A Well-Paid Slave (56 page)

Flood wrote a first-person account of his reasons for backing the new league in the April 1995 issue of
Sport
magazine:
Major League Baseball returned in 1995; the United Baseball League never came to fruition.

Ken Burns's nine-part
Baseball
documentary in 1994 reminded fans of Flood's continued significance. With questions prompted by Judy, Burns interviewed Flood at length and made him one of the documentary's featured commentators. Flood discussed the influence of Jackie Robinson, the civil rights movement, the opposition to the Vietnam War, and the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King on his decision to sue baseball.

At the documentary's premiere in Washington, D.C., Curt and Judy toured the White House and met President and Mrs. Clinton. The premiere also reunited Flood with other former players interviewed for the project. Tim McCarver watched Flood glide down the red carpet in a sharp-looking suit. McCarver teased his former Cardinals co-captain that he looked regal. “I am in the process of living happily ever after,” Flood confessed in a three-page Christmas letter in 1994 to friends and family.

The fairy-tale ending came to an abrupt halt in Flood's Arlington, Texas, hotel room at the 1995 All-Star Game. He fainted and blamed it on the heat. He consulted an ear, nose, and throat doctor about what he thought was a sinus infection. He soon “sounded like Louis Armstrong.” At that point, doctors discovered a lump in his throat—throat cancer. They initially gave him a 90 to 95 percent chance of recovery. He had quit smoking in 1979 and drinking in 1986. Over the next year, he underwent chemotherapy, radiation treatment, and operations on nodes on both sides of his throat.

Word leaked out about Flood's illness in October 1995 when he missed the funeral of his good friend Vada Pinson. Pinson was not found for three days after suffering a stroke. Flood still had a message from him on his answering machine. Eight months earlier, Pinson had driven all the way from South Florida to San Francisco to present Flood for induction into the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame. Flood could not attend Pinson's funeral because of a radiation treatment but made good on his promise to present Pinson for induction a year later.

The Players Association quietly helped Flood with his medical bills. Having been dropped from the players' health plan years earlier, Flood did not have adequate insurance to pay for his cancer treatments. The union dipped into its own coffers to pay about $400,000 of his health care costs. The Baseball Assistance Team (BAT), an organization created to help ex-ballplayers in need and spearheaded by Joe Garagiola, also supported Flood and his family.

The chemotherapy, radiation treatment, and multiple throat operations eventually robbed Flood of his ability to speak. But Bill White made sure that Flood could still be heard. The former Yankees broadcaster had ascended to National League president in 1989, making him baseball's highest-ranking black official. Aside from Gibson, White was Flood's closest former teammate. In 1993, Rawlings discovered that Flood had never received his 1969 Gold Glove Award because he had sat out the following season. White presented the award to Flood at a black-tie event in New York City. After Flood could no longer speak, White arranged for the purchase of a special computer that voiced Flood's typewritten thoughts. White kept his contribution quiet, just as he had downplayed his role in integrating spring training camps in Florida.

Marvin Miller frequently called Flood's home. Like most people, Miller spoke with Judy as Curt typed on his computer or wrote down what he wanted Judy to say. He communicated the same way with filmmaker Spike Lee, whose 15-minute segment on Curt for HBO's
Real Sports
featured Judy reading from Curt's journal and interviews with ballplayers from his era. Flood wanted Lee to make a feature-length film about his life.

Flood did not want anyone's pity. At the end, he instructed Judy not to allow any weepy visitors into his room at UCLA Medical Center. He wanted to enjoy the time he had left. In his one-page Christmas letter to family and friends in 1996, he acknowledged “mixed feelings of joy and sadness” but quoted advice that his late mother, Laura, who had died three years earlier, used to give him: “Start counting your blessings, Squirtis, by the time you finished, you won't have time for anything else!” Flood's iron will and indomitable spirit came from his mother. Even near death, he sounded like a survivor: “Say this: ‘Curt accomplished every goal that he set for himself, and simply moved on.' ”

Curt Flood passed away on January 20, 1997—Martin Luther King Day. Two days earlier, he had turned 59. He died a proud and happy man.

