[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 12 (Tuesday, February 4, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E144-E146]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      CURT FLOOD: AN UNCOMMON MAN

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. JOHN CONYERS, JR.

                              of michigan

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, February 4, 1997

  Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, 1 month ago, I introduced legislation 
repealing baseball's antitrust exemption. The bill was designated H.R. 
21, in honor of Curt Flood's number when he played for the St. Louis 
Cardinals.
  In an ear when the terms hero and courage are used all too 
frequently, Curt Flood stands out as the genuine article, a true 
inspiration to all Americans who care about economic and social 
equality. I am attaching a letter from President Clinton and several 
articles written which describe his career and reiterate these very 
points.
  Most of us are well aware of the courage Curt Flood displayed when he 
refused to accept being traded to the Philadelphia Phillies. His letter 
to then Commissioner Kuhn cut directly to the core of the issue:

       After 12 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. I believe that any system which produces that 
     result violates my basic rights as a citizen and is 
     inconsistent with the laws of the United States and the 
     several states.


[[Page E145]]


  Although Curt Flood lost his legal battle challenging baseball's 
antitrust exemption, the public recognized the moral validity of his 
arguments--he was not a piece of property. His case paved the way for 
free agency in all professional sports. A national poll taken in the 
wake of Flood v. Kuhn showed that fans opposed the reserve clause, 
which bound players to teams for life, by an 8 to 1 margin.
  And while thousands of athletes have subsequently benefited from free 
agency, Curt Flood paid a heavy price for his decision to take on the 
baseball owners. The 3-time all-star and 7-time gold glove award winner 
played only 13 more games before being forced out of baseball.
  Less well known is the fortitude Curt Flood displayed in fighting 
racial intolerance. At the same time Jackie Robinson was breaking the 
color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Curt Flood was facing the Jim 
Crow laws as the sole black man playing for the High Point, NC Hi-Toms.
  He alone was barred from gas station rest rooms. Only Curt Flood was 
forced to eat at the kitchen door while his teammates were served in 
the dining room. And when he played a doubleheader, he experienced only 
greater humiliation. As he explained to Ken Burns:

       After the end of the first game you take off your uniform 
     and you throw it into a big pile. . . . [But the clubhouse 
     manager] sent my uniform to the colored cleaners which was 
     probably 20 minutes away and there I sat while all the other 
     guys were on the field. [The crowd has] really been giving me 
     hell all day long, and now I'm sitting there stark naked 
     waiting for my uniform to come back from the cleaners and the 
     other guys were out on the field. So finally they get my 
     uniform back and I walk out on the field . . . boy you'd 
     think that I had just burned the American Flag.

  Curt Flood's talents and goodwill extended well beyond baseball. He 
ran a foundation to benefit inner-city youngsters. An accomplished 
painter, his portrait of Martin Luther King hangs today in Corretta 
King's living room.
  In the end, we will remember Curt Flood for having the courage to 
tell America what should have been plain and obvious all along. 
Discrimination is wrong. People--even athletes--are not property. 
Baseball is a business and should be subject to the competition laws.
  A few days before Curt Flood died, I wrote him, suggesting that if 
the legislation I introduced in his honor was to pass into law, he 
should come to the White House signing ceremony. That can't happen now, 
but I know his indomitable spirit will be with us as we continue his 
fight for equality and fairness. I know all Members--and indeed all 
professional athletes--join me in mourning this courageous man.


                                              The White House,

                                 Washington, DC, January 24, 1997.
     Mrs. Curt Flood,
     4139 Cloverdale Ave.,
     Los Angeles, CA.
       Dear Mrs. Flood: Hillary and I were saddened to learn of 
     your husband's death, and we extend our deepest sympathy.
       Curt Flood was a man of extraordinary ability, courage, and 
     conviction. His achievements on the field were matched only 
     by the strength of his character. While there are no words to 
     ease the pain of your loss, I hope you can take comfort in 
     the knowledge that Curt will be remembered by so many 
     Americans as one of baseball's finest players and a lasting 
     influence on the sport he loved so much.
       We hope that the loving concern and support of your family 
     and friends will sustain you during this difficult time. You 
     are in our thoughts and prayers.
           Sincerely,
     Bill Clinton.
                                                                    ____


