A Well-Paid Slave

by Brad Snyder

  The Reds rewarded Flood for his fine season by calling him up to the major leagues. He had never been to a regular-season major league game before playing in one. On the plane flight to join the team in St. Louis, the airline lost his bag containing his baseball spikes and other equipment. He could not even get out of the Carolina League with his shoes. In St. Louis, he borrowed spikes from one of his new Reds teammates and traded his Hi-Toms uniform number 42 for a Reds uniform bearing number 27. The following spring, and for most of his major league career, he wore number 21—half of Jackie Robinson’s number.

  A week after joining the team, Flood found himself at Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field on the same diamond as his hero. The Reds, Dodgers, and Braves were locked in a pennant race, with the Reds just two games behind the first-place Dodgers. On September 16, the Reds trailed the Dodgers 3-2 with two outs in the top of the ninth inning. When third baseman Ray Jablonski and catcher Ed Bailey both singled to keep the Reds’ hopes alive, Cincinnati manager Birdie Tebbetts sent Flood to pinch-run for Bailey at first base. At that moment, Flood represented only one thing to Jackie Robinson—the winning run. Flood never made it past first. Robinson scooped up pinch hitter Stan Palys’s ground ball at third base and threw to first for the final out. It was the only time the two men shared the same major league field. After the season, the Dodgers sold Robinson to their crosstown rivals, the New York Giants. Robinson had already decided to retire and accept an executive position with Chock full o’ Nuts. He later explained that he wanted nothing more to do with the game or the racist people who ran it.

  The Reds, who regarded Flood as the nation’s best minor league prospect, were so eager to get him into their lineup that they sought to turn the graceful center fielder into a third baseman. The experiment began in pregame warm-ups during Flood’s September call-up to the major leagues, continued during an aborted winter league season in the Dominican Republic and at spring training in 1957, and ended with the Savannah Redlegs of the Class A South Atlantic (“Sally”) League.

  After High Point-Thomasville, the last thing Flood needed was a year in the Sally League. With teams in Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, and North and South Carolina, the league was Flood’s introduction to the Deep South. Hank Aaron had integrated the Sally League in 1953 along with several other players. Despite growing up in Mobile, Alabama, Aaron said he “wasn’t prepared at all for what would happen that year.” If anything, racial tensions had increased by the time that Flood played there four years later.

  Before the 1957 season, the Georgia Senate passed a bill, 31-0, banning interracial athletics in an attempt to keep integrated teams out of the state’s four Sally League towns. The bill would have ended many major league teams’ affiliation with Georgia, but it died in the House of Representatives. Senator Leon Butts, the author of the legislation and a native of Lumpkin, Georgia, near Columbus, fumed: “I think it’s a shame the major league ballclubs and the NAACP have gotten control of the Georgia House.”

  That same year, U.S. senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina broke the record for the longest filibuster in Senate history by holding the floor for 24 hours, 18 minutes. He was defeated in his efforts to prevent the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. On September 4, Arkansas governor Orval Faubus enlisted the National Guard to prevent nine black students from integrating Little Rock’s all-white Central High School. Faubus flouted federal court orders and forced President Eisenhower to bring in the U.S. military to oversee the integration of the school. The Savannah Morning News ran front-page stories about the “Little Rock Crisis” every day.

  Flood knew what to expect after a season in the Carolina League, but life in Savannah was still hard. “The Georgia city had lately been in a high state of tension about school desegregation and other civil rights,” he said. “When I saw how uptight the black community was, and how hostile the whites were, I realized that Cincinnati had arranged another full dose for me.”

  One day, in between games of a doubleheader, Flood peeled off his only uniform and threw it into a pile with those of his white teammates. The team trainer yelled as if Flood had lit him on fire. The trainer extricated Flood’s uniform and jockstrap from the pile with a long stick with a nail on it and sent his clothes to the black laundry 20 minutes away. Flood cried as he sat naked waiting for his uniform to arrive while his white teammates took the field. He could not even wait in the same section of the clubhouse as his white teammates. He dressed in a cordoned- off section made out of corrugated tin next to the dugout. According to Flood, local law prevented him from dressing with his white teammates.