At his memorial service a week later at First African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Los Angeles, 300 people paid tribute to Flood in what the program called “Curt's 9th Inning.” He received two standing ovations. Oscar Brown Jr. sang an original work about his departed friend. President Clinton sent a telegram that was read at the funeral service. Nine baseball people spoke.

One of the toughest and proudest men ever to step on a pitcher's mound struggled with his emotions that day.

“My name is Bob Gibson,” he said. “This is not easy.

“I think I knew Curt as well as anyone. We were roommates for ten years, and I knew him for 40 years. And in those 40 years, I could never remember being unhappy or having a mean thought about him. And that's unusual for me. . . . Curt had a way of bringing you back to reality when you got a little too high. When you were down and didn't think anything could be funny, he could make you smile. . . .

“I've been sad for a while, but I'll get over it,” Gibson concluded. “When I do, my next thoughts about Curt Flood won't make me sad; they'll make me smile.”

Conservative columnist and baseball author George Will also spoke that day. In November 1993, Will had written a glowing
Washington Post
column about Flood. Flood never forgot it and made sure that Will spoke at his funeral. In his eulogy, Will compared Flood to Rosa Parks. He criticized the Supreme Court's decision in Flood's case and analogized it to the infamous 1857
Dred Scott
decision denying the freedom of a St. Louis slave who had escaped north on a train. “It was one of those rare occurrences,” Will recalled, “where George Will and Jesse Jackson were sharing the same podium.”

Nearly 25 years after he had eulogized Jackie Robinson, the Reverend Jesse Jackson delivered a spine-tingling eulogy about Flood. Jackson's voice rose as he closed his notes, nodded his head, and concluded: “Don't cry for long, Curt is the winner. The courts lost. Curt won. Base-ball is better. And people are better. America is better. Because God sent an instrument his way. Let him rest. Fought the good fight. Finish his race. He kept the faith. Thank God that Curt Flood came this way. We love you, Curt. You are a winner.”

Jackson called for Flood to go into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Flood's 1,861 hits, .293 lifetime batting average, seven Gold Gloves, and three All-Star Game appearances alone do not warrant his inclusion, but several sportswriters, including the late Leonard Koppett, have advocatedFlood's candidacy based on his status as one of the game's pioneers. Larry Doby, the American League's first black player, was inducted in 1998 in part on this basis. In his final year on the baseball writers' ballot in 1996, Flood received 71 votes, his highest vote total. One of 25 players on the Veterans Committee's 2005 ballot, he received only 10 (out of 80) votes. “You would think that every Hall of Famer who had made millions as a free agent, courtesy of Flood's lawsuit, would have voted for Flood,” wrote
New York Times
columnist Dave Anderson. The Hall of Fame, however, is a conservative institution. Bowie Kuhn has been on its board of directors since 1969, and Marvin Miller, whose impact on the game outstrips that of every baseball executive except Judge Landis and Branch Rickey, has still not been inducted. Flood's chances of election by the Veterans Committee remain slim indeed.

Jackson also called for the Players Association to create a Curt Flood Courage Award, and he called on the players who benefited from Flood's lawsuit to endow it. That seems as unlikely as his Hall of Fame induction.

Many former players attended Flood's funeral. Joe Black, Orlando Cepeda, Bob Gibson, Earl Robinson, Bill White, and Maury Wills served as pallbearers; Lou Brock, Lou Johnson, John Roseboro, and Don Newcombe served as honorary pallbearers. Both Black and Newcombe had carried Jackie Robinson's coffin 25 years earlier. Many other former players dotted the audience, including Don Baylor, Doug DeCinces, Al Downing, Tito Fuentes, Steve Garvey, Lee Maye, and Joe Morgan.

Not a single active player attended Flood's funeral. Union reps David Cone and Tom Glavine issued a prepared statement, and Cone gushed about Flood to at least one New York sports columnist. It was the end of January. Cone, Glavine, and other active players, many of whom lived in Southern California, did not have anywhere to be that day. They seemed to have forgotten all about Flood since his 1994 speech in Atlanta. The absence of active players was a sign that the union leadership had stopped educating its members.

