A Well-Paid Slave

by Brad Snyder

  Hitting was Williams’s obsession. His book, The Science of Hitting, landed in bookstores that May and remains the definitive work on the subject. In 1969, Williams had talked the Senators into becoming hitters. He raised the team’s batting average 27 points that season from .224 to .251—tied for third best in the American League. He even made a hitter out of shortstop Eddie Brinkman, who raised his average 79 points from .187 to .266. In doing so, he also turned the Senators, who finished the season with an 86-76 record, into winners. For producing the first winning season in the expansion Senators’ nine-year history (and the first above-.500 season by a Washington team since 1952), Williams was named the American League Manager of the Year.

  But sustained managerial success eluded Williams. A staunch Republican and Nixon fan, Williams had gained weight and had begun to look and sound like John Wayne. He had trouble communicating with players from the counterculture generation. Several players, led by McLain, started an anti-Williams faction called “the Underminers Club.”

  Even though the group included at least two black players, race did not seem to be the issue. Williams had used his 1966 Hall of Fame induction speech to lobby for the induction of Negro league legends Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson “because they were not given a chance.” Williams’s color blindness may have stemmed from his Mexican mother and his childhood in working-class San Diego. For Ted, baseball ability was the great equalizer. Indeed, in 1971, half of the position players in his Opening Day lineup were black.

  Williams’s problems were more generational than racial. Maddox and some of the team’s other young players could not relate to him. During the 1971 season, Maddox marched into Williams’s office and asked why he had been benched in favor of Larry Biittner. Williams said he wanted to look at a younger player. Maddox pointed out that Biittner was two years older than he was. Williams told Maddox not to be such a smart-ass.

  Publicly, Williams said all the right things about Flood and what he expected from him coming back from his year-and-a-half layoff. “As good a player as he is,” Williams said, “it shouldn’t make any difference at all.” Williams pointed out that he had enjoyed one of his best seasons in 1946 after three years as a World War II pilot. He also hit .407 at the end of the 1953 season after nearly two years as a Korean War pilot. Flood, however, was not Ted Williams. He was a singles hitter who relied on his speed to leg out base hits.

  Privately, Williams gave Flood almost no chance of coming back. Williams received reports from his friends in the National League that Flood’s play had fallen off dramatically in 1969. Having read Flood’s book, he also knew about Flood’s “bedding and boozing” in Denmark.

  Flood defended his physical conditioning during his layoff. “Sure, I lived the good life in Copenhagen during the time I was out of action,” he said. “But I took care of myself. I like a drink once in a while. Yet I also know when to stop.”

  The medical experts begged to differ. “Flood has to have the oldest 33-year-old body I’ve ever examined,” Senators team doctor George Resta said. Team trainer Bill Zeigler agreed. Flood had no strength in his arms and no muscle tone. A small man at 5 feet 9 and 165 pounds, he now looked even smaller. His washboard stomach and sinewy arms and legs had atrophied since his missed fly ball in the 1968 World Series.

  Even his face looked different. His cheeks looked fuller, and the circles under his eyes were more pronounced. Broadcaster Harry Caray saw Flood in spring training and thought Flood had “aged ten years.” He mentioned the bags under Flood’s eyes to Williams. Williams said he had noticed the same thing.

  Flood’s first day in camp did nothing to change Williams’s mind. During his first time in the batting cage, Flood flailed against a non-roster sinkerball pitcher, Jim Southworth. Southworth never made it to the major leagues, but that day he made Flood look foolish. Flood struggled to get any of Southworth’s pitches out of the batting cage. A few dribbled into the infield. Williams made excuses for Flood, saying he should not have faced a sinkerballer like Southworth in his first few at-bats. But the next hitter, a switch-hitting outfielder named Richie Scheinblum, roped Southworth’s offerings into the outfield.