  He could not find a place to live until the dean of men at the local black college, Savannah State, offered him a room. The college cafeteria was usually closed after games, so Flood sometimes cooked a piece of meat in his room. Sometimes he went hungry rather than eat the greasy food at the only late-night place that would serve him, the all-black lunchroom at the local bus station.

  Savannah center fielder Buddy Gilbert thought that Flood was the loneliest man in the world. On road trips, Gilbert frequently brought food out to Flood and the other black players on the team bus. “Poor Gilbert’s small kindnesses only accentuated the cruelty of prejudice,” Flood said. Flood seethed as he waited for his food on the bus. “He took a lot,” Gilbert recalled. “How he ever held it in was beyond my comprehension. There were times it really bothered him, more than the other guys. He would just get really quiet.”

  Playing third base made Flood an easy target for abuse. He committed 41 errors that season, and each error was an excuse for the fans, either home or away, to call him another name. In August, he injured the inside of his right arm sliding into the canvas bag at second base. An ugly mass of flesh formed on the joint and made throwing extremely painful. He played on, though he shifted to right field for the last two weeks of the season. For Flood, it was all about surviving physically and mentally and advancing to the major leagues. He could not do that on the bench.

  Flood’s Sally League season was solid but not spectacular. His .299 average was the fourth highest in the league. He finished among the Sally League leaders in most offensive categories. He made two Sally League all-star teams at third base despite his 41 errors.

  The Reds thought enough of Flood’s Sally League campaign to call him up again at the end of the season. His first major league hit was a home run, a two-run shot down the left-field line off Chicago Cubs pitcher Moe Drabowsky. The home run was a happy ending to two brutal seasons in the southern minor leagues. The name-calling, segregated facilities, and second-class citizenship had transformed Flood from an extroverted kid who charmed adults into a quiet, introverted man who had survived two trying years in the South because of his tremendous pride and inner competitive fire.

  Flood discovered the effects of the reserve clause that winter in Venezuela. He was sent there to learn to play second base because of the outstanding 1957 season of Reds third baseman Don Hoak. Then came the first trade. In exchange for Flood and outfielder Joe Taylor, the Reds acquired three Cardinals pitchers whom sportswriter Jim Murray later described as “a flock of nobodies even the slot man on the Sporting News had to look up.”

  The Reds traded Flood to the Cardinals for the same reason they had tried to turn him into an infielder—Cincinnati was not ready for an all-black outfield. The Reds already had 1956 Rookie of the Year Frank Robinson in left field and preferred another West Oakland player, Vada Pinson, in center. Pinson was not the defensive outfielder that Flood was, but Pinson was bigger, stronger, and faster. After tearing up Class C Visalia in 1957, Pinson played so spectacularly in spring training in 1958 that he started in right field for the Reds on Opening Day before a slump sent him back to the minor leagues. The following year, Pinson emerged as the Reds’ star center fielder.

  Bobby Mattick, the scout who had signed all three players, rejected the all-black-outfield theory as the reason behind the Flood trade. Mattick
pointed out that another of his black Bay Area signees, Tommy Harper, started in the Reds outfield with Robinson and Pinson from 1963 to 1965. But that was years later. Mattick attributed the trade to Reds manager Birdie Tebbetts, who had told Mattick that Flood was too small. Tebbetts denied that race had anything to do with it, saying he had traded Flood because of a hitch in his swing. Flood did have a hitch (that he later corrected), but so did many other great players, including Frank Robinson.

  An equally plausible explanation for Flood’s trade to the Cardinals was the unspoken quota system employed by most major league teams of the late 1950s and early 1960s. “There was a quota on a lot of ball clubs,” Frank Robinson said. “If you saw a few [blacks] at spring training at a major league camp and there was more than four, you said, ‘Uh-uh, someone’s got to go.’ ” The Reds opened the 1958 season with four black position players: Robinson, Pinson, George Crowe, and Bob Thurman. Flood would have made five, but he had already been sent to St. Louis.