               [From the Washington Post, Jan. 22, 1997]

                          Quite Simply, a Hero

                          (By Thomas Boswell)

       Every few years, Curt Flood would reappear. Maybe that was 
     so we could compare his fast-aging and haggard face with the 
     laughing ballplayer's mug that he'd worn in the 1960s, before 
     he took baseball to the Supreme Court.
       We won't be able to read the cost of making history in that 
     face any more. Flood died of throat cancer Monday at 59. It 
     was Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Of all the figures in sports 
     in the last generation, perhaps only Flood could die on the 
     anniversary of a martyr's death and have it seem a fitting 
     memorial.
       For a few days perhaps we can remember the difference 
     between a real rebel--one who takes risks for the sake of a 
     genuine cause--and our phony, look-at-me rebels who only 
     stand for the cover shoot of their next autobiography.
       Rebellion that's worthy of the name isn't about attitude. 
     The rebel to whom our respect and our heart goes out is the 
     one, such as Flood, who never in this world wanted such a 
     job. He just had the mixed fortune to see what was right and 
     act on it, knowing the cost to himself.
       ``Baseball players have lost a true champion,'' said 
     players union head Donald Fehr on Monday. ``A man of quiet 
     dignity, Curt Flood conducted his life in a way that set an 
     example for all who had the privilege to know him. When it 
     came time to take a stand at great personal risk and 
     sacrifice, he stood firm for what he believed was right.''
       Flood had the brains and the sense of justice to understand 
     that baseball's employment system was basically unfair. 
     However, by temperament, he was completely unsuited to a 
     public brawl that lasted for years. He was as distressed by 
     conflict as Fehr is invigorated by it. And Flood's torment 
     always showed.
       When he arrived in Washington in 1971 after sitting out a 
     season, he played only 13 games for the Senators. You 
     couldn't tell if his Gold Glove, all-star skills were just 
     fading fast or whether the Flood case was eating him inside. 
     At RFK Stadium, some of us cheered. But enough booed to let 
     Flood know that, for him, no place was home. On the road, he 
     was vilified as a traitor who wanted to ruin the national 
     pastime.
       Back then, memories of Black Power salutes were in the air. 
     So Flood, thoughtful but never extreme, was pigeon-holed as 
     radical. All he said was that he was sick of being treated--
     and traded--``like a piece of meat.'' How could America 
     sanction a system where a team owned a man for his whole 
     career?
       After batting .200 in 35 at-bats, Flood fled. Hard as it 
     may be to believe these days, Flood didn't want fame. He 
     flinched when talking about himself and even admitted that he 
     loathed the thought that he might be hurting his sport.
       For years, Flood disappeared from the public scene, often 
     living in Europe. In 1972 Flood v. Kuhn, the Supreme Court 
     upheld baseball's right to antitrust immunity. Flood had 
     fought the law and, temporarily, the law won.
       ``You have to understand that if you do what I did to 
     baseball, you are a hated, ugly, detestable person,'' he 
