A Well-Paid Slave

by Brad Snyder

  Before the meeting, Flood conferred with Marvin Miller.

  “Why is it nobody’s ever done this before?” Flood asked Miller.

  Miller reminded him of Gardella’s and Toolson’s lawsuits, how Gardella had been paid off and Toolson had lost. Any player willing to sue Major League Baseball, Miller said, must have either no choice or nothing to lose. Flood was risking everything so that his fellow ballplayers might have more bargaining power and more control over their careers.

  Before Flood spoke that morning, he waited outside the meeting room as the players addressed several related items on their agenda. For nearly two months, the players and owners had been trying unsuccessfully to negotiate a new labor agreement. The players proposed several modifications to the reserve clause. The owners rejected all of them. Instead, the owners offered to raise the minimum salary by $500 per year (to $10,500 in 1970), daily meal money at spring training by 50 cents (to $12.50 in 1970), and in-season meal money by 50 cents (to $15.50 in 1970). They also agreed to allow lawyers or agents to participate in salary negotiations but refused to include it in writing. The player representatives voted unanimously to reject the owners’ counteroffer because of their refusal to compromise on the critical issue in the labor agreement, the reserve clause.

  The players also reviewed the lack of progress of the joint study committee. As part of the 1968 Basic Agreement, the players and owners had agreed to form a committee to discuss “possible alternatives to the reserve clause as now constituted.” The committee had been meeting for the last two years. Each time the players proposed an alternative to the reserve clause, the owners rejected it. “If you want to change one comma,” Miller said, describing the owners’ position, “Yankee Stadium will fall.”

  Flood’s timing was perfect. The player representatives were primed to listen to a challenge to the reserve clause. Miller spoke first. Most of the player representatives knew only that Flood had been traded to the Phillies and had announced his intention to retire. Miller explained that Flood planned to challenge the legality of the reserve clause in court. He told the player reps that he had met with Flood on several occasions and had given Flood the “third degree” about the risks. Flood was determined to sue with or without the Players Association’s support. Thus, Miller explained, it would benefit the association to provide Flood with the best possible legal counsel and to have input on his legal strategy. Miller proposed that in exchange for the right to select Flood’s counsel, the Players Association would agree to pay Flood’s legal fees and related travel expenses.

  The players were skeptical of Flood’s retirement announcement. They knew that their only leverage in salary negotiations was to threaten to quit. They also knew that Flood was not the first player to make such a threat after being traded. Earlier that year, Montreal Expos first baseman- outfielder Donn Clendenon had balked at being traded to the Houston Astros for outfielder-first baseman Rusty Staub. On February 28, 1969, Clendenon announced his retirement and said he planned to take a $40,000-a-year public relations job with the Atlanta-based Scripto pen company. The Expos coaxed Clendenon out of retirement with a two-year contract and a $14,000 raise on his $35,000 annual salary. Staub, for his part, refused to return to Houston, which filed suit against Montreal before receiving additional players and monetary compensation.

  A few weeks after Clendenon’s change of heart, retirement talk surfaced from the shaggy-haired, mod-dressing Boston Red Sox outfielder Ken “Hawk” Harrelson. Two years earlier, Harrelson had joined the Red Sox during their “Impossible Dream” season after being released by the Kansas City A’s at midseason because of a dispute with A’s owner Charlie Finley. In April 1969, the Red Sox traded Harrelson to the Cleveland Indians. The 27-year-old Harrelson, wearing dark glasses, a maize sweater, multicolored pants, and high-heeled white boots, immediately announced his retirement, citing his Boston-area business interests. Cleveland changed his mind with a new contract that reportedly paid him $75,000 plus $25,000 for promotional work.

  Finally, on June 3, 1969, Montreal Expos shortstop Maury Wills shocked his team a few hours before game time by announcing his retirement. This was not about money; Wills was making the highest salary of his career, $80,000. The former Dodgers star and team captain, whom the Expos had acquired from the Pirates in the previous winter’s expansion draft, wanted to return to the West Coast. He planned on franchising a dry-cleaning business. Eight days later, the Expos traded Wills back to the Dodgers. The 36-year-old Wills unretired and played through the 1972 season.

