A Well-Paid Slave (30 page)

Both Kuhn and National League president Chub Feeney testified that free agency would compromise the game's integrity by inducing players to cheat. Feeney raised the possibility of a potential free agent committing a key error during the pennant race and then joining the opposing team the following season. According to Feeney, “the public's confidence in the integrity of the game would be shattered.” Feeney did not explain what incentive a free agent would have to perform below his best or what incentive another team would have to sign a player who did so. Kuhn made an equally implausible prediction that free agency would stifle trades and end offseason discussion of baseball known as the Hot Stove League.

On June 2, after Cardinals general manager Bing Devine's testimony, former Cardinals catcher Joe Garagiola brought 13 minutes of promanagement cheer. Garagiola's image had come a long way since his heated 1947 encounter with Jackie Robinson. During a routine double play at first base, Garagiola stepped on Robinson's heel. Robinson—who had been spiked by Cardinals outfielder Enos Slaughter a few weeks earlier—exchanged angry words with Garagiola before Robinson's next time at-bat. Garagiola, according to Robinson, “made a crack about my race.” Umpire Beans Reardon stepped in between them. Dodgers coach Clyde Sukeforth, knowing that Rickey had ordered Robinson not to fight back, tried to push Robinson away. Nothing more came of the incident. Garagiola spent the rest of his life trying to make people forget that it had ever happened. The gregarious host of NBC's
Today
show, the game show
He Said
,
She Said
, and several radio programs, Garagiola endeared himself to a subsequent generation of baseball fans as one of the voices of television's
Game of the Week
.

Garagiola spelled his name for the court reporter. Even before his testimony began, he and Judge Cooper formed a mutual admiration society.

“Do you always have a smile like that?” Cooper asked.

“Yes, always.”

“That is a blessing.”

Garagiola returned the compliment: “I wish you were on a bubble gum card, Judge. I'd have you.”

In his only substantive testimony, Garagiola said of the reserve clause: “To me this is the best system so far. Nobody's come up with anything better. I think if they might change the name but have the same thing, everybody would be happy.”

Topkis declined to cross-examine Garagiola. It would have been like interrogating Santa Claus. Nothing could have been gained except alienating Judge Cooper.

The only nondefendant in baseball to testify against Flood, Garagiola made light of the system of player ownership years later. “Being traded is like celebrating your hundredth birthday,” he said. “It might not be the happiest occasion in the world, but consider the alternatives.” Garagiola lacked Flood's vision to do just that.

Another former player who testified against Flood was American League president Joe Cronin. As the Washington Senators' player-manager, Cronin was traded to the Boston Red Sox for $225,000 and shortstop Lyn Lary by his uncle-in-law, Senators owner Clark Griffith. After sending Cronin to the Red Sox, Griffith and the Senators never won another pennant. Cronin testified that Griffith—known during his pitching days as “the Old Fox”—was “one of the finest baseball talents (and one of the finest human beings) he had ever known.”

“Didn't he attain some fame by jumping his reserve clause?” Topkis asked on cross-examination.

“That I don't remember,” Cronin replied.

Topkis then read Griffith's testimony before a 1951 House subcommittee in which Griffith said he had “jumped his reserve clause and joined the American League at the time of its formation.” Griffith had been instrumental in persuading other National League players to jump their contracts and join the league known as the junior circuit.

The defense's next four witnesses were baseball executives— Cincinnati Reds president Francis L. Dale, Montreal Expos president and CEO John McHale, California Angels president Robert Reynolds, and Kansas City Royals owner Ewing Kauffman. They testified that they would not have purchased their teams without baseball's antitrust exemption and without the reserve clause.

Of the four, Kauffman was the most impressive witness. In 1950, the Royals' owner founded a pharmaceutical company, Marion Laboratories, in his 500-square-foot basement with $5,000 and turned it into a three-acre laboratory worth millions. In 1968, he bought the Royals as an expansion team and started a baseball academy in an effort to find young men with the right athletic gifts to turn them into professional baseball players. On the stand, he toed the party line about baseball not being able to survive without the reserve clause. But when Topkis asked him how much he would pay Curt Flood on the open market, Kauffman said $125,000 a year and even more than that if Flood was willing to sign a long-term deal.

