A Well-Paid Slave

by Brad Snyder

  For Flood, Robinson’s “soliloquy . . . sent chills up and down my spine.” His hero had just stood up for him in open court for taking on the baseball establishment just as Robinson had done 23 years earlier. Flood had endured similar things in the southern minor leagues that Robinson had endured with the Dodgers. He had overcome racism in the Reds organization and with Solly Hemus to become an All-Star and Gold Glove center fielder. He had experienced the thrill of winning two World Series. He had ascended to the upper levels of baseball’s salary scale. Now it was Flood’s turn to take what Robinson had taught him over the years and to stand up and be counted. Robinson had just given Flood the encouragement he needed to fight on.

  Flood was not the only one inspired by Robinson’s testimony. As soon as he excused Robinson from the witness stand, Judge Cooper called for a short recess and brought lawyers from both sides into his chambers. He invited Kuhn, Feeney, and Cronin. He also invited Robinson. The defense thought that Cooper had a problem with Robinson’s testimony. Instead, Cooper requested both sides’ permission to ask Robinson for an autograph for his grandson. No one objected, and the starstruck Cooper received Robinson’s signature. Robinson was not the last celebrity in the courtroom that day.

  As soon as they returned from the impromptu autograph session, Cooper ordered people to be seated and called for the next witness.

  “Mr. Greenberg will be our next witness,” Goldberg said.

  Hank Greenberg knew about discrimination. The 6-foot-41⁄2 - inch Detroit Tigers slugger battled anti-Semitism his entire career, particularly in 1938 when he chased Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record and finished two shy of Ruth’s mark with 58. Despite losing more than four seasons to military service in World War II, he finished his 13-year career with 331 home runs and 1,276 RBIs. Before anyone had ever heard of Sandy Koufax, Greenberg had been baseball’s most legendary Jewish player. In 1947, Greenberg’s last season and Jackie Robinson’s first, Robinson collided with the big Pittsburgh Pirates first baseman on a close play at first. During Robinson’s next time on base, Greenberg asked Robinson if he was okay and told him to ignore Greenberg’s stupid, racist teammates. “Stick in there,” Greenberg said. “You’re doing fine. Keep your chin up.” He even invited Robinson to dinner. “Class tells,” Robinson said at the time. “It sticks out all over Mr. Greenberg.”

  Greenberg also knew about the evils of the reserve clause. He had been in the Tigers organization since 1930 and came back in his first full season after World War II to lead the American League in home runs (44) and RBIs (127) in 1946. But the Tigers no longer wanted to pay Greenberg’s $75,000 salary in 1947, so they put him on waivers. They refused to allow any of their American League rivals to claim him and then sold him for the $10,000 waiver price to the Pirates. Greenberg heard about the sale on the radio and then received a one-paragraph telegram making it official. The 36-year-old Greenberg informed Pirates owner John Galbreath that he was retiring. Galbreath talked Greenberg out of it by agreeing to the following conditions: (1) moving in the left-field fences at Forbes Field to 335 feet; (2) allowing Greenberg to fly instead of take trains and to have his own room on the road; and (3) raising Greenberg’s salary from $75,000 to $100,000. Greenberg agreed to play for just one more season, provided the Pirates agreed to release him at the end of the year. “Mr. Galbreath,” Greenberg said, “I’m never going to go through the shock of being traded or sold like a piece of merchandise like what just happened to me with Detroit.”

  True to his word, Greenberg retired after one season in Pittsburgh. Unlike Jackie Robinson, he was welcomed into management. Bill Veeck, the maverick owner of the Cleveland Indians, made Greenberg the team’s vice president in 1948, farm director in 1949, general manager in 1950, and part owner and director in 1955. Greenberg sold his interest in the Indians in 1958 and the following year was part of Veeck’s group that bought the Chicago White Sox. Greenberg worked as the team’s general manager until 1961. Two years later, he left the White Sox and baseball. In 1956, he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Greenberg lived a good life. He had married Caral Gimbel, whose family owned the Gimbel Brothers and Saks Fifth Avenue department stores. After they divorced, Greenberg remarried and moved to Southern California. His son, Stephen, became the deputy commissioner of base-ball under Fay Vincent.

