How Curt Flood's Fight for Free Agency Changed Pro Sports

TEASE:

DATE: July 4, 2015

ARCHIVAL (ABC NEWS 7, 7-4-15):
LARRY BEIL: The Clippers just got worse. DeAndre Jordan is leaving LA.

MARC SPEARS (NBA WRITER, YAHOO! SPORTS): Free agency is a crazy game now.

ARCHIVAL (ABC 7 SPORTS, 7-8-15):
ROBERT BURTON: Free agent center DeAndre Jordan may be reconsidering..

MARC SPEARS: It’s a monster that doesn’t die.

ARCHIVAL (KTVU, 7-9-15):
ANCHOR: The wackiest non-deal yet.

ARCHIVAL (KRON, 7-9-15):
ANCHOR: They barricaded the door.

ARCHIVAL (ESPN, 7-9-15):
ANCHOR: One of the most unprecedented about-faces we’ve ever seen.
MARK CUBAN: If I had to do it all over again, would I quarantine him?

NARRATION: The drama of modern free agency has become as much a part of professional sports as the games themselves. But it wasn’t always that way.

JUDY FLOOD (CURT FLOOD’S WIDOW): Curt helped to change the way they do business in the world of sports.

OSCAR ROBERTSON: Curt Flood’s legacy is he gave his life for a lot of baseball players who don’t even know who he is.

CURT FLOOD: REBEL WITHOUT A CLAUSE

BRAD SNYDER: It’s October 8, 1969. Curt gets a call in the morning from not the general manager, not the owner, Gussie Busch, but some middle manager in the front office calls him and in sort of a monotone voice says, “Curt, you and Tim McCarver have been traded to the Philadelphia Phillies.

NARRATION: It was no small trade. Few ballplayers ever become as successful and popular as Curt Flood, who was known to fans as a prolific hitter and defensive wizard, streaking across the outfield to snare fly ball after fly ball. By 1969, he had helped lead the St. Louis Cardinals to three World Series in the previous six years.

ARCHIVAL AUDIO:
The Cardinals win. They’re the new world champions.

BRAD SNYDER: Curt’s the longest standing member on the team. He’s a three-time All Star. He’s a huge fan favorite.

NARRATION: Despite his stardom on and off the field, the Cardinals had begun to sour on Flood.

ARCHIVAL AUDIO:
Fly ball, Flood…Oh he misjudged it, over his head!

NARRATION: He demanded a raise months after slipping on a key play in game 7 of the 1968 World Series. From then on his days in St. Louis appeared to be numbered.

RICHARD MOSS (GENERAL COUNSEL, MLB PLAYERS ASSOCIATION, 1966-77): He liked St. Louis, he liked playing for the Cardinals. And he just didn’t think it was right that he had no say in where he would play.

NARRATION: Since the early days of professional baseball, a short clause, inserted into every major league contract, had given owners complete control over their players. Even when the player’s yearly contract was up, the owner could unilaterally renew his contract – essentially binding him to the same franchise for life, allowing him to be paid whatever the owner felt he was worth, or traded on a whim.

JUDY FLOOD: So, it wasn’t anger, it was more, “This is not right. This just is not my America.” Curt was very much aware of what was going on in the world, and he was very much aware of the fact that he did not have his civil rights.

ARCHIVAL (ABC, 2-3-70)
CURT FLOOD: Me as a black man, I’m probably a lot more sensitive to the rights of other people because I have been denied these rights.

NARRATION: Though Flood had grown up on the West Coast, distanced from the civil rights issues roiling the American South, that had all changed when he was sent to the Southern minor leagues at the beginning of his professional career.

JUDY FLOOD: He saw these two water fountains: one said “colored,” one said “white.” He said, “For some strange reason, I thought maybe club soda and cola?” And he said he soon realized, no, this is not club soda. I’m in the south.

RICHARD MOSS: After one of his first games the players threw their uniforms in a pile the clubhouse man came over and he took a broomstick and he picked up Curt’s uniform. These things have an effect on people.