     said, explaining his self-imposed exile. This week, Hank 
     Aaron said simply, ``Flood was crucified for taking his 
     stand.''
       By 1976, free agency had arrived and the justice of Flood's 
     stand against the reserve clause was vindicated. But Flood 
     stayed on the island of Majorca. Finally, two years later, he 
     put his toe back into baseball gingerly, as a radio announcer 
     for the Oakland A's for one season. He looked like a shy, 
     hyper-sensitive ghost of himself. Though only 41, he seemed 
     far older. His wounds were deep. His sense of isolation was 
     almost palpable.
       Many in the game respected Flood's pain, regarding him like 
     a soldier who'd suffered shell shock in a necessary battle. 
     Nobody, however, had a name for his fragile condition. He 
     hadn't exactly become an eccentric. But whenever you saw him 
     at a ballpark, he seemed raw-nerved and weighted down, like a 
     man who'd seen something--seen it clearly and undeniably--and 
     couldn't begin to get over it.
       Finally, in 1994 Flood stood before the cameras again 
     briefly during the players strike. Ostensibly, he was part of 
     a possible new league called the United Baseball League.
       Really, he took the stage to give modern players some 
     backbone. The message was subliminal: This guy bucked the 
     system for all of you. Maybe baseball put him on the rack and 
     cracked him to a degree. So when an owner sneers about 
     breaking the union, have a little guts. The money in your 
     bank account came out of this guy's peace of mind.
       Flood's legacy remains a tangled one. You could say he did 
     the groundwork so athletes could make more money than anybody 
     deserves. Flood laid the cornerstone of the Shaq Fu mansion, 
     so to speak. Flood helped make a world where Brett Favre 
     knows nobody will mock the Superman tattoo on his biceps; 
     self-infatuation is so routine, nobody even notices anymore. 
     Could Dennis Rodman be as ``Bad As I Wanna Be'' without his 
     $7 million salary? If you kick somebody, peel off a big stack 
     of Grover Clevelands. No problem. Thanks, Curt.
       Cynics will say that Flood stood for something so that 
     those who followed him could afford to stand for nothing.
       That, however, is not Flood's fault. By helping athletes 
     make market salaries for their services, he allows them to 
     live on a bigger scale. We hear about the jerks. But the 
     fools are still in the minority. More athletes are like 
     Darrell Green of the Redskins, who was chosen this week as 
     the NFL's Man of the Year for his charity and community work.
       For some of us, Flood should be a daily tonic. Maybe he'll 
     shame us into using the language more precisely when we 
     describe our famous athletes.
       When we use ``courage'' to describe a quarterback who takes 
     a pain-killing shot, maybe we'll blush. When we call someone 
     who makes a jump shot at the buzzer a ``hero,'' maybe we'll 
     be just a bit abashed. If that is heroism, what word have we 
     reserved for people such as Flood?
       And when we say losing the World Series is ``tragic,'' 
     perhaps we'll think of the last 28 years of Flood's life--and 
     the price he paid for following his conscience. Then, our 
     perspective sharpened, maybe we'll choose a better word.
                                  ____
                                  

