Des Moines, and then was recalled to the Cubs a week later. The Chicago-Des Moines-Chicago moves wreaked havoc on Brosnan's family life.

“My wife threatened to divorce me,” Brosnan testified about living in Des Moines. “She had just purchased two weeks of steaks, put them in the freezer in a house we had just rented, and she had done all this on her own because I was on a road trip to Denver. When I arrived in Denver there was a telegram saying, ‘You are recalled. Get on a plane and report to St. Louis.' Then when I called her, she said, ‘What do I do with the steaks and the rent?' ”

Brosnan was not compensated for the lost rent or steaks. Topkis asked him what happened to the steaks.

“She gave them to the ballplayer that reported in my place.”

The minor league pitcher who had replaced him, Paul Menking, lucked out.

Brosnan discussed his conflicts with Reds general manager Bill DeWitt and White Sox general manager Ed Short over his writing. Brosnan recalled that after he had refused to sign a contract with the White Sox in 1964, the package containing his notice of unconditional release came with 36 cents postage due. He then explained how he had been blackballed and had taken out an ad in the
Sporting News
.

As the audience laughed, Hughes objected. Judge Cooper admonished Brosnan. “This is your testimony under oath and while I like a certain amount of humor and humanity in the proceedings, there must come a time when we must make real progress with regard to the substantive matters before me,” Cooper said. “So I am going to ask you to forfeit the indulgence that prompts you to add a little extra here and there.”

On the reserve clause, Brosnan mentioned three former teammates that he thought could have been starters on other major league teams. He also advocated modifications to the reserve clause. Such modifications, Brosnan said, would not result in superstars jumping from team to team. “When a ballplayer develops his talents to the point where he is recognized as an outstanding player in a particular town with a particular club, his involvement with that club and with that town is of a unique nature, that is he does not want to leave that particular town for many reasons,” Brosnan said. “In many case[s], he will have his family there, he will build a home there, he will have business contacts and businesses, probably, there. He is part of the community. His social life on and off the field, during the offseason, is bound up within the community in that particular town. For him to go to another town strictly on the basis of more money, for a star—we're talking about stars, he is making good money in the first place—would not be a good enough reason, in my mind, to leave a club with whom he has a solid position.”

Brosnan stepped down from the witness stand after a brief cross-examination, and court adjourned for the day. Brosnan never even had the chance to say good-bye to Flood. As they left the courthouse, Goldberg grabbed Brosnan and pulled him into a cab. He was not happy with Brosnan's humorous testimony.

“Why was Irving Ben Cooper laughing?” Brosnan said as the cab drove him back to his hotel.

“There's a time to laugh and there's a time to be serious,” Goldberg replied, “and this is a serious matter.”

Goldberg's problem did not seem to be with Brosnan. Goldberg's involvement in the trial was at an end, and he had not really helped Flood's cause. Goldberg confided to the former pitcher after two days of trial: “We don't seem to be winning.”

“When your chief lawyer says ‘we're not winning,' ” Brosnan recalled, “I already knew it was over.”

F
or Flood, the rest of the trial after Jackie Robinson's testimony was a “blur.” He was at loose ends in New York City. He shared a suite with Allan Zerman at the Warwick Hotel. They hung out at the hotel bar, which was across the street from ABC News. Flood and Zerman drank with Howard Cosell and Don Meredith after the sportscasters had signed their first contract to do a weekly sports broadcast known as
Monday Night Football
. They also met the brains behind ABC Sports, producer Roone Arledge.

Flood also went out for drinks with the two young Paul, Weiss associates working on his case, Bill Iverson and Max Gitter. They were only a few years younger than Flood, but whereas Flood's baseball career was at an end, their legal careers were just beginning. For Iverson and Gitter, Flood's trial was a joyride. On lunch breaks, Flood and his trial team retreated to a Chinese restaurant near the Bowery. Cosell and Red Smith joined them a few times, as did a few of Flood's friends. One afternoon, Iverson and Gitter left the trial early to order the food. They became so enamored of the restaurant's dumplings that they placed six orders—72 dumplings in all. Flood and the rest of the group ate only a dumpling or two apiece and left the other 60 dumplings on the table. Iverson and Gitter finished them all.