  As a result of the Clendenon and Harrelson incidents, the owners passed a caveat emptor (“let the buyer beware”) rule. All trades were final regardless of who retired or threatened to retire. The rule was passed in early December, a few weeks after the Flood trade, and therefore did not apply to him.

  After Miller spoke, Flood took the podium and punctured the players’ skepticism about his lawsuit with his brutal honesty. He was not threatening to retire as a negotiating tactic. He was going to sue baseball, with or without their help. He explained that he was not doing it for the money. He was doing it because the reserve clause as it currently existed was inhumane and unjust. This was a question not only about how the business of baseball should be conducted, but also of human dignity. We are all “under the same yoke,” he said. “I can’t be bought off. Someone has to do it. . . . I feel I’m qualified and capable of doing it.”

  Flood knew most of the players in the room. Player representatives were usually smart, veteran players who were not afraid of management retaliation. For 20 minutes, he spoke from his heart before a group that included four future Hall of Famers (Jim Bunning, Roberto Clemente, Reggie Jackson, and Brooks Robinson), a future U.S. congressman and senator (Bunning), two future major league managers (Phil Regan and Joe Torre), and three future general managers (Tom Haller, Dal Maxvill, and Woody Woodward).

  After Flood finished, the player representatives asked Miller for his views. Miller reminded the group that Flood was a member of the association with a problem that affected all of them. It was “of tremendous importance,” Miller said, that the association help Flood as much as possible. More important, it was incumbent on the association to make sure that Flood had the best possible legal counsel so that he would not make “bad law.” The players were the ones who would have to live with it.

  The player representatives questioned Flood for more than an hour. With Miller serving as moderator, Flood and his fellow players acted like a group of business executives in a board meeting but with the candor and casual dress of ballplayers in a pregame strategy session. “A lot of people think baseball players are clods,” Maxvill said a month after the meeting. “But I never was prouder than when I listened to the questions the player reps put to Flood at that meeting.”

  Tom Haller of the Dodgers asked an early but pivotal question: During this period of black militancy, was Flood doing this as part of a movement? Was he doing this because he was black?

  The room fell silent. Haller’s question had taken Miller by surprise. But the question was on the minds of many of the players in the room, all of whom, except Jackson and Clemente, were white.

  The black power and antiwar movements of the late 1960s inspired several high-profile black athletes to take political stands. In 1966, Jim Brown retired from pro football at age 30 to pursue an acting career and tackle racial issues. A year before his retirement, the running back had helped to organize the Negro Industrial and Economic Union to benefit black businesses. The same year as Brown’s retirement, Muhammad Ali spoke out against the Vietnam War (“I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong,” he said). The following year, Ali refused induction into the military and was stripped of his heavyweight title. A jury disagreed with his contention that as a member of the Nation of Islam he was a conscientious objector. In December 1969, Ali’s draft-evasion conviction was still being appealed. At the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos bowed their heads and
raised their black-gloved fists on the medal stand in support of black power and unity. UCLA basketball star Lew Alcindor (known today as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) and other African-American athletes boycotted the Olympics altogether. Tennis star Arthur Ashe sought to raise awareness about South Africa’s racist system of apartheid by attempting to compete in the 1970 South African Open. After denying Ashe a visa to play in its tournament, South Africa was banned from the 1970 Davis Cup.

  Haller did not want to be associated with black militancy. “I didn’t want it to be just a black thing,” Haller recalled. “I wanted it to be a base-ball thing.” Other players agreed. “I wanted to make sure that he didn’t have a personal ax to grind,” the Expos’ Ron Brand recalled. Flood later described Haller’s query as a “fascinating question, well-meant.” The players’ financial support for Flood’s lawsuit hinged on his response.