  At that time, St. Louis was the southernmost city in the major leagues, both geographically and politically. St. Louis was the city where the slave Dred Scott had sued for his freedom and lost, resulting in the infamous 1857 Supreme Court decision that some believe ignited the Civil War. In 1947, several southern members of the St. Louis Cardinals had threatened to boycott their team’s games against Jackie Robinson and the Dodgers. After the boycott talk was crushed, Cardinals outfielder Enos “Country” Slaughter and catcher Joe Garagiola spiked Robinson at first base; Robinson also exchanged heated words with Garagiola, a St. Louis native, at home plate. A few years later, the Cardinals tormented Robinson and Dodgers pitcher Joe Black. The Chase Hotel in St. Louis had refused to allow black players to stay there until Robinson broke that barrier in 1954 by agreeing not to use the pool or dining room or hang out in the lobby. St. Louis was as segregated in 1958 as any southern city. Flood’s first apartment there in a black hotel was so run-down that he found his own lodging in what turned out to be a whorehouse.

  Cardinals president Gussie Busch and new general manager Bing Devine were bent on changing the team’s racist image. They were succeeding until Busch replaced manager Fred Hutchinson—who had instigated the trade for Flood and started him in center field in 1958— with Solly Hemus, who was named player-manager. A diminutive former Cardinals infielder known as “Mighty Mouse,” Hemus wrote Busch an ingratiating letter in 1956 after the Cardinals had traded him to the Phillies. Hemus gushed about how much he had loved wearing a Cardinals uniform and how he wanted to return to the organization one day. Three seasons later, Busch granted the 35-year-old Hemus’s wish.

  During Hemus’s managerial tenure from 1959 to 1961, Flood spent two and a half seasons as a pinch runner, late-inning defensive replacement, and second-fiddle center fielder. Hemus insisted on experimenting with anyone and everyone, including slick-fielding first baseman Bill White, in center. White nearly killed himself out there. Hemus also refused to put Bob Gibson into the regular starting rotation and often shuttled him back and forth between the Cardinals and the minor leagues. Hemus believed that the Creighton-educated Gibson lacked the brains to learn to control his fastball and master National League hitters. Flood and Gibson believed that Hemus, the son of an Austrian immigrant, was not simply making player evaluations. “Hemus acted as if I smelled bad,” Flood said. “He avoided my presence and when he could not do that he avoided my eye.”

  Hemus’s lack of confidence in him drove Flood to distraction. During the Hemus years, Flood rarely slept more than a few hours each night. He often stayed awake replaying the previous night’s game in his head, which sportswriter Al Stump called Flood’s “Midnight League.” He had already been smoking a pack of cigarettes a day since he was 15. Now insomnia and indigestion were Flood’s closest friends. Nearly every day there was a new center fielder auditioning for his job. A St. Louis sportswriter speculated in July 1961 that Flood might be left unprotected during the 1962 expansion draft.

  Hemus revealed his true colors after inserting himself into the second game of a May 3, 1959, doubleheader against the Pirates’ black rookie pitcher Bennie Daniels. During a second-inning at-bat, Daniels nicked Hemus in the leg. Hemus motioned toward the mound and yelled at Daniels, “You black bastard!” After Hemus doubled in the third inning, Daniels whizzed a fastball near Hemus’s chin. Just as Daniels threw his next pitch, Hemus released his bat toward the mound. Both benches emptied. Fists flew. Hemus held a closed-door team meeting immediately after the game and revealed to his players what he had called Daniels. Flood, White, and George Crowe, acquired in the offseason from the Reds, sat there in stunned silence. They now understood where they stood with their manager. “Until then, we had detested Hemus for not using his best lineup,” Flood said. “Now we hated him for himself.”

  Hemus was fired on July 6, 1961, and replaced with Johnny Keane. After briefly studying for the priesthood, Keane had played in the Cardinals’ minor league system until a vicious beaning by pitcher Sig Jakucki in 1935 fractured Keane’s skull and put him in a coma for a week and in the hospital for six more. Keane played one more year, then managed for 17 seasons in the Cardinals’ minor league system before becoming one of Hemus’s coaches. Keane had been passed over five times for the Cardinals’ managerial post.

