Investing in the Future Now Denver Post Alex Rodriguez makes more than the entire Florida Marlins roster. Baseball might have some measure of parity, but payroll parody still exists.
Union to Review Bonds' Free Agency Chicago Tribune The lack of offers to Barry Bonds will be examined by the baseball players association as part of its annual review of the free-agent market.
What Free Agency Did to Fandom Baseball Digest Not even taking into account my everlasting love for the Montreal Expos that was crushed when they left for Washington, and the revenge I feel I should be allowed to exercise upon Bud Selig, the current Baseball market, established with the birth of free agency in the 70’s, had lasting effects on baseball fans too.
April 17, 2008
Curtis Charles Flood was as vital to the economic rights of ballplayers as Jackie Robinson was to breaking the color barrier.
Yet, at his funeral in 1995, one mourner, Tito Fuentes, remarked as he passed by Flood’s casket: "I’m sorry that so many of the young players who made millions, who benefited from his fight, are not here.”
And if you asked one of today's free agents -- who are free to make those millions -- if they ever heard of Curt Flood, you’d probably get a blank stare.
So, who exactly is this man, who threw away a $100,000 salary (huge in those days) for, would you believe, a principle?
As a baseball player, he was the superior centerfielder of his day. A three-time All-Star and seven-time Gold Glove winner, Flood hit .300 six times during a 15-year major league career that began in 1956. As a man, he stood up for his rights.
After the 1969 season, the Cardinals attempted to trade him to the Philadelphia Phillies and Flood, then 31 years of age, refused to go. There was just one problem: He had no rights.
At the time, baseball was run by an old boy’s network and the infamous reserve clause that bound a player one year at a time, in perpetuity, to the club that owned his contract. Flood took his case to the Supreme Court.
From January 1970 to June 1972, the case, Flood v. Kuhn, made its way through the district, circuit and Supreme Court. Justice Holmes, who presided over the case, ruled that the business of giving baseball exhibitions for profit was not 'trade or commerce in the commonly-accepted use of those words" because "personal effort, not related to production, is not a subject of commerce." Nor was it interstate, because the movement of ball clubs across state lines was merely "incidental" to the business of baseball.
You’d need Casey Stengel to figure out what all that means, but the Supreme Court ruled against Flood and upheld Major League Baseball's antitrust exemption. But the ruling in the Flood case paved the way for the 1975 Messersmith-McNally rulings, and free agency.
Flood would return the following year with the Washington Senators, but he was a pariah in his own clubhouse. He quit after 18 games and never played Major League Baseball again.
Years later, in his book, "The Way It Is," Flood eloquently said: "I’m a child of the sixties. During that period of time this country was coming apart at the seams. We were in Southeast Asia. And to think that merely because I was a professional baseball player, I could ignore what was going on outside the walls of Busch Stadium, was truly hypocrisy and now I found that all of those rights that these great Americans were dying for, I didn’t have in my own profession…"
You’ve heard all the arguments, maybe you’ve even made them yourself, I’ve even, in a weak moment, made a few — that greed is running rampant, free agency is ruining the game, and we should go back to… (well, it all gets a bit hazy after that.)
That kind of thinking doesn’t jibe with the attendance figures. Or, even slightly more important, the U.S. Constitution.
There may still be a Hall of Fame for Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, but there is no Hall of Fame for Curt Flood. And I think that’s a shame.
How It Happened EPSN.com Andy Messersmith's name has largely been lost to history. Some may remember him as the pitcher who challenged baseball's reserve clause, but most fans don't realize how good of a pitcher he was.
Remembering Curt Flood BlackAmericaWeb It’s hard to imagine a time when professional athletes worked a second job in the off-season to make ends meet and spent their entire career with the team that drafted them as a rookie.
Trade, Extension and Free Agency Talk The Bleacher Report Last year, the Chicago White Sox had troubles with contract talks that got in the way of winning.
Who won in Flood v. Kuhn?
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Although I agree that giving players rights, such as free agency, I think the greed that's "destroying baseball" isn't the players themselves--it's the players' union. This is one of the most highly paid unions in the world, yet they feel the need to strike? That is pure greed. Even this year, the union lawyers were looking into if the fact that Bonds had not been picked up by another team constituted "unlawful collusion" and, if so, who they could sue. I seriously doubt Bonds is in dire straights right now.
However, Flood had no responsibility for foreseeing the results of his suit beyond his own free agency, and what he was fighting for should certainly be a ballplayer's right. Good on him for it! I just wish they didn't get so carried away sometimes.
Spinner said...
What about the agents? Aren't they the grease in the machinery pushing the greed? After all, they certainly get a nice piece of the action when all goes toward the player's side of the ledger. Who motivated the famous line, "Show me the money!"?
For every "effect" there was a "cause". But for every "cause" there are "unintended consequences". What Flood started had a beneficial effect, but its unintended consequences may be the greed in baseball. We have multi-millionaires playing for bilionaires. It's not a"democracy" of fans either. The rich get the "stadium club" and the top chefs (Wolfgang Puck in L.A.) the poor get the $6.00 nose bleed bleachers and a hot dog made of mystery meat.
To understand who is really coming out the "winner' you have to follow the money. To whom does the lion's share of the money go? Then you'll find the winner.
Don't get me wrong. The current situation is better than the old system. It's free enterprise at work not "slave labor".
Bheckel169 said...
Have to disagree. As a young little leaguer in a small town in So. California in the 50's I had lots of baseball idols. I remember when the Dodgers left Brooklyn and first played at the Colliseum. Our family would go and I'd watch Duke Snyder, Pee Wee Reese, Gino Cimoli, Gil Hodges, Junior Gilliam, Maury Wills, Johnnie Podres and of course Don Drysdale and my all time favorite, Sandy Koufax. Every year I knew when the season started my favorites would be back and the Dodgers would be the same team, same chemistry, indelibly branded. These players made the team and team was those players. When free agency came into existence, I lost track of my favorite players and the makeup of the teams changed hands like we change underwear. No, sorry. Baseball was never the same for me. I haven't watched a game in decades.
Bruce
wayne gallup said...
I no longer watch baseball, much less go to professional games. The players have become whiney primadonnas, and the fans have become idiots I don't care to spend time with. My youth was spent with the Sacramento Solons of the Pacific Coast League. They loved the game for itself, and I loved them in return.
So what sort of life do I have without sports heroes? How about Civil War reenacting, (Cavalry), growing fruit and olive trees. smoking good cigars, and (gasp) reading. I do not understand people whose lives are incomplete without being some sort of "sports fan".