A Well-Paid Slave

by Brad Snyder

  “Didn’t he attain some fame by jumping his reserve clause?” Topkis asked on cross-examination.

  “That I don’t remember,” Cronin replied.

  Topkis then read Griffith’s testimony before a 1951 House subcommittee in which Griffith said he had “jumped his reserve clause and joined the American League at the time of its formation.” Griffith had been instrumental in persuading other National League players to jump their contracts and join the league known as the junior circuit.

  The defense’s next four witnesses were baseball executives— Cincinnati Reds president Francis L. Dale, Montreal Expos president and CEO John McHale, California Angels president Robert Reynolds, and Kansas City Royals owner Ewing Kauffman. They testified that they would not have purchased their teams without baseball’s antitrust exemption and without the reserve clause.

  Of the four, Kauffman was the most impressive witness. In 1950, the Royals’ owner founded a pharmaceutical company, Marion Laboratories, in his 500-square-foot basement with $5,000 and turned it into a three-acre laboratory worth millions. In 1968, he bought the Royals as an expansion team and started a baseball academy in an effort to find young men with the right athletic gifts to turn them into professional baseball players. On the stand, he toed the party line about baseball not being able to survive without the reserve clause. But when Topkis asked him how much he would pay Curt Flood on the open market, Kauffman said $125,000 a year and even more than that if Flood was willing to sign a long-term deal.

  “How much for a five-year contract?” Topkis asked.

  “I don’t know,” Kauffman replied. “You let me choose my players, we’ll go pretty high.”

  It was an honest admission that revealed the main purpose of the reserve clause: to prevent deep-pocket owners such as Kauffman from paying players what they were worth.

  As their last two witnesses, the owners called economist John Clark and their labor negotiator, John Gaherin. A veteran negotiator for the railroad and newspaper industries, Gaherin was the owners’ most credible witness. He countered many of Marvin Miller’s assertions that the owners had not negotiated about the reserve clause in good faith. He said that Miller and the Players Association had thrown out ideas about how to modify the reserve clause, but they had not made any formal proposals. He also said that the union’s decision to fund Flood’s lawsuit undermined their efforts to negotiate a new labor agreement. Gaherin came off as a professional negotiator rather than a baseball partisan.

  Between rebuttals by Miller and Gaherin, Flood’s legal team called its best witness last—former Cleveland Indians, St. Louis Browns, and Chicago White Sox owner Bill Veeck. Known as the P. T. Barnum of baseball because of his crazy promotions, Veeck was not so much a clown as a visionary. He originated exploding scoreboards, bat days, ball days, cap days, and names on the backs of uniforms. He would do almost anything to help his team at the box office and in the standings.

  Veeck is most famous for sending a midget—3-foot-7-inch, 65-pound Eddie Gaedel—to bat with the Browns. Gaedel jumped out of a papier-mâché cake before the game, pinch-hit for the leadoff batter, and stepped to the plate wearing the number 1/8 and holding a toy bat. “Eddie,” Veeck had earlier told Gaedel, “I’m going to be up on the roof with a high-powered rifle watching every move you make. If you so much as look as if you’re going to swing, I’m going to shoot you dead.” Gaedel walked on four pitches. Detroit Tigers pitcher Bob Cain was laughing so hard that balls three and four sailed over Gaedel’s head. Cain’s catcher, Bob Swift, caught the pitches on his knees. The Browns immediately sent in a pinch runner. The following day, American League president Will Harridge banned Gaedel from baseball. Veeck claimed Harridge’s ruling “discriminate[d] against the little people.” Veeck demanded that Harridge set a minimum height requirement and wanted to know whether diminutive Yankees shortstop Phil Rizzuto was “a short ballplayer or a tall midget.” Veeck befriended Gaedel and hired him for several other baseball-related promotions until Gaedel’s death in 1961. The last line of Veeck’s Hall of Fame plaque reads: “A champion of the little guy.”

  As the owner of the minor league Milwaukee Brewers, Veeck installed movable outfield fences. A gadget lowered the fences when the Brewers batted and raised them for opposing teams. In Cleveland, he moved the fences in and out depending on the opposing team’s power. Both leagues immediately outlawed Veeck’s fence manipulation. “I have tried always not to break any rules,” Veeck testified at Flood’s trial, “but to test highly their elasticity.”