  Flood’s struggles at the plate continued during the first few intrasquad games. He failed to get a ball out of the infield in the first two games and finished 0-for-7. Flood sat next to Williams to try to pick up batting tips. Williams held Flood out of the first few exhibition games against the Montreal Expos and then used him for four games as a designated hitter. He wanted Flood to get as many at-bats, particularly against American League pitching, as possible. Williams thought the biggest problem for Flood would be learning the American League pitchers. “They don’t know me, either,” Flood said. He finally got his first base hit of spring training in his 10th at-bat, a solid liner to left off Orioles pitcher Dave Leonhard, but Leonhard picked him off first base. “The toughest thing is the hitting,” Flood said. “You can almost fake the fielding if you want to, but you can either hit or you can’t.”

  Flood flopped in the field as well. He dropped an easy fly ball March 15 against the Kansas City Royals. His arm also proved to be suspect. As a runner tagged from third later in the game, Flood pumped once. His throw then bounced in to cutoff man Frank Howard. It revived speculation that Flood’s arm was shot. Williams later criticized Flood for playing too deep in center field. Flood even took to borrowing his son Gary’s Mickey Mantle glove to try to cure his fielding woes.

  After the first few days of spring training, Flood quietly booked his own room in the team’s spring training hotel. Maddox switched into a room with one of his former Tigers teammates, pitcher Norm McRae, just down the hall.

  Maddox was constantly knocking on Flood’s door. He wanted to keep Flood company, to learn about the game, and to keep Flood from drinking too much. Sometimes Flood told him to come back in an hour. If Maddox did not come back in exactly an hour (or sometimes even if he did), Flood would open the door only four inches. His bloodshot eyes glared at Maddox. Never mind, Flood would say. Sometimes he said he was tired or in bed. Sometimes Flood did not even bother to get up; he simply yelled through the door.

  During the nights when Flood let him in, Maddox could see that his new friend was a troubled soul. Flood spent only a few minutes talking about his problems at the plate or in the field. Normally, if a ballplayer was not playing well, he would spend much of the night obsessing over his swing or his fielding techniques. Playing baseball, however, was not the first thing on Flood’s mind.

  After a while, Flood told Maddox that he wanted to be alone. “I’ve got things to think about,” he said. Maddox replied that Flood’s hitting and fielding would come around. “No,” Flood said, “it’s not about that.”

  Sportswriters who had known Flood for years could see that his heart was not in his comeback. “He is in baseball but not of it,” Los Angeles Times columnist Jim Murray wrote. “Curt Flood, quite clearly, would rather make $10,000 a year painting oils than $110,000 catching baseballs.” Washington Daily News columnist Jack Mann wrote that after the first week of spring training Flood did not try very hard to hide his unhappiness. “One gained an impression during spring training, from the sardonic words and themes Flood chose, that his displeasure was not so much with the game of baseball itself but the game of life in the society where it is played,” Mann wrote. “He had discovered Denmark, but it was as if in Denmark he had discovered Curt Flood, one he had never allowed himself to be before.”

  Flood resented what had been written about him in the months leading up to his comeback. Bob Short referred to him as “tarnished goods”; Sports Illustrated called him a “stormy petrel.” The press and publiclumped him in with McLain, who had been suspended for investing in a gambling operation, as one of baseball’s bad boys.

  As Flood, McLain, and Williams posed for a national magazine cover, a photographer asked them not to smile.

  “What’s it gotta be serious for?” McLain asked.

  “Don’t you kn
ow, Denny?” Flood said. “We’re supposed to be mad at the world.”

  Reporters who had covered Flood in the National League could not believe the change in his attitude. Once a great talker, Flood had turned reluctant and shy. A former Sports Illustrated writer, Mann had known Flood since his rookie season. Twelve years later with the Senators, Flood met Mann at the hotel bar near the swimming pool and drank a 7UP. He complained that he and his teammates were not allowed to drink at the team hotel bar. When Mann’s wife, Judy, approached them, Flood quickly got up and left. He did not want to be seen with a bikini-clad white woman. “[I] better get the hell out of here,” Flood said to Judy. “They’ll think I’m with you, and I’ve got enough troubles.”

  Flood could not understand the media’s fascination with him or his lawsuit. As he had done during his instructional league stint, he turned down several requests for television interviews. “As long as he isn’t hurting anybody else,” he asked Mann, “why can’t a man do his own thing? Why do they care so much?”