  Flood explained that as a black man he had experienced many hardships in baseball, hardships that may have made him more sensitive to injustice than the average white player. Yet, he was not suing baseball as a black man; he was suing as a major league ballplayer. The reserve clause, he said, was an injustice that affected players of all races, and it was time that someone did something about it. He believed he was the right man to do it.

  Flood knew that his answer may have satisfied his fellow players, but it again raised the question about his true motivations. The players in Puerto Rico knew nothing about Flood’s past racial battles. Not even McCarver, one of Flood’s friends and teammates, knew the full extent of his housing dispute. Flood did not tell any of the players about the racism he had experienced in and out of baseball or his passion for the civil rights movement. His answer to Haller’s question was technically right—the reserve clause did affect players of all races—but the answer avoided the lifetime of motivations behind his lawsuit.

  After he answered Haller’s black-militancy question, the players indicated by their questions that they supported Flood.

  Jim Bunning of the Phillies asked, if he had not been traded, what Flood would have done.

  The trade brought things to a head; he was tired of being treated like chattel.

  Reggie Jackson of the A’s asked why Flood wanted to challenge the trading of players from one team to another.

  To make things between the players and owners more fair.

  Haller asked what Flood would do if the Phillies gave him his release.

  Miller said that would be okay if other teams bid on his services.

  McCarver asked what would happen if Flood won in court.

  Miller said a court would determine whether the reserve clause was legal, but a solution would still need to be negotiated between the owners and the Players Association.

  Moe Drabowsky of the Royals asked if Flood would play again after the lawsuit.

  Yes, if he wasn’t too old.

  Bob Locker of the Seattle Pilots asked if there were any dangers if Flood won.

  Miller said there was no danger, as long as everyone realized that the objective was to modify the reserve clause and not abolish it. Miller recognized the owners’ right to recoup their investments in players developed in their minor league systems. He also knew that making all the players free agents at the end of every season would flood the market and cause too much uncertainty. Miller’s goal, therefore, was to modify the reserve clause to allow players to test the market after a certain number of years.

  Several players, including Bunning and Milt Pappas of the Braves, asked what would happen if other players wanted to join the lawsuit.

  Roberto Clemente reminded them that no other players had stepped forward. Reggie Jackson said that no other players could afford it. Other players, Miller said, would either have to wait for the outcome of Flood’s case or file their own self-sponsored lawsuits. Flood’s would be the test case.

  Steve Hamilton of the Yankees asked Flood how far he would go with his lawsuit.

  As far as necessary.

  Bunning asked Flood what would happen if the owners offered him a $1 million settlement but refused to modify the reserve clause.

  It was a classic Bunning question. He was not concerned whether the union should support Flood, but what might happen a year or two into Flood’s lawsuit. Bunning, like Miller, was testing Flood’s resolve. Bunning’s support meant more than that of any other player in the room. He had served on the player committee that hired Miller. He had made it his mission to improve the major league pension. Traded from the Pirates to the Dodgers in 1969, Bunning was released by the Dodgers after the season and re-signed with the Phillies. He was attending the meeting as the union’s pension representative and reigned as the group’s intellectual leader.

  The settlement, Flood replied, must be satisfactory to all the players. The answer seemed to satisfy Bunning. Flood had gained an important ally.

  Drabowsky asked Flood what he had told Philadelphia.

  Flood said he had told them nothing but planned to hold a press conference December 22 and to send letters to Miller and the commissioner stating that, as a free man in a free society, he should have the right to negotiate with the team of his choice.

  Roberto Clemente knew exactly what Flood meant. No one in that room had earned more respect as a player than Clemente. His speed, swing, and incredible throwing arm made him baseball’s first Latin American superstar. His social conscience eventually made him a legend. After collecting his 3,000th hit at the end of the 1972 season, he died in a New Year’s Eve plane crash while on a relief mission to Nicaraguan earthquake victims.