  Greenberg, knowing that it meant the end of his ties to Major League Baseball, had been reluctant to testify for Flood. “Greenberg said he agrees with our position on the reserve clause, but he had some qualms about testifying, and asked to think it over,” Max Gitter and Topkis wrote in a May 7 memo to Goldberg. “Perhaps a phone call from you would resolve his doubts in our favor.” Goldberg called Greenberg. Whatever Goldberg said to one of the other most prominent Jewish-American figures of the 20th century, it must have worked.

  Healthy, tanned, and with dark, slicked-back hair, Greenberg was a physically imposing yet soft-spoken witness. As emotional as Robinson was on the witness stand, Greenberg, speaking in the thick Bronx accent of his boyhood, was calm, reserved, and almost aloof. He discussed his career with the Tigers, the telegram he received announcing his trade to the Pirates, and his part ownership of the Indians and the White Sox.

  Greenberg testified that “the reserve clause as it is constituted now and has been is obsolete and antiquated. . . . It seems to me that the times have changed and that the owners and the players are going to have to get together and work more harmoniously and with a more cooperative spirit so that the game can go forward, and the first step or the last step is the reserve clause in the contract.”

  Judge Cooper asked Greenberg why the reserve clause was not in the best interests of baseball.

  “[I]t’s a unilateral contract, Judge,” Greenberg replied. “The ballplayer has no choice other than accept the terms offered to him, because he can’t play elsewhere.” Greenberg had been rankled by the Tigers organization’s callousness in selling him to the Pirates. After 17 years with Detroit, Greenberg felt that he deserved some consideration about where the Tigers were going to send him. Greenberg empathized with Flood: “I think that baseball must recognize that, that the player has built up some equity in playing with the club over a period of years, that he has a family, has friends, has business associations in the city, and they can’t just arbitrarily say, ‘You play in Philadelphia next season.’ ”

  “That is the kind of testimony I want you to give,” Cooper remarked. “I am not passing on the weight of it, but that is really the sort of thing I seek.”

  Greenberg, who believed that the reserve clause should be replaced by a contract for a term of years, helped both the owners and players on cross-examination. He conceded that both sides should sit down and negotiate reserve clause modifications—undercutting Flood’s lawsuit and supporting the owners’ argument that this issue should be resolved through labor negotiation. Greenberg, however, added that he was not a member of the Players Association and had met Marvin Miller for the first time that day. Greenberg also admitted that the owners had some equity interest in the players they developed and that it had taken him three minor league and two major league seasons to round into peak form. But, as a former owner, Greenberg said: “I would be perfectly willing to invest in baseball tomorrow if we had no reserve clause.”

  After Greenberg’s testimony, Marvin Miller retook the witness stand to testify about the owners’ refusal to negotiate about the reserve clause. American League counsel Sandy Hadden cross-examined Miller after lunch. Miller conceded that the owners had compromised on a number of other issues in the upcoming basic agreement, just not on the reserve clause.

  Flood’s legal team called one more star witness on this second day of Flood’s trial: pitcher-turned-author Jim Brosnan. A major league relief pitcher for nine years, in 1954 and from 1956 to 1963, Brosnan spent his offseasons working for a Chicago advertising firm but really wanted to be a writer. He dared to read books in the clubhouse. His teammates called the bespectacled pitcher “Pr
ofessor.” After writing several magazine articles for Robert Creamer at Sports Illustrated, Brosnan kept a diary while splitting the 1959 season between the St. Louis Cardinals and Cincinnati Reds. The result was The Long Season, the first baseball book to capture the way ballplayers really talked. Although tame by modern standards, The Long Season pulled back the curtain on life inside the clubhouse. Brosnan cast a critical eye on his fellow players and coaches. One of his main targets was Flood’s old nemesis, Cardinals manager Solly Hemus. Brosnan wrote that Hemus “tried too hard. He tends to overmanage and he gets panicky for no good reason at all.” Hemus later said of Brosnan: “He’s the first pitcher I ever heard of who won nine games and felt he had to write a book about it.” Literary critics loved The Long Season, which became a bestseller. Brosnan followed it up with Pennant Race, a diary of the Reds’ 1961 season.

