Enough that he gave his players a dressing-down one fine spring training day that Flood wrote later was code for “behave or get out. I no longer felt like a ninety-thousand-dollar ballplayer but like a green recruit. That same spring, the players pushed for and got a serious remake of baseball’s player pension plan, including reduction of the vesting time to four years’ major league service and a larger contribution from the owners into the pension fund.īut Busch-who was known for treating his players a lot better than other owners did at the time-was not amused. It presents Flood as just what he was, a sensitive and intelligent man who could change hearts and minds in his clubhouse but found doing so beyond it a greater challenge than he found running fly balls down in center field.Īfter Jackie addresses Flood’s request for a raise to a six-figure salary for 1969 and then-Cardinals owner Gussie Busch’s initial demurral. The splendid new documentary After Jackie chronicles both Jackie Robinson’s baseball career and post-playing civil rights activism, and the efforts of Flood and fellow Cardinals Bob Gibson and Bill White to bond their team against the still-persistent Jim Crow South and comparable attitudes elsewhere. The Civil Rights movement gave him more strength. And, finally, it happened. He was going to do this no matter what happened. I can understand the process for nobody doing anything, or saying anything, just so happy to be playing the game. “It cost him everything, he had no money, completely losing everything,’’ she told USA Today‘s Bob Nightengale.īut it was breaking his heart to walk away. Long before she renewed her acquaintance with and married Flood, she was one of the only African American actresses to appear in prime time, portraying the patient wife of a black surgeon in the final season of the legendary 1960s serial Peyton Place. Judy Pace-Flood knows something about trailblazing in her own right. ![]() Since Sunday was also Juneteenth, Flood’s widow seized upon the occasion to call for a fresh push to enshrine her pioneering husband in Cooperstown. Will.Fifty years ago Sunday, Curt Flood’s challenge to baseball’s ancient and abused-by-the-owners reserve clause lost in the Supreme Court. 13 at the Sheraton Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico, it voted 25-0 to give Flood the union's support and pay his legal expenses, a group that included future Hall of Famers Roberto Clemente, Reggie Jackson, Brooks Robinson, Joe Torre and Jim Bunning.“Few have ever matched the grace and craftsmanship Curt Flood brought to, However, none has matched what he did for the game as a citizen.”-George F. The union retained former Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg to represent Flood. Louis where I can devote full time to my business interests."įlood conferred with his lawyer, Allan Zerman, and met with Miller and union general counsel Dick Moss the following month for four hours over lunch at the Summit Hotel in New York and discussed plans for a lawsuit against Kuhn, the AL and NL, both league presidents and the 24 clubs. But under the circumstances I have decided to retire from organized baseball, effective today, and remain in St. Flood issued a statement saying: "If I were younger, I certainly would certainly enjoy playing for Philadelphia. ![]() Louis traded the 31-year-old outfielder with Tim McCarver, Joe Hoerner and Byron Browne to Philadelphia for Dick Allen, Jerry Johnson and Cookie Rojas.
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