  Miller understood the importance of minority voices such as Clemente’s and Reggie Jackson’s among the player reps. When Bunning was traded from the Phillies to the Pirates after the 1967 season, his new teammates immediately wanted to make him the player rep. With Miller’s support, Bunning urged the Pirates to ask Clemente instead. They agreed.

  Clemente took up Flood’s cause that day at the Sheraton Hotel in Puerto Rico. He related how the reserve clause had led to his playing his entire 18-year career in Pittsburgh. In February 1954, the 19-year-old Clemente turned down a $35,000 offer from the Milwaukee Braves in favor of a $10,000 bonus (and $5,000 salary) from the Brooklyn Dodgers because he wanted to play in New York. After the 1954 season, the last-place Pittsburgh Pirates drafted Clemente, a bonus player who was supposed to remain on the Dodgers’ active roster, from Brooklyn’s Triple-A club in Montreal for $4,000. Clemente later offered to refund the Pirates’ $4,000 in exchange for his freedom. Pirates general manager Joe Brown refused. “He had me,” Clemente told his fellow players, estimating that during his career the Pirates had “made $300,000 on me.”

  The tenor of the meeting soon changed from whether the players would back Flood, to how.

  Max Alvis of the Indians asked how quickly this could get into court.

  Dick Moss, who had been taking detailed notes of the proceedings, said no earlier than the spring.

  Jackson asked Flood if things would have been different if St. Louis had consulted with him about the trade.

  Basically, yes.

  Drabowsky said that the timing could not be better and that taking the reserve clause to court was preferable to a strike. His comment reflected the players’ anger over the owners’ refusal to modify the reserve clause during the joint study committee meetings or negotiations about the 1970 Basic Agreement. As the minutes of the meeting indicated, the owners had left the players with only two choices about the reserve clause: “(1) to take concerted action on the issue by withholding their services, or (2) to test the matter in the courts. As between the two, it was felt that the latter was a far less disruptive course of action, and therefore was preferable.” The players were not unified enough in December 1969 to strike over the reserve clause; they chose to let Flood do their striking for them.

  Joe Torre of the Cardinals was the first player at the meeting to say that the association must back Flood. Torre knew all about being traded. Atlanta Braves vice pre
sident Paul Richards, a frequent union and Miller critic, had blasted Torre for his participation in the 1969 pension dispute. He wanted to cut Torre’s salary $5,000 and take away his complimentary Cadillac. Torre refused to sign his contract. “I don’t care if he holds out until Thanksgiving,” Richards said. Before the 1969 season, Richards traded Torre to the Cardinals for popular first baseman Orlando Cepeda.

  During his one season as Flood’s teammate in 1969, Torre bonded with both Gibson and Flood. “Knowing how entrenched Curt was in St. Louis, it didn’t surprise me,” Torre said of Flood’s decision to sue. An alternate player rep with the Cardinals and a mainstay on the union’s negotiating team, Torre saw the necessity of Flood’s lawsuit and never doubted Flood’s sincerity. “I knew Curt didn’t do something just for the sake of doing something. He did something because he felt very strongly about it,” Torre recalled. “He was a sensitive, personal, passionate person. And he just sort of felt violated. He was making a stand. He was certainly forewarned by Marvin Miller and Dick Moss that you may not play baseball again, and he understood that. He just didn’t think someone should tell him that he has to go play somewhere.”

  Bunning said the representatives needed unanimity.

  Alvis said that unanimity among the player representatives did not necessarily mean that all the rank-and-file players would support Flood’s lawsuit.

  As their questions turned into commentary, the players excused Flood from the room and discussed with Miller how to explain their prospective decision to their fellow players, when to make the lawsuit public, and what effect the lawsuit would have on their labor negotiations with the owners. Miller said that it was up to him and the player representatives to educate their fellow players, but it was up to Flood when to make the lawsuit public. His lawyers would decide when to file. The labor negotiations could continue as planned.