  Brosnan’s literary success curtailed his baseball career. The Reds’ new general manager, Bill DeWitt, objected to Brosnan’s books and magazine articles. NBC offered Brosnan $4,000 to be miked for a baseball documentary. DeWitt demanded prior approval of the script. NBC said not even President Kennedy received prebroadcast approval. DeWitt prevented Brosnan from doing the documentary by invoking paragraph 3(c) of the Uniform Player Contract, which said:

  DeWitt withheld his consent. Brosnan wrote to commissioner Ford Frick, National League president Warren Giles, and Players Association part-time adviser Judge Robert Cannon for help. No one responded.

  The Player further agrees that during the playing season he will not make public appearances, participate in radio or television programs or permit his picture to be taken or write or sponsor newspaper or magazine articles or sponsor commercial products without the written consent of the Club, which shall not be withheld except in the reasonable interests of the Club or professional baseball.

  “You’re being censored,” a New York columnist told Brosnan. “That’s unconstitutional.”

  “Obviously,” Brosnan replied, “but so is the reserve clause.” DeWitt traded Brosnan in May 1963 to the Chicago White Sox. White Sox general manager Ed Short met Brosnan at the airport and said: “You can’t write here, either.” After Brosnan finished the 1963 season with a 3-9 record, 3.13 ERA, and 14 saves, Short tried to cut Brosnan’s contract from $32,000 to $25,000 and refused to allow him to make up the difference by writing two magazine articles. Brosnan turned down the White Sox contract offer. Short responded by releasing him in February and boasting that “Brosnan can be had for a dollar.” No teams called. After deciding against moving to Europe, Brosnan took out a tiny ad in the March 7, 1964, edition of the Sporting News. “Situation Sought. Bullpen operator, experience.” After breaking down his statistics, Brosnan’s ad concluded: “Free agent. Negotiable terms available. Respectfully request permission to pursue harmless avocation of professional writer.” Only the unconventional Kansas City Athletics owner Charlie Finley responded to Brosnan’s ad, but he wanted the pitcher to take a $5,000 pay cut. Brent Musburger, then writing for the Chicago American, told Brosnan that he was being blackballed. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) accused the White Sox of censorship. Brosnan worked in 1964 and 1965 as a television and radio sports commentator and after that became a full-time freelance writer. He wrote magazine articles about baseball and had started to write a novel.

  Bill Iverson called Brosnan May 1 at his home in Morton Grove, Illinois, and asked if Brosnan would come to New York to testify for Flood. Brosnan agreed. On the plane flight from Chicago to New York, Brosnan questioned his decision. “Why am I doing this?” Brosnan thought. “Our people asked me to do it. And we’ve got some weapons that we’ve never had before. The least I could do was put my ten words in, or two words.”

  Brosnan barely knew Flood, even though they had been teammates for half of the 1958 and 1959 seasons with the Cardinals and they both detested Solly Hemus, but Brosnan knew how cruel the game could be to players who dared to be different. He saw Flood’s fight against the reserve clause as a noble one. “I didn’t perceive this as a race thing,” Brosnan recalled. “I perceived it as a player thing. I had been thinking about these things for a long time.” Brosnan spent two delightful weeks in New York City hanging out with sports journalist Dick Schaap but had almost no contact with Flood at the trial except to shake hands with him and wish him luck.

  On the day of his testimony, Brosnan ate lunch with Red Smith and Jackie Robinson. Smith and Robinson had not been friends during Robinson’s playing days. Smith thought that Robinson was “fiercely racist” and “saw racism and prejudice under the bed.” Inviting Robinson to lunch showed how progressive Smith had become. Smith also was a great admirer of Brosnan’s books. The two men spent most of lunch discussing writing and art. Smith worked for the “Famous Writers School,” a group of renowned writers who critiqued the work of people who paid to send them weekly submissions. Brosnan wanted to get his daughter, an aspiring artist, into the “Famous Artists School.” Robinson, a political and social activist who knew little about writing or art, found it difficult to get a word in as Brosnan and Smith discussed their craft, and thus said almost nothing.