  Bernie Allen watched from the next locker as reporters swarmed around Flood. Allen could see the frustration mounting in Flood each day. “They all had Flood trapped,” Allen said.

  Flood’s reticence boiled over into surliness during another round of questions about his lawsuit at the Dodgers’ spring training camp in Vero Beach. “Look!” Flood said. “I just don’t wanna talk about it! A guy can bury himself with his own words. This game is hard enough, and I’ve been gone for over a year. I’m having enough trouble. I’m very sensitive about it. It’s tough enough to hit the curveball when you can concentrate.”

  Flood read books on the bus during spring training road trips. He kept his distance from most of his teammates. They liked and admired him, but also pitied him. They knew that he was not the player he had once been.

  “I was expecting him to be the second coming of Lou Brock,” catcher Dick Billings said. “He looked like kind of a regular player, a rookie who wasn’t quite sure of himself.”

  “He was a speed guy, and he didn’t have the speed anymore,” outfielder Del Unser said.

  “You hear about guys who have lost a step or two; he lost three,” pitcher Dick Bosman said. “I’m not sure he hit four or five balls hard all spring.”

  He hid his drinking from everyone but Maddox and a few close friends. The day before the season started, the Senators played an exhibition game in Richmond against the Atlanta Braves. Flood went out with a former teammate, Braves first baseman Orlando Cepeda. For the first time, Cepeda realized that Flood had a drinking problem, but Cepeda did not believe it was his place to say anything. No one else seemed to notice. “Hell, in those days,” Frank Howard said, “we all drank.”

  Flood tried to acclimate himself to Washington’s social scene. A month before spring training, Howard had taken Flood out to dinner at several of the city’s best restaurants. He had also introduced Flood to Fran O’Brien’s. Whereas politicians dined at Duke Zeibert’s, athletes drank beers and chased women at Fran O’Brien’s. Started by a former Redskins lineman, the restaurant-bar served as the unofficial clubhouse of the Redskins and Senators. Beautiful women flocked there and usually drank for free. Fran O’Brien’s operated on the ground floor of a five-year-old apartment building-hotel at 18th and L streets known as the Anthony House. During the season, Howard and pitcher Casey Cox lived at the Anthony House, as did Flood.

  Flood was not a regular at Fran O’Brien’s. He sometimes ate lunch or dinner there. He also made an appearance there on Shelby Whitfield’s weekly one-hour radio show, but he preferred the privacy of his room. “He didn’t spend a lot of time downstairs,” Whitfield said. “He was upstairs screwing women most of the time. He was a good-looking guy. He could have any woman he wanted.”

  Whitfield, who also conducted a weekly radio show with Williams after Short had fired him as the team’s color commentator, was privy to Williams’s side of the Williams-Flood relationship. Williams disapproved of Flood’s lifestyle—drinking vodka martinis at noon and sleepingwith countless women. Williams also once spied Flood in the clubhouse smoking a pipe. Williams hated pipe smokers. He thought they were too laid-back and lacked the “piss and ginegar,” as he liked to say, to be great ballplayers.

  With some reservations, Williams penciled Flood into the number two spot of the Senators’ Opening Day lineup. Flood’s hitting had started to come around at the end of spring training. He batted only .210 (17-for-81) that spring, but Williams knew that spring training statistics often meant nothing, especially for veteran players. “I have a feeling that Flood’s the type of player who will do it during the season,” he said. Privately, he felt otherwise but knew that he could not keep Bob Short’s $110,000 prize out of the lineup. At least not yet.

  Opening Day marked the high point of Flood’s comeback. After Master Sergeant Daniel L. Pitzer, a prisoner of war for four years in Vietnam, filled in for President Nixon and threw out the first ball, Bowie Kuhn and Joe Cronin watched with Bob Short from the presidential box as Flood helped the Senators defeat Vida Blue and the Oakland A’s, 8-0. Flood walked twice, scored two runs, and laid down a perfect fourth-inning bunt in front of Oakland third baseman Sal Bando for a base hit. “He’s the guy you really have to stop to stop the Washington ballclub,” Blue said. “He gets on base, and he scores runs.” Flood was nervous in his first game back and relieved that he had contributed, but he was realistic about his situation. “I’m just the same poor little colored boy,” he said. “Nothing’s changed.”