  Veeck purchased the Brewers in 1941 with $11 in his pocket and a $25,000 loan to cover the team’s pressing debts and left the game in 1961 after selling his share of the Chicago White Sox for $1.1 million. The son of the president of the Chicago Cubs, Veeck had been thrown out of several boarding schools and dropped out of Kenyon College upon learning that his father was dying of leukemia. The younger Veeck worked for the Cubs from 1933 until 1941. He lost part of his right leg after injuring his foot as a World War II marine. Over the years, he had bought and sold a number of franchises: the Brewers, Indians, Browns, minor league Miami Marlins, and White Sox. He persuaded Hank Greenberg to join the Indians’ front office in 1948. The two men later bought the White Sox and were best friends. Veeck likely influenced Greenberg to testify at Flood’s trial.

  In his quest for success, Veeck disregarded not only size but also age and race. Although disputed by some historians, he claimed that Judge Landis had scuttled his plan to purchase the Philadelphia Phillies after the 1942 season and stock the team with black players. He signed Larry Doby, the American League’s first black player, in July 1947, only a few months after Jackie Robinson had broken in with the Dodgers. The following year, Veeck signed Negro league pitching legend Satchel Paige. Paige and Doby helped the 1948 Indians become the first team to draw more than 2 million fans and capture Cleveland’s last World Series trophy. Paige also pitched for Veeck with the Browns and the Marlins.

  Veeck was a man ahead of his time. In 1952, he suggested at an American League meeting that the owners increase the visiting team’s share of the gate receipts and pool their television revenues. “After all,” Veeck reasoned, “it takes two teams to put on a game.” After Veeck received a second for his proposal, the owners voted against it, 7-1. The NFL adopted Veeck’s television idea in 1961 at the urging of NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle, which helped football maintain competitive balance and overtake baseball as America’s most popular professional sport.

  For nearly 30 years, Veeck had been on record as opposing the reserve clause. While taking night law school classes at Northwestern in 1941, Veeck wrote Judge Landis a letter that described the reserve clause as “legally and morally indefensible.” Veeck recalled Landis’s tersely written response by heart: “Some very knowledgeable fellow once said that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing and you just proved him a wizard.”

  Veeck sold the White Sox in June 1961 after doctors at the Mayo Clinic had told him to slow down. He had been smoking four packs of cigarettes and drinking a case of beer a day. He had lost the rest of his right leg to subsequent operations. He had suffered a chronic case of walking pneumonia, and had been coughing so hard that he was blacking out.

  For Veeck, however, there was no slowing down. Even though he retired to a farm on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, he purchased Suffolk Downs racetrack outside Boston. He also wrote, with Ed Linn, two of the best baseball autobiographies ever published, Veeck As in Wreck and The Hustler’s Handbook. An insomniac and voracious reader, Veeck read an average of five books a week.

  Miller, Topkis, and Goldberg all spoke with Veeck about testifying. It did not take much persuading. During a three-hour dinner with Miller in Washington, Veeck readily agreed to testify. Topkis and Gitter visited with Veeck for several hours at Suffolk Downs. The two lawyers barely got a word in as Veeck regaled them with stories just as he had done with Miller. Topkis, who, like Miller, had read Veeck’s books, knew what to expect. “I was prepar
ed to love him and be charmed by him, and I was,” Topkis recalled.

  Veeck refused to allow his desire to return to baseball to prevent him from testifying against the owners. He had already revealed many of their foibles in his two books. He had testified against them in 1966 during the Milwaukee Braves relocation case. A prior speaking engagement, however, had prevented him from testifying May 19 or 20 for Flood. Veeck initially agreed in a phone conversation with Goldberg to testify on May 21, but Veeck could not make it that day either. He wanted to testify June 1—in the middle of the defense’s case. The owners’ lawyers balked at the idea of interrupting their defense. Flood’s lawyers agreed to call him as a rebuttal witness.

