The National League adopted a reserve clause binding a player to his team in December 1879. “Challenging the reserve clause was essential to the blossoming sport we have today,” Cole said, later adding: “I just think it’s so important that players know the other sacrifices that players made in order to keep the integrity of the game where it is, and so I hope everybody has that conversation about Curt Flood on the bus.” When Gerrit Cole signed his $324 million, nine-year contract with the New York Yankees last week, the pitcher paid tribute to Flood and to Marvin Miller, the transformative union head finally elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame on Dec.
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“I think that’s what they were waiting for.”īaseball’s average major league salary has risen from just under $25,000 at the time of Flood’s letter to just more than $4 million this year, an escalation testament to the power of free agency. The Supreme Court decided not to give it to me, so they gave it to two white guys,” Flood once said. “All the groundwork was laid for the people who came after me. His only further employment with a major league team before his death from throat cancer in 1997 would be as an Oakland Athletics radio broadcaster for part of the 1978 season. Kennedy Airport in New York en route to Spain. After sitting out the 1970 season, he had 40 more plate appearances in 1971 for Washington and told the Senators he was retiring via telegraph sent from John F. 293 career hitter, was long gone from the field by then. The reserve clause was struck down in 1975 by arbitrator Peter Seitz in the case of pitchers Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally, and it took eight work stoppages from 1972 through 1995 to achieve long-term labor peace.įlood, a. “So he was the man who stepped out of the foxhole to go and challenge.” “If there had not been the person who was going to step out there and take the bullets, there wouldn’t have been anything,” Flood’s widow, the actress Judy Pace, said last weekend. Supreme Court, but the union’s fight went on. I, therefore, request that you make known to all the major league clubs my feelings in this matter and advise them of my availability for the 1970 season.”įlood and the union lost that fight in a lawsuit that went all the way the U.S. I have received a contract offer from the Philadelphia club, but I believe I have the right to consider offers from other clubs before making any decisions. “It is my desire to play baseball in 1970 and I am capable of playing. “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 of the several states. “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,” Flood wrote in his Dec. Flood broke with the sport’s culture of conformity and refused to accept the Cardinals’ right to deal him, becoming a pioneer and a pariah.Īfter weeks of discussions with the Major League Baseball Players Association, Flood began the union’s equivalent of Lexington and Concord, challenging the reserve clause in a first shot of a labor war that would consume the sport for more than a quarter-century.
Louis had traded the All-Star center fielder to Philadelphia just after the 1969 season.
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NEW YORK - Curt Flood set off the free-agent revolution 50 years ago Tuesday with a 128-word letter to baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, two paragraphs that pretty much ended the career of a World Series champion regarded as among the sport’s stars but united a union behind his cause. Click here to find news in your practice area and gain insights into lawyers, judges and the legal community. As a CDLB subscriber you have access to Lawyerport News, including access to 30 years of news archives.
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