  Flood cautioned that he “was not out of the woods yet.” The next game, he singled in the first inning off Orioles pitcher Dave McNally, and reached on an error in the seventh and was caught stealing. The Senators lost to the World Champion Orioles, 3-2.

  Before the game, Flood found out about another loss. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit had denied his appeal; the three-judge panel had affirmed Judge Cooper’s decision.

  Judge Sterry R. Waterman, who had presided over the oral argument in Flood’s case and had participated in the Salerno appeal, wrote a measured majority opinion. A Vermonter who never graduated from law school, Waterman rejected Flood’s federal antitrust claims based on Federal Baseball and Toolson. He denied Flood’s state antitrust claims because baseball was interstate commerce and therefore federal law preempted state law. “We readily acknowledge that plaintiff is caught in a most frustrating predicament,” Waterman wrote. Baseball was not subject to federal law because the game was not interstate commerce according to the Supreme Court in 1922; however, baseball was not subject to state law because the game was “so uniquely interstate commerce” according to the Second Circuit in 1971. “[W]e do not consider our decision to be internally inconsistent. . . ,” he wrote. “Any apparent inconsistency results not from faulty logic, but from the vagaries of fate and this court’s subordinate role to the Supreme Court.” In other words, it would be up to the Supreme Court to clean up the mess it had made. Waterman’s opinion was thorough yet concise, scholarly yet commonsensical, and above all fair. It was the way Flood and his lawyers had expected to lose.

  One of the other two judges, Leonard P. Moore, felt more strongly about preserving baseball’s legal monopoly. The former U.S. attorney in Brooklyn and a loyal Republican, Moore had won a fierce political battle to replace a judicial legend on the court of appeals, Jerome Frank. Frank—who in Gardella had declared Federal Baseball an “impotent zombi” and had written that “it is of no moment that [ballplayers] are well paid; only the totalitarian-minded will believe that high pay excuses virtual slavery”—died on January 13, 1957. He did not live to see if his prediction about the Supreme Court overruling Federal Baseball ever came true. “In my opinion,” Moore wrote in his concurring opinion about the Flood case, “there is no likelihood that such an event will occur.”

  Moore tipped his hand with his opinion’s opening sentence. “Base-ball for almost a century has been our country’s ‘national’ sport,” he wrote. The
remainder of his first paragraph referred to A. G. Spalding and Abner Doubleday; baseball greats “Christy Mathewson, Walter Johnson, the remarkable Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth of home-run fame, Lou Gehrig, and more recently Ted Williams and Willie Mays”; and the Chicago Cubs’ poetically famous double-play combination, “Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance.” This was not a judicial opinion; it was a glorified history of baseball.

  After discussing the relevant precedents, Moore extolled the virtues of Justice Holmes’s opinion in Federal Baseball:

  The Supreme Court in 1922 undoubtedly felt that it should adopt a “hands off” policy as to this one particular sport which had attained by then such a national standing that only Congress should have the power to tamper with it. And properly so. Baseball’s welfare and future should not be for politically insulated interpreters of technical antitrust statutes but rather should be for the voters through their elected representatives. If baseball is to be damaged by statutory regulation, let the congressman face his constituents the next November and also face the consequences of his baseball voting record.

  Moore concluded that he had no “reservations or doubts as to the soundness of Federal Baseball and Toolson” and wrote that he “would limit the participation of the courts in the conduct of baseball’s affairs to the throwing out by the Chief Justice (in the absence of the President) of the first ball of the baseball season.”

  There was something about baseball that turned cerebral judges into pennant-waving schoolboys; that caused them to lose their judicial bearings, to twist precedents, and to jeopardize the dignity of the federal courts; and that made it nearly impossible for any litigant to defeat the baseball establishment. This case was about more than Federal Baseball and Toolson or Justice Holmes and stare decisis; it was about the grip of the national pastime on the minds of the men in black robes. This was what Flood was up against as his lawsuit made its way to the Supreme Court.