  Veeck arrived in New York City late on the night of June 9. The next morning, Topkis and Iverson met Veeck at 7:45 in his suite at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, where they ate salmon omelets and discussed his testimony. Iverson was concerned that during cross-examination the owners—by bringing up midgets and movable fences—would make Veeck look like a crackpot. Veeck told Iverson not to worry. He pulled out a large embossed book that American League owners had given him in 1961 after he had sold the White Sox. The book contained a list of his accomplishments and a citation that read as follows:

  Tribute to Bill Veeck

  It is a matter of deep regret to the American League that Bill Veeck has been forced by illness to divest himself of his interests in the Chicago White Sox and to resign from the presidency of that club. The American League expresses its appreciation to Bill Veeck for his many valuable contributions to baseball, the league and the Chicago club, and extends sincere wishes for his speedy recovery to good health and to the personal vibrancy which has so characterized his career in baseball.

  Resolution unanimously adopted by the members of the American League of Professional Baseball Clubs at its meeting in Chicago on Monday, June 26, 1961.

  The owners thought that Veeck was dying. Doctors at the Mayo Clinic believed that lung cancer had spread to his brain. He turned out to have a chronic concussion exacerbated by the coughing fits that caused his blackouts. His health improved with rest. He spited his American League adversaries by living an additional 25 years and testifying against them at Flood’s trial.

  Before his testimony, Veeck waited in Cooper’s courtroom to be called to the witness stand. He wore an open-neck, wide-collared shirt and no tie. He hated to wear ties on account of a skin condition. He ignored the No Smoking signs in the courtroom and lit a cigarette. Miller sat there bemused by Veeck’s wearing an open-collared shirt and smoking in federal court. Goldberg, who had declined Topkis’s and Iverson’s repeated invitations to join them at breakfast, was horrified. “Bill,” Goldberg said, “you can’t smoke in the courtroom.” Veeck pulled up his right pants leg and extinguished the cigarette in an ashtray carved into his wooden leg.

  Fortunately for Veeck, Topkis conducted his direct examination. After reviewing Veeck’s background, Topkis asked whether he had received any awards from the American League. “Well, I presume it was an award,” Veeck said. “It was a very nice citation or call it what you will. I have a feeling that maybe it was kind of in memoriam.” The crowd laughed. Topkis then read the entire resolution into the court record. The owners could not portray his witness as a kook.

  Veeck set himself apart from Flood’s other witnesses because of his quick wit and because, in Topkis’s words, “he had thought about these issues more than anyone else.” Veeck opposed the complete elimination of the reserve clause, but phasing in a different form of the reserve clause “wouldn’t dislocate baseball horrendously and wouldn’t cause any chaotic conditions.” Veeck advocated seven-year contracts like the ones between movie stars and Hollywood studios, which called for automatic raises at designated option periods. He suggested a system similar to pro football’s, in which the player played out his one-year option and joined a new team as long as the new team was willing to pay his former team mutually-agreed-upon financial compensation. He also endorsed signing players to a combined major league-minor league contract for a period of years.

  Modifying the reserve clause, Veeck argued, would benefit management. The wealthiest teams, Veeck said, could not sign all the best players. He attributed the Yankees’ dominance not to their wealth but to their scouts and added, “though it grieves me to say it, they had probably the best administrator in the game in a fellow by the name of George Weiss, with whom I did not see eye to eye on much of anything except that he is a very talented man.” Veeck believed winning was “not a questionof dollars” but “a question of the ability of the people operating and their willingness to work hard.”

  Veeck also recognized the principles at stake: “Everyone should once in their business career have the right to determine their future for themselves.” He envisioned more equitable contractual negotiations and distribution of talent. Teams could not stockpile players if the players were free to negotiate with another organization where they could receive more playing time. He believed that teams recouped their investments in their players after five major league seasons.

  Unlike most of the owners, Veeck understood why Flood felt like a slave and why the current system was bad for the game. “I think that it would certainly help the players and the game itself to no longer be one of the few places in which there is human bondage,” Veeck said. “I think it would be to the benefit of the reputation of the game of baseball. . . . I still think it is a game that deserves to be perpetuated and to restore it to the position of honor it once held, and I think this would be a step in that direction. At least it would be fair.”