  As the new Cardinals manager, Keane immediately inserted Gibson into the starting rotation. The 5-foot-9, 165-pound Flood finally heeded his coaches’ advice, stopped trying to hit home runs, and turned himself into a singles hitter. A month later, Keane made Flood the starting center fielder. Flood finished the 1961 season with a .322 batting average and held the center field job for the next eight seasons. The former seminary student sensed the anxiety that lay behind Flood’s calm clubhouse demeanor. He could read on Flood’s face when things were bothering him, and he tried to put Flood’s active mind at ease. Keane recognized that Flood, Gibson, and White were not just great natural athletes; they were also smart, educated, and proud men and budding team leaders. He respected them in a way that Hemus, according to Flood and Gibson, never did.

  Flood, Gibson, and White led the Cardinals into the 1960s. They represented the next generation of outspoken black athletes. They also became the best of friends. Flood first met Bob Gibson during a September 1957 game in the Sally League. The starting pitcher for Columbus against Flood’s Savannah team, Gibson did not get out of the first inning, walking five straight hitters with two outs—beginning with Flood. The segregation and discrimination in the Sally League infuriated Gibson. One of seven children whose father had died three months before he was born and whose mother worked in a laundry and cleaned houses and hospitals in her spare time, Gibson grew up a sickly child in an Omaha, Nebraska, ghetto. A rat once bit Gibson’s ear. Pneumonia nearly killed him. His older brother, Josh (not the Hall of Fame catcher), promised to buy Gibson a baseball glove if he recovered. Raised by his older brother, Gibson starred in baseball and basketball playing with and against whites. He attended Creighton University on a basketball scholarship and played for several years with the Harlem Globetrotters, initially dividing his year between the Cardinals and the Globetrotters until Devine agreed to cover his basketball salary.

  Gibson and Flood were reunited at the Cardinals’ 1958 rookie instructional camp. Gibson arrived in St. Petersburg in 1958 and made the same mistake that Flood had made with the Reds in 1956—Gibson showed up at the white players’ hotel. He was immediately sent to a black boardinghouse, where Flood happened to be one of his three housemates. They roomed together when Flood briefly began the 1958 season at Triple-A Omaha and were road roommates for nearly ten years with the Cardinals. Flood grew closer to Gibson than he was to his own brothers.

  Flood and Gibson may have led the Cardinals on and off the field in the 1960s, but in early 1961 they could not crack Hemus’s starting lineup. Rather, the mantle of leadership initially fell on the third member of their trio, Bill White. Born in Lakewood, Florida, and raised in the integrated steel town of Warren
, Ohio, William De Kova White was the only child of a military secretary and never knew his steelworker father. White finished second in his high school class, attended Hiram College on an academic scholarship, and planned on becoming a physician. But the premed student could not bear asking his mother for any more spending money and instead accepted the New York Giants’ $2,500 bonus to play baseball. As the first black player to survive a season in the Carolina League, White yelled at his tormentors and gave them the finger. White, like Flood, later developed an outward calm that masked his deep sensitivity and competitive inner fire.

  One weekend before spring training in 1961, Flood and White drove to Miami and were introduced to a young man named Cassius Clay. The Louisville Lip charmed them. The light-heavyweight Olympic gold medalist in 1960, Clay had moved up to the heavyweight division and turned professional. During a two-week period in Miami Beach, he won his fourth and fifth professional bouts against Jim Robinson and Donnie Fleeman. He also sparred with former heavyweight champion Ingemar Johansson. “I’ll go dancin’ with Johansson,” Clay said.

  In between fighting palookas and dancin’ with Johansson, Clay invited Flood and White to a Nation of Islam meeting. They were searched for weapons and forced to leave their wallets and watches at the door. A speaker stood up and started talking about white devils. The ballplayers, as well as Clay, got up and left. “Sounds as if black power would be white power backwards,” Gibson said later. “That wouldn’t be much improvement.”

  In 1961, White spoke up about one of the most important baseball issues of the day: segregated spring training facilities. White arrived in St. Petersburg, Florida, an All-Star first baseman only to be treated like a second-class citizen. His white Cardinals teammates either rented private beachfront condos for their families or sunned themselves by the pool at St. Petersburg’s Vinoy Park Hotel. White and his fellow black players stayed in boardinghouses in the black section of St. Petersburg and were afraid to bring their families to Florida. As a result, any team unity fostered in spring training was destroyed once the Cardinals left the field.