ARCHIVAL (ABC, 2-3-70):
CURT FLOOD: What I really want out of this thing is to give every ballplayer the chance to be a human being and take advantage of the fact that we live in a free and democratic society.

NARRATION: For the right to determine his own future as a ballplayer, Flood would have to sue Major League Baseball, and cut to the core of how America’s pastime operated. As the country’s first professional team sport, the courts had chosen to view baseball as a game instead of a business. Decades of rulings had exempted it from antitrust laws, giving it a special legal status that protected it from competition.

BRAD SNYDER: The line from the owners when Curt sued, was Curt Flood is trying to destroy Major League Baseball. And a lot of sportswriters were buying the line. They couldn’t relate to a guy making $90,000 a year who is rejecting a trade from one team to another.

JUDY FLOOD: Curt would say we have been subsidizing the owners we just can’t even go out and find out, what am I really valued at? What do I need to be paid if I’m getting seven consecutive Gold Gloves? What is my value?

ARCHIVAL, (ABC, 2-25-71):
REPORTER: This is Curt Flood, baseball’s Bolshevik.

NARRATION: Men before Flood had fought baseball’s reserve clause. But no modern athlete framed the issue as starkly.

ARCHIVAL (ABC, 2-3-70):
CURT FLOOD: A master and slave relationship.

ARCHIVAL (ABC, “WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS” 1-3-70):
HOWARD COSELL: You’re a man who makes $90,000 a year, which isn’t exactly slave wages, what’s your retort to that?
CURT FLOOD: Well, Howard, a well-paid slave is nonetheless a slave.

JUDY FLOOD: There were death threats. I mean, vicious – “Nigger this,” and, “Nigger that.” And, “How dare you?” And, “Biting the hand that feeds you.”

BRAD SNYDER: The players were so afraid of the fallout of a public endorsement of Curt and his lawsuit. Even Curt’s teammates, when they were in town playing the Mets, didn’t show up to the trial.

ARCHIVAL, (CBS, 6-19-72):
WALTER CRONKITE: The Supreme Court today rejected a suit from ex-outfielder Curt Flood.

NARRATION: In the end, Flood fared no better than those who had gone before him. With the unprecedented backing of the newly formed players union, his case went all the way to the Supreme Court – but he could not beat the owners of the game.

JUDY FLOOD: At that point it was devastating because he had given up everything.

BRAD SNYDER: Had the Players Association known how vulnerable Curt was financially, and how vulnerable Curt was with alcohol, they would have had some second thoughts. He was far from the ideal plaintiff.

ARCHIVAL (ABC, 2-25-71):
CURT FLOOD: I did what I thought was right, I took it to court.

NARRATION: To demonstrate the unfairness of the existing system, Flood had sat out the 1970 season, forfeiting his income for the year. By the time he joined the Washington Senators in 1971, he was no longer the same player on the field or in the eyes of the public.

JUDY FLOOD: Somehow or other, someone got into the clubhouse with a huge black funeral wreath with his name on it in front of his locker. That was scary. You now are walking around, “How do I play center field with my back to people?

NARRATION: Flood played only 13 games for Washington before abruptly sending the team’s owner a telegram from New York’s JFK airport, announcing he was quitting. He would never play Major League Baseball again.

Though it ultimately failed, Flood’s case had laid the legal groundwork for players to settle the issue at the negotiating table.

RICHARD MOSS: We lost the case, but it was nevertheless very important because people got to know what was going on and why Curt Flood was doing this.

NARRATION: Three years later, pitchers Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally won an arbitration case that found owners could no longer renew players’ contracts in perpetuity, opening free agency to all veteran major leaguers.

ARCHIVAL (CBS, 12-24-75):
WALTER CRONKITE: Big league baseball owners have maintained a grip on their players so strong that it has amounted to almost total control over their careers. Now that absolute power may be ending.

NARRATION: The league also adopted what some called the Curt Flood rule, allowing players to veto any trade once they have spent 10 years in the major leagues, including five with their current team.

But it was too late for Flood himself. Beset by financial and drinking problems, he exiled himself to the island of Majorca.

