Years later, Flood told Ken Burns, "We lost because my guys, my colleagues, didn't stand up with me. They did not include Mickey Mantle, who had been hardballed in negotiations by the Yankees for nearly 20 years, or Tom Seaver, who found the voice to come out against the war in Vietnam in 1969. Flood's witnesses included Jackie Robinson, Hank Greenberg, Jim Brosnan, and Bill Veeck, all out of baseball at that time. No active ballplayer testified on his behalf, nor did any of them even come to court and sit in the gallery. Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, and Bob Feller said he was wrong. Carl Yastrzemski, Harmon Killebrew, and Ron Santo second-guessed the union for supporting him. The tragedy is that Hank Aaron did not stand up for him, nor did Willie Mays. Yet, the loss is not the tragedy of Curt Flood. "I was not a consignment of goods," he said. Flood threw himself out of baseball because he felt his principles were worth fighting for. Think of Buck Weaver or Pete Rose spending decades trying to get back into baseball after a commissioner threw them out. The result, as Flood knew it would be, was that his career was destroyed. Flood took his case all the way to the Supreme Court, losing his way up the ladder and being denied in the Supreme Court, as well, in a bizarre and capricious decision. They thought he was cynical and self-serving, and in the process of expressing that belief became cynical and self-serving themselves. This was exactly how observers, including Flood's fellow ballplayers, judged his case. It was prescient, both generally and in Curt Flood's case. Then, at the end, Lennon intentionally undercuts any possibility of that with a deflating hypocrisy: "If you want to be a hero, well, just follow me." Lennon imagined a protest so obtusely narcissistic that it missed the point of its own testimony. The song invites the listener to identify. When you can't really function you're so full of fear When they've tortured and scared you for twenty-odd years The Supreme Court's prescription was not unlike your doctor telling you that your pneumonia will clear up if God wills it, and no sooner.Ī little more than a year after Flood filed suit, in early December 1970, John Lennon released Plastic Ono Band, an album that contained the anti-anthem " Working Class Hero." Following a simple and dirge-like musical pattern, Lennon muttered five bitter verses: Congress, as we well know, is an asylum for narcissistic sloths. However, in 1922 the United States Supreme Court ruled that the law applied pretty much everywhere but baseball in 1953 they affirmed that decision and said that it was Congress's problem to deal with. Carroll," he said, "would you consider removing a former player from the reserve list when he reached age 65?"Īnd Carroll, without batting an eye, said, "No, because that would be a foot in the door."įrom at least 1890 on, when the Sherman Antitrust Act became federal law, the Reserve Clause would have been considered illegal restraint of trade. Somebody told me that Lefty O'Doul, who was now 72 years old, was still on the Giants' reserve list, and Bouton asked a tongue-in cheek question of National League counsel Lou Carroll. In Talkin' Baseball: An Oral History of Baseball in the 1970s, Players Association head Marvin Miller remembered: Under the reserve clause, players subject to those infinite one-year terms would never gain the ability to work where he chose or sell his services to the highest bidder. Read More: Throwback Thursday: When LaMarr Hoyt Fell In The War On Drugs This dryly phrased bit of contractual language, paragraph 10(a) of the uniform player contract, stating, "the club shall have the right… to renew this contract for a period of one year," had always been interpreted by baseball men to have an invisible two words appended to it: "in perpetuity." Curt Flood challenged this interpretation, which is to say that he challenged everything.
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