                [From the New York Times, Jan. 21, 1997]

                Remembering Flood, a Man for All Seasons

                           (By Murray Chass)

       In a recent letter to Frank Slocum, executive director of 
     the Baseball Assistance

[[Page E146]]

     Team (B.A.T.), Curt Flood wrote, ``The 1996 holiday season 
     brings mixed feelings of joy and sadness. Therefore, we'll 
     take the advice that mother Laura gave to me when I was a 
     kid. She'd say `Start counting your blessings, Squirtis, by 
     the time you've finished, you won't have time for anything 
     else.' ''
       Flood, who was 59, died yesterday after a yearlong battle 
     with throat cancer, and it is the players who came after him 
     in the major leagues who should count their blessings for 
     having had a man of his stature and dignity and courage 
     precede them.
       Professional athletes, for the most part, live for their 
     time. They generally don't care what happened before them 
     and, worse, they often don't know. Sadly, many baseball 
     players wouldn't even be able to identify Flood, wouldn't 
     even know that he was the forerunner of Andy Messersmith, 
     another name they wouldn't recognize for the impact he had on 
     their lives.
       But that day in Atlanta in the last month of 1994, the 
     players in the meeting room of the players association 
     executive board knew about the man who was to speak to them. 
     They saluted him with a standing ovation before he spoke.
       ``It almost made me forget what I was going to say,'' Flood 
     said afterward. ``It caught me a little short. I felt a lump 
     in my throat.''
       Flood was in the room that day in his capacity as vice 
     president of the United Baseball League, a venture that did 
     not reach fruition. Twenty-five years earlier, in 1969, he 
     appeared before another Players Association executive board 
     seeking support for the task he was about to undertake. The 
     St. Louis Cardinals, for whom he had played for 12 years, had 
     traded him to the Philadelphia Phillies, and he didn't want 
     to go.
       Richard Moss, who was the union's general counsel at the 
     time, recalled yesterday that Flood came to him and Marvin 
     Miller, the head of the union, and told them he wanted to 
     challenge the system that he said ``treated people like they 
     were pieces of property.''
       ``Marvin and I weren't sure if he was serious, if he had 
     some other agenda,'' Moss said. ``We arranged for him to come 
     to the board meeting in Puerto Rico. The idea was to let him 
     talk to the board and convince them that he was for real, 
     that he really believed this and he was sincere.''
       With the board's support, Flood took his challenge all the 
     way to the United States Supreme Court. He lost, but his 
     effort eventually emboldened other players, Messersmith in 
     particular. Unfortunately, besides losing the case, Flood saw 
     his career die. After sitting out the 1970 season, he played 
     briefly for the Washington Senators in 1971.
       He knew he wasn't the same player he had been, and he 
     walked away from the only job he had known. A pariah in an 
     owner-dominated business, Flood was not welcome to wear a 
     baseball uniform. Instead, he drifted from country to 
     country, first to Majorca, where he opened a bar and became 
     an alcoholic, then back to the United States, then to Sweden, 
     then back home again.
       In recent years, Flood operated a youth center in Los 
     Angeles. He enjoyed working with children. He would have 
     enjoyed working with young professional baseball players, 
     too, but he never had the opportunity. Nevertheless, he 
     retained his dignity and, in the last year, his courage.
       Yesterday, Joe Garagiola, president of B.A.T., recalled 
     that he testified for baseball in Flood's lawsuit. ``I 
     thought if the reserve clause went, baseball was going,'' 
     Garagiola said. ``I was so wrong I can't begin to tell you. 
     It took a lot of guts for him to do what he did.''
       Garagiola's organization had helped Flood in the last year, 
     and Moss, whom Flood always identified as his lawyer, had 
     planned to appear before the B.A.T. board tomorrow morning to 
     express Flood's appreciation for the assistance. Instead, 
     Moss made plans to return to Los Angeles.
       In his letter to Slocum, Flood also wrote, ``Say this: 
     `Curt accomplished every goal that he set for himself, and 
     simply moved on.' ''
       He didn't gain a victory 25 years ago, and in his career he 
     didn't achieve statistics that were good enough for the Hall 
     of Fame. But when Flood's name first appeared on the Hall of 
     Fame ballot, this voter marked an `X' next to it in a 
     symbolic gesture. No one was ever more worthy of such 
     recognition.
                                  ____
                                  

                [From the New York Times, Jan. 21, 1997]

          Curt Flood Is Dead at 59; Outfielder Defied Baseball

                           (By Joseph Durso)