  Kuhn’s lawyer, Victor Kramer, cross-examined Veeck. “I would say I found Veeck As in Wreck an extremely enjoyable book,” Kramer announced. “I recommend it to everyone within the sound of my voice.” Kramer then turned Veeck’s literary genius against him. He adopted the same strategy that baseball’s lawyers had used in the Milwaukee case: He read sentences from Veeck’s books and asked Veeck whether he agreed or disagreed with them. A contrarian by nature, Veeck disagreed several times with statements from his own books.

  Goldberg, in one of his few speaking roles since the beginning of the trial, stood up and objected to Kramer’s marking selected pages from Veeck’s books as exhibits. Goldberg wanted Veeck’s entire books entered into the record. Goldberg had already been burned by the owners’ selective quotation of Jackie Robinson’s prior statements. Judge Cooper refused to admit the entirety of both books into evidence. Instead, they compromised on the admission of a complete chapter.

  Despite a few early inconsistencies, Veeck was too quick for both Kramer and Judge Cooper on cross-examination. Cooper asked Veeck to stick to yes-or-no answers when asked yes-or-no questions on cross-examination. “I know that you are a colorful witness,” Cooper said, “and it is good to have a colorful witness, but would you remember that it is important to address yourself to the particular question.” “I’m sorry to have spoiled your morning,” Veeck replied.

  Kramer asked Veeck a hypothetical question about an unhappy star shortstop who wanted just compensation and therefore wanted to leave the team. “I find that question impossible to answer,” Veeck said, “because I can’t anticipate as an owner, when I was an owner, that I would have a shortstop who would be so unhappy with being with me.” Kramer also asked Veeck why he seemed to be so fond of the American League owners. “I think it is that I don’t have to associate with them as directly,” Veeck replied. During a recess, however, he told a reporter that the owners have “intractable minds that respond only to necessity.” After an hour and a half, Veeck stepped down from the witness stand. He walked out of the courthouse and smiled for waiting photographers.

  Only baseball’s outsiders—black, Jewish, pitcher-turned-author, and maverick—had the guts to support Flood. Robinson, Greenberg, Brosnan, and Veeck brought an enormous amount of publicity to Flood’s case. The American people—69 percent of them according to a September poll—believed that the reserve clause was �
�necessary.” But these four men reminded everyone why it needed to be modified.

  John Gaherin briefly rebutted Miller’s third and final appearance on the witness stand, and both the plaintiff and the defense rested. Lawyers from both sides asked Judge Cooper to decide the case in their favor; Cooper refused to rule. Instead, he ordered post-trial briefs due July 7 with replies due July 13. Cooper’s decision was going to come in the form of a written opinion.

  Just past 3:37 p.m. on June 11, Cooper concluded Flood’s trial after 3 weeks, 15 trial days, 21 witnesses, 56 exhibits, and 2,078 pages of transcript. Cooper singled out each of the lead attorneys in the courtroom for praise. He reminded the audience that Hughes was the past president of the New York County Lawyers Association, a subtle reference to the only local bar organization that had refused to testify against him at his confirmation hearings. He praised Goldberg’s “leadership” as “exemplary” and told Topkis “your hair-trigger alertness was remarkable and at times truly fascinating.”

  “As to the case itself,” Cooper said, “it really is a cause in the truest classical sense. Interwoven with the rights of the litigants named in the caption of this matter is baseball itself. This is enough to compel us to proceed with utmost care. . . . It goes without saying that we are resolved to call them as we see them as they come across the plate.”

  Cooper wrapped up his remarks with a quotation from Judge Jerome Frank, the famed liberal jurist who in the Gardella case had equated the reserve clause with slavery. Cooper quoted another of Frank’s opinions:

  “The law doesn’t require a judge to anesthetize his emotional reflections. ‘Only death yields such complete dispassionateness, for dispassion signifies indifference. Much harm is done by the myth that merely by putting on a black robe and taking the oath of office as a judge a man ceases to be human and strips himself of all predilections and becomes a passionateless unthinking man.’