  Brosnan was eager to testify by the time he approached the witness stand. He needed no more incentive than to see Bowie Kuhn taking notes on a yellow legal pad in the front row. At lunch, Smith informed Brosnan what Kuhn had been telling people: “What has [Brosnan] done in baseball that he can be involved in this?”

  Brosnan responded with his wit. Six feet four, lanky, and wearing large black horn-rimmed glasses, he spoke with a slow midwestern accent. He enlivened every story with his writer’s eye for detail, easygoing smile, and wry sense of humor. “He is a large, amiable, four-eyed, pipe-smoking martini man out of Xavier College in Cincinnati, whose literary leanings made his employers nervous,” Red Smith wrote. Brosnan explained how he had bounced around the minor leagues and nearly quit the game after the 1953 season until the Chicago Cubs invited him to spring training. He spent half the year with the Cubs in 1954, was sent to Des Moines, and then was recalled to the Cubs a week later. The Chicago-Des Moines-Chicago moves wreaked havoc on Brosnan’s family life.

  “My wife threatened to divorce me,” Brosnan testified about living in Des Moines. “She had just purchased two weeks of steaks, put them in the freezer in a house we had just rented, and she had done all this on her own because I was on a road trip to Denver. When I arrived in Denver there was a telegram saying, ‘You are recalled. Get on a plane and report to St. Louis.’ Then when I called her, she said, ‘What do I do with the steaks and the rent?’ ”

  Brosnan was not compensated for the lost rent or steaks. Topkis asked him what happened to the steaks.

  “She gave them to the ballplayer that reported in my place.”

  The minor league pitcher who had replaced him, Paul Menking, lucked out.

  Brosnan discussed his conflicts with Reds general manager Bill DeWitt and White Sox general manager Ed Short over his writing. Brosnan recalled that after he had refused to sign a contract with the White Sox in 1964, the package containing his notice of unconditional release came with 36 cents postage due. He then explained how he had been blackballed and had taken out an ad in the Sporting News.

  As the audience laughed, Hughes objected. Judge Cooper admonished Brosnan. “This is your testimony under oath and while I like a certain amount of humor and humanity in the proceedings, there must come a time when we must make real progress with regard to the substantive matters before me,” Cooper said. “So I am going to ask you to forfeit the indulgence that prompts you to add a little extra here and there.”

  On the reserve clause, Brosnan mentioned three former teammates that he thought could have been starters on other major league teams. He also advocated modifications to the reserve clause. Such modifications, Brosnan said, would not result in superstars jumping from team to team. “When a ballplayer develops his talents to the point where he is recognized as an outstanding player in a particular town with a particular
club, his involvement with that club and with that town is of a unique nature, that is he does not want to leave that particular town for many reasons,” Brosnan said. “In many case[s], he will have his family there, he will build a home there, he will have business contacts and businesses, probably, there. He is part of the community. His social life on and off the field, during the offseason, is bound up within the community in that particular town. For him to go to another town strictly on the basis of more money, for a star—we’re talking about stars, he is making good money in the first place—would not be a good enough reason, in my mind, to leave a club with whom he has a solid position.”

  Brosnan stepped down from the witness stand after a brief cross-examination, and court adjourned for the day. Brosnan never even had the chance to say good-bye to Flood. As they left the courthouse, Goldberg grabbed Brosnan and pulled him into a cab. He was not happy with Brosnan’s humorous testimony.

  “Why was Irving Ben Cooper laughing?” Brosnan said as the cab drove him back to his hotel.

  “There’s a time to laugh and there’s a time to be serious,” Goldberg replied, “and this is a serious matter.”

  Goldberg’s problem did not seem to be with Brosnan. Goldberg’s involvement in the trial was at an end, and he had not really helped Flood’s cause. Goldberg confided to the former pitcher after two days of trial: “We don’t seem to be winning.”

  “When your chief lawyer says ‘we’re not winning,’ ” Brosnan recalled, “I already knew it was over.”