“How much for a five-year contract?” Topkis asked.

“I don't know,” Kauffman replied. “You let me choose my players, we'll go pretty high.”

It was an honest admission that revealed the main purpose of the reserve clause: to prevent deep-pocket owners such as Kauffman from paying players what they were worth.

As their last two witnesses, the owners called economist John Clark and their labor negotiator, John Gaherin. A veteran negotiator for the railroad and newspaper industries, Gaherin was the owners' most credible witness. He countered many of Marvin Miller's assertions that the owners had not negotiated about the reserve clause in good faith. He said that Miller and the Players Association had thrown out ideas about how to modify the reserve clause, but they had not made any formal proposals. He also said that the union's decision to fund Flood's lawsuit undermined their efforts to negotiate a new labor agreement. Gaherin came off as a professional negotiator rather than a baseball partisan.

Between rebuttals by Miller and Gaherin, Flood's legal team called its best witness last—former Cleveland Indians, St. Louis Browns, and Chicago White Sox owner Bill Veeck. Known as the P. T. Barnum of baseball because of his crazy promotions, Veeck was not so much a clown as a visionary. He originated exploding scoreboards, bat days, ball days, cap days, and names on the backs of uniforms. He would do almost anything to help his team at the box office and in the standings.

Veeck is most famous for sending a midget—3-foot-7-inch, 65-pound Eddie Gaedel—to bat with the Browns. Gaedel jumped out of a papier-mâché cake before the game, pinch-hit for the leadoff batter, and stepped to the plate wearing the number
¹
/8 and holding a toy bat. “Eddie,” Veeck had earlier told Gaedel, “I'm going to be up on the roof with a high-powered rifle watching every move you make. If you so much as look as if you're going to swing, I'm going to shoot you dead.” Gaedel walked on four pitches. Detroit Tigers pitcher Bob Cain was laughing so hard that balls three and four sailed over Gaedel's head. Cain's catcher, Bob Swift, caught the pitches on his knees. The Browns immediately sent in a pinch runner. The following day, American League president Will Harridge banned Gaedel from baseball. Veeck claimed Harridge's ruling “discriminate[d] against the little people.” Veeck demanded that Harridge set a minimum height requirement and wanted to know whether diminutive Yankees shortstop Phil Rizzuto was “a short ballplayer or a tall midget.” Veeck befriended Gaedel and hired him for several other baseball-related promotions until Gaedel's death in 1961. The last line of Veeck's Hall of Fame plaque reads: “A champion of the little guy.”

As the owner of the minor league Milwaukee Brewers, Veeck installed movable outfield fences. A gadget lowered the fences when the Brewers batted and raised them for opposing teams. In Cleveland, he moved the fences in and out depending on the opposing team's power. Both leagues immediately outlawed Veeck's fence manipulation. “I have tried always not to break any rules,” Veeck testified at Flood's trial, “but to test highly their elasticity.”

Veeck purchased the Brewers in 1941 with $11 in his pocket and a $25,000 loan to cover the team's pressing debts and left the game in 1961 after selling his share of the Chicago White Sox for $1.1 million. The son of the president of the Chicago Cubs, Veeck had been thrown out of several boarding schools and dropped out of Kenyon College upon learning that his father was dying of leukemia. The younger Veeck worked for the Cubs from 1933 until 1941. He lost part of his right leg after injuring his foot as a World War II marine. Over the years, he had bought and sold a number of franchises: the Brewers, Indians, Browns, minor league Miami Marlins, and White Sox. He persuaded Hank Greenberg to join the Indians' front office in 1948. The two men later bought the White Sox and were best friends. Veeck likely influenced Greenberg to testify at Flood's trial.