Congress, the institution that had done nothing to correct the Supreme Court's baseball decisions, finally came to Flood's aid. Representative John Conyers (D-MI), who had read President Clinton's telegram at Flood's funeral, introduced H.R. 21—in honor of Flood's number—removing baseball's antitrust exemption as it related to labor issues. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) introduced a similar bill in the Senate. Wanting to send a message after the 1994 baseball strike, Congress passed the legislation as the Curt Flood Act of 1998. President Clinton signed it into law. The owners agreed to relinquish a small piece of their exemption—allowing major league players to file antitrust lawsuits about labor issues—because the legislation lacked any teeth. The Supreme Court had ruled in a 1996 case involving the NFL that labor unions and their members could not sue under the antitrust laws because of the labor exemption. The Players Association, therefore, would have to decertify as a union for a major league player to sue under the Curt Flood Act. Baseball's antitrust exemption, for all intents and purposes, remained unscathed. Congress gave Flood a posthumous but hollow victory.

Curt Flood's legacy has nothing to do with congressional legislation or Supreme Court precedents but with starting the fight for free agency in baseball. “Baseball didn't change Curt Flood,” Jesse Jackson said during his eulogy. “Curt Flood changed baseball.” He changed all professional sports. Flood's lawsuit sounded the alarm about the players' lack of economic freedom. Curt may not have won a single player free agency, but he exposed baseball's system of perpetual player-ownership as exploitative and un-American. He helped usher in a new era that allowed the players to exercise greater control over their careers and to share in the owners' economic prosperity.

Free agency, despite the yearnings of some sentimentalists, has been good for baseball. Competitive balance has improved. The Yankees, Cardinals, or Dodgers do not win the pennant every year. Nine different teams won the World Series during the 1980s, six different teams won during the 1990s (with no winner in 1994), and six different teams won from 2000 to 2005. Attendance has increased dramatically. Television revenue has soared. Free-agent signings have only heightened fan interest during the winter months. Players shift teams no more now than they did before free agency. The difference is that the players of today do not always change teams because they have to, but because they want to.

Flood cannot be blamed for the real source of the average fan's discontent: the players' skyrocketing salaries. The average major league salary has increased from $29,303 in 1970 to $371,571 in 1985 to $2,632,655 in 2005. The largest free-agent contract of 25 years ago, Dave Winfield's 10-year deal eventually worth $18 million, pales in comparison to Alex Rodriguez's 10-year, $252 million contract. Flood, however, would have applauded Rodriguez's riches. He understood that the players' salaries are the outgrowth of America's obsession with celebrity and entertainment. “Sylvester Stallone got $30 million for
Rocky II
. He said 30 words you could understand in the whole movie. Nobody seems to mind that,” Flood said in 1989. “But does Sylvester Stallone do more relevant things than Roger Clemens? Isn't baseball show business?” Flood also recognized that the owners have no more right to the almighty entertainment dollar in sports than the players. “If the owners put a cap on their own salaries, then we'll agree to put a cap on our salaries,” Flood said before the 1994 strike. “If George Steinbrenner— particularly George Steinbrenner—has a cap, then we'll all have a cap.” After more than three decades of fighting free agency tooth and nail, the owners finally seem to be at peace with paying the players what they are worth. The owners' only lingering issue is how to divide baseball's enormous revenues among themselves.

Curt Flood's lawsuit was about an idea much more basic in our society than free agency in baseball—it was about the freedom to choose where to work. He helped destroy the myth of employer or employee loyalty. The boss will reassign you, fire you, or lay you off in a heartbeat if it will help the bottom line. The days when people worked for the same company or even in the same occupation for their entire lives are long gone. People are always on the lookout for a better job or a better deal. “We may not want to admit it, but there's a little Curt Flood in all of us,”
Houston Chronicle
business columnist Loren Steffy wrote during the 2005 World Series. “If baseball is an analogy for life, then we have become a society of free agents.”