BRAD SNYDER: He spiraled down into alcoholism worked in a bar, which is maybe the worst thing an alcoholic can do and ran out of money and came back to Oakland, California, in 1976 really a broken man.

OSCAR ROBERTSON: What amazes me about the Curt Flood case is that some of the other great baseball players sat solidly on the sidelines and said nothing. That’s hard to imagine. That’s hard to imagine. In basketball we knew what Curt Flood was trying to achieve and we thought it was right.

NARRATION: Three months after Flood had filed his lawsuit in 1970, Oscar Robertson and thirteen other professional basketball players sued to abolish the reserve clause in the NBA. Following an earlier failed attempt by star Rick Barry. Six years later, they reached a settlement to bring free agency to their sport.

OSCAR ROBERTSON: The awakening was happening. You could only tell after the fact. Free agency has been a wonderful, sun coming up over the mountains, warming up the whole valley.

ARCHIVAL (NBC, 3-27-93):
REPORTER: On March 1st, free agency came to the National Football League.

ARCHIVAL (ABC, 7-21-96):
REPORTER: Wayne Gretzky has signed a contract with New York’s hockey team

NARRATION: Though in many cases real power remains with the owners. Free agency soon began to shift the balance across American professional sport.

ARCHIVAL (ESPN, 7-8-10:)
JOHN BUCCIGROSS: Anxious fans in NBA cities around the country anxiously awaiting LeBron’s decision…

ARCHIVAL (ESPN PRESENTS “THE DECISION” 7-8-10):
LEBRON JAMES: And this fall I’m going to take my talents to South Beach, and join the Miami Heat.

NARRATION: After four years in Miami, LeBron James’ dramatic return to Cleveland proved elite players can shape not only their own fate, but the entire NBA ecosystem.

ARCHIVAL (ESPN, 7-18-14):
MAX KELLERMAN: It’s his team. It’s his franchise. He’s calling the shots. Period.

NARRATION: And today, he isn’t the only player whose decision as a free agent keeps owners and fans on the edge of their seats.

ARCHIVAL (CBS, 7-12-15):
ANCHOR: Last week, fans, LA’s Clippers DeAndre Jordan agreed to a contract with the Dallas Mavericks. But his heart belonged to another.

MARC SPEARS: I can’t remember anybody being courted like DeAndre Jordan, who hasn’t even been an All-Star.

ARCHIVAL (MSNBC, THE ED SHOW, 7-9-15):
ANCHOR: An emoji battle broke out on Twitter between Clippers and Mavs players, spreading throughout the NBA Twitterverse.

MARC SPEARS: It’s like, a male soap opera.

ARCHIVAL (ESPN, 7-21-15):
DEANDRE JORDAN: This whole fiasco was not my intent.

MARC SPEARS: Because of Twitter, everything is instantaneous. Every little piece is, like, a gossip, tidbit. Ohhhh, they locked it down. Ohhhh, Mark Cuban’s not there, ohhhh, he’s not going to have a meeting.” Like, I think there’s people that enjoy that more than the regular season.

ARCHIVAL (CBS, 7-15-15):
ESPN ANALYST: It’s one thing when it’s LeBron James that holds franchises hostage. It’s another thing when DeAndre Jordan, who’s a fine player, but definitely not one of those upper-crust guys that should be holding the fate of two NBA franchises in the balance, in the palm of his hand.

OSCAR ROBERTSON: It’s just the coming of age of sports. All the fights that we undertook and also Curt Flood. It’s the reason that they can do this today. The question I ask is, what happened to Curt Flood if this is all going on now?

NARRATION: A few years before his death, Flood was finally given his seventh Gold Glove trophy – the one he’d earned in the 1969 season but was never awarded. By then, he had gotten his life together.

JUDY FLOOD: In years to follow, he saw what happened. He understood the game had changed and he knew he was the reason why.

ARCHIVAL(TALKING BASEBALL WITH ED RANDALL, AMAZON):
CURT FLOOD: Can a man work in America, wherever it is that he decides that he wants to work? Forget that it’s baseball… And, the easy answer is, “Of course he can.”

(END)