In his quest for success, Veeck disregarded not only size but also age and race. Although disputed by some historians, he claimed that Judge Landis had scuttled his plan to purchase the Philadelphia Phillies after the 1942 season and stock the team with black players. He signed Larry Doby, the American League's first black player, in July 1947, only a few months after Jackie Robinson had broken in with the Dodgers. The following year, Veeck signed Negro league pitching legend Satchel Paige. Paige and Doby helped the 1948 Indians become the first team to draw more than 2 million fans and capture Cleveland's last World Series trophy. Paige also pitched for Veeck with the Browns and the Marlins.

Veeck was a man ahead of his time. In 1952, he suggested at an American League meeting that the owners increase the visiting team's share of the gate receipts and pool their television revenues. “After all,” Veeck reasoned, “it takes two teams to put on a game.” After Veeck received a second for his proposal, the owners voted against it, 7-1. The NFL adopted Veeck's television idea in 1961 at the urging of NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle, which helped football maintain competitive balance and overtake baseball as America's most popular professional sport.

For nearly 30 years, Veeck had been on record as opposing the reserve clause. While taking night law school classes at Northwestern in 1941, Veeck wrote Judge Landis a letter that described the reserve clause as “legally and morally indefensible.” Veeck recalled Landis's tersely written response by heart: “Some very knowledgeable fellow once said that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing and you just proved him a wizard.”

Veeck sold the White Sox in June 1961 after doctors at the Mayo Clinic had told him to slow down. He had been smoking four packs of cigarettes and drinking a case of beer a day. He had lost the rest of his right leg to subsequent operations. He had suffered a chronic case of walking pneumonia, and had been coughing so hard that he was blacking out.

For Veeck, however, there was no slowing down. Even though he retired to a farm on Maryland's Eastern Shore, he purchased Suffolk Downs racetrack outside Boston. He also wrote, with Ed Linn, two of the best baseball autobiographies ever published,
Veeck As in Wreck
and
The Hustler's Handbook
. An insomniac and voracious reader, Veeck read an average of five books a week.

Miller, Topkis, and Goldberg all spoke with Veeck about testifying. It did not take much persuading. During a three-hour dinner with Miller in Washington, Veeck readily agreed to testify. Topkis and Gitter visited with Veeck for several hours at Suffolk Downs. The two lawyers barely got a word in as Veeck regaled them with stories just as he had done with Miller. Topkis, who, like Miller, had read Veeck's books, knew what to expect. “I was prepared to love him and be charmed by him, and I was,” Topkis recalled.

Veeck refused to allow his desire to return to baseball to prevent him from testifying against the owners. He had already revealed many of their foibles in his two books. He had testified against them in 1966 during the Milwaukee Braves relocation case. A prior speaking engagement, however, had prevented him from testifying May 19 or 20 for Flood. Veeck initially agreed in a phone conversation with Goldberg to testify on May 21, but Veeck could not make it that day either. He wanted to testify June 1—in the middle of the defense's case. The owners' lawyers balked at the idea of interrupting their defense. Flood's lawyers agreed to call him as a rebuttal witness.

Veeck arrived in New York City late on the night of June 9. The next morning, Topkis and Iverson met Veeck at 7:45 in his suite at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, where they ate salmon omelets and discussed his testimony. Iverson was concerned that during cross-examination the owners—by bringing up midgets and movable fences—would make Veeck look like a crackpot. Veeck told Iverson not to worry. He pulled out a large embossed book that American League owners had given him in 1961 after he had sold the White Sox. The book contained a list of his accomplishments and a citation that read as follows:

Tribute to Bill Veeck

The owners thought that Veeck was dying. Doctors at the Mayo Clinic believed that lung cancer had spread to his brain. He turned out to have a chronic concussion exacerbated by the coughing fits that caused his blackouts. His health improved with rest. He spited his American League adversaries by living an additional 25 years and testifying against them at Flood's trial.