       Curt Flood, the All-Star center fielder for the St. Louis 
     Cardinals in the 1960's who became a pioneering figure in the 
     legal attack on baseball's reserve clause that foreshadowed 
     the era of free agents, died yesterday in Los Angeles. He was 
     59.
       Flood died at the U.C.L.A. Medical Center, where he had 
     been a patient in recent months, after developing pneumonia. 
     He had been suffering from throat cancer since last spring.
       At bat and especially on the field, Flood was an 
     outstanding player for a dozen years with the St. Louis 
     Cardinals, a center fielder who won the Gold Glove for 
     fielding excellence seven years in a row in the 1960's and 
     batted over .300 six times.
       But it was his stiff resolve regarding the unfairness of 
     baseball's virtually enslavement of players and his courage 
     in challenging a system that perpetuated this condition that 
     carried Flood beyond baseball.
       It all crystallized when the Cardinals traded Flood to the 
     Philadelphia Phillies after the 1969 season and Flood refuse 
     to go. Represented by Arthur J. Goldberg, former Associated 
     Justice of the Supreme Court and United States Ambassador to 
     the United Nations, Flood triggered a legal war that shook 
     baseball.
       Flood actually lost the battle in Federal District Court in 
     New York when the judge suggested that the players and club 
     owners negotiate the issue. But almost six years later, he 
     won the war when other baseball players successfully sued and 
     broke from the ``reserve system,'' which for almost a century 
     had bound a player to his team year after year.
       As a result, before another generation had passed, salaries 
     in all sports soared, teams sought salary caps to contain the 
     damage to their payrolls and large cities were required to 
     pay small cities millions in compensation.
       The solitary figure who prompted this revolution, Curtis 
     Charles Flood, was born in Houston on Jan 18, 1938, but was 
     raised in Oakland. He was short and skinny, but he signed his 
     first professional contract while still a senior at Oakland 
     Technical High School.
       After two years in the minor leagues and briefly with the 
     Cincinnati Reds, he was traded in 1958 to St. Louis, where he 
     played for the next 12 seasons and three times played in the 
     World Series--against the New York Yankees in 1964, the 
     Boston Red Sox in 1967 and the Detroit Tigers in 1968.
       His talents were unquestioned. During a career that lasted 
     from 1956 to 1971, he batted 293, stole 85 bases, appeared in 
     three World Series and reigned in center field for 12 years 
     for the Cardinals.
       During one span, he played in 226 consecutive games without 
     committing an error and in 1966 went the entire season 
     without committing an error and in 1966 went the entire 
     season without making a misplay. He even became a portrait 
     artist of some talent who was commissioned to paint August A. 
     Busch Jr., the owner of the Cardinals, and his children in 
     oils.
       At the peak of his career, though, the man with the 
     flawless glove misjudged a line drive, cost the Cardinals the 
     1968 World Series and supplied a regrettable footnote to the 
     1968 World Series against Detroit.
       The Tigers and Cardinals were tied at three games apiece 
     with Bob Gibson facing Mickey Lolich for the championship in 
     St. Louis in Game 7. They were scoreless for six innings. 
     Then in the Tiger seventh, Gibson retired the first two 
     batters. But after two singles, Jim Northrup followed with 
     the hard drive to center.
       Flood lost sight of the ball momentarily, took a couple of 
     steps in toward home plate, reversed direction and slipped 
     while the ball carried over his head for a triple and two 
     runs. The Tigers won, 4-1, and captured the Series.
       After the game, Tim McCarver stood in the rubble of the 
     Cardinals' locker-room regret and called out, ``Curt Flood, 
     you're beautiful.
       But a year later, the Cardinals slid into fourth place and 
     Busch cleaned house. In one blockbuster trade, he sent Flood, 
     McCarver and Joe Hoerner to Philadelphia for Richie Allen, 
     Cookie Rojas and Jerry Johnson. But Flood sued for his 
     freedom from a system that ``reserved'' players to their 
     teams and that had won exemption from the antitrust laws as 
     far back as 1922.
       The trial opened May 19, 1970 before Judge Irving Ben 
     Cooper in the United States Court House in lower Manhattan. 
     The defendants included Commissioner of Baseball Bowie Kuhn, 
     the presidents of the National and American Leagues and the 
     Chief executive of all 24 teams then in the big leagues. They 
     were being challenged by a 32-year-old outfielder who was 
     making $90,000 a year but was determined not to be traded 
     without his consent. When he was asked which team he wanted 
     to play for, he testified, ``The team that makes me the best 
     offer.''
       The ``reserve clause'' in contracts was not toppled during 
     the trial, but it came under sustained attack. Marvin Miller, 
     executive director of the players association, described how 
     baseball contracts tied the player to his club forever and 
     said, ``The player has no say whatsoever in terms of what 
     conditions he plays under, always bearing in mind he has the 
     one alternative: He may decide to find a different way to 
     make a living.''
       The Trial consumed 10 weeks, 2,000 pages of transcript and 
     56 exhibits. Judge Cooper suggested that ``reasonable men'' 
     could find a solution outside court and ruled: ``We are 
     convinced that the reserve clause can be fashioned so as to 
     find acceptance by player and club.''
       Flood, who sat out the 1970 season, did not think so. He 
     signed with the Washington Senators in 1971 for $110,000, but 
     after two months suddenly quit and flew to Europe.
       When the case was appealed to the Supreme Court, the 
     justices--in a 5-3 ruling--supported the District Court and 
     the Court of Appeals and left the ``reserve clause'' 
     undisturbed. But Curt Flood had set the stage for the 
     revolution that followed in 1976, and generations of free 
     agents poured through.
       ``Baseball players have lost a true champion,'' the 
     players' union head, Donald Fehr, said yesterday. ``When it 
     came time to take a stand, at great personal risk and 
     sacrifice, he proudly stood firm for what he believed was 
     right.''
     
                               ____________________