50 years after his letter changed baseball forever, Curt Flood's sacrifice still resonates

When Curt Flood penned the missive that would alter baseball – and all of sports – forever, he was alone in a Copenhagen hotel room, soon to be estranged from his children, fully aware he was on the verge of immolating his lucrative career.

It was Christmas Eve 1969, 10 weeks after the St. Louis Cardinals traded Flood to the Philadelphia Phillies, a transaction the seven-time Gold Glover and 12-year major league veteran had no choice but accept. Major League Baseball’s Reserve Clause bound player to club for as long as owner saw fit to employ him, able to trade or release him on a whim, allowing no freedom of movement.

Since the money was OK and the fame sometimes better, players accepted that lot – hey, getting paid to play a game, right? – and largely kept their mouths shut. Flood, whose mind was as creative as his body was athletically talented, saw a different path.

And so the 31-year-old divorced father of five, who grew up in the major leagues as Jim Crow laws still ruled the land, tapped out 134 words to Commissioner Bowie Kuhn:

Dear Mr. Kuhn:

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After 12 years in the Major Leagues, I do not feel that I am a piece of property to be bought and sold irrespective of my wishes. I believe that any system which produces that result violates my basic rights as a citizen and is inconsistent with the laws of the United States and of the several States.

It is my desire to play baseball in 1970, and I am capable of playing. I have received a contract from the Philadelphia club, but I believe I have the right to consider offers from other clubs before making any decisions. I, therefore, request that you make known to all the major league clubs my feelings in this matter, and advise them of my availability for the 1970 season.

Sincerely yours,

Curt Flood

Ever shoot off an email and immediately regret it? Well, in 1969, there was no “send” button, but rest assured, Flood had few misgivings before mailing his request.

“My dad was not that type of guy,” Curt Flood Jr., Flood’s oldest son, told USA TODAY Sports. “When he got something in his head, his focus was unwavering.

“He would always tell me, ‘Focus wins, every time.’”

On paper, Flood did not win.

Three days later, Kuhn sent a diplomatic but unmoved response that he “cannot comply with the request in the second paragraph of your letter.” Three weeks later, Flood filed suit against Major League Baseball, Kuhn and its club seeking relief from the Reserve Clause, but ultimately, a 5-3 Supreme Court ruling in 1972 sided with baseball.

Yet Flood’s conscious decision to place himself at the tip of the sword started a battle his brothers in the game would eventually win.

He paid – with his career. Flood sat out the 1970 season, played 13 games for the Washington Senators in 1971 and was done, as union chief Marvin Miller predicted when Flood approached him with this gambit.

But, as Flood might put it, the genie was out of the bottle.

Thus inspired, Miller found a pair of pitchers – the Dodgers’ Andy Messersmith and Orioles’ Dave McNally – willing to play the 1975 season without a contract and then attack the Reserve Clause anew. Arbitrator Peter Seitz agreed, and his landmark Dec. 23 ruling – almost exactly six years after Flood’s initial action – paved the way for collectively bargained free agency as we now know it.

Fifty years later, the through line from Flood to the billions of dollars in salaries big leaguers enjoy today is evident. Last week, as Gerrit Cole slipped on a Yankees jersey for the first time after agreeing to a $324 million contract – a record for a pitcher – he singled out Miller and Flood and “all the players that have sacrificed for us to get in this position,” noting how veteran catcher John Buck would beckon rookies to the front of the bus and drill them on labor history.

“I hope everyone,” Cole said, “has that conversation about Curt Flood on the bus.”

Flood’s name will be evoked often in the next two years. MLB and the Players’ Association now have an $11 billion bounty to divide, but the average player salary has dipped and the very mechanism to freedom and riches Flood sought – free agency – has been crimped by owners who despite record revenues, are risk-averse at best, collusive at worst.

With the Collective Bargaining Agreement set to expire in 2021, the will of the players is again expected to be tested in a sport that’s had eight work stoppages since 1972. The term “sacrifice” figures to be tossed around a good bit.

An extended stoppage may, in fact, signal the end of selected veterans’ careers. Yet no player’s path will be as solitary, or as painful, as Flood’s.

'A world that despised you'

Flood graduated from high school in Oakland but at 18 was bumping around minor league towns in the South nine years before the Civil Rights Act. Suddenly, he found himself separated from teammates at hotels and restaurants. By 18, he had debuted for the Cincinnati Reds, who traded him to St. Louis before the 1958 season. By ’64, he was an All-Star – his 216 hits led the NL – and a World Series champion after the Cardinals defeated the Yankees in seven games.

All that could not spare him the venom of racism in what was to be his own home.

With two adopted children, two children of his own and a pregnant wife, Flood was thrilled to lease a beautiful home in the burgeoning Northern California suburb of Alamo, not far from his Oakland roots. But the property owner, upon hearing the Flood family was black, threatened to shoot them if they arrived to integrate what was then an all-white neighborhood.

Flood filed suit in Contra Costa County and won a temporary restraining order allowing his family to occupy the home; they arrived accompanied by U.S. marshals.

The stress informed Flood’s future in myriad ways: Successfully litigating to defend his basic rights, his son says, would provide some inspiration to eventually fight baseball for freedom.

But there was collateral damage.

Flood could not salvage his marriage. A genetic predisposition to alcohol addiction was exacerbated. A 1950 quote from author and activist James Baldwin, his son says, summed Flood’s disposition: “To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.”

“To be conscious and moving in a world that basically despised you,” says Flood Jr., who was 5 years old when his father fought for their Alamo home, “would drive anybody to drink.”

Flood would make All-Star teams in 1966 and ’68, and the Cardinals won another World Series in ’67. Flood’s wife, meanwhile, remarried, and the stable life she and her new husband provided compelled Flood to feel that he had failed.

He often sought refuge in Europe, finding a more color-blind existence in Amsterdam or Madrid or Copenhagen when being black in America felt too heavy.

That’s where he found himself after the trade, when he electively chose to fight baseball.

“Curt’s eyes were wide open when he turned down the trade from St. Louis to Philadelphia and instead requested that other teams be allowed to bid for his services,” says Tony Clark, current executive director of the MLB Players’ Association. “He knew what he was up against.”

And with little help. Only retired players Jackie Robinson and Hank Greenberg testified on his behalf, even as Flood enjoyed close relationships with influential stars like Bob Gibson, his roommate with the Cardinals.

Older players such as Joe Garagiola and Joe DiMaggio vocally supported management.

Flood lost in court, both legally and that of public opinion, and also lost his family, a self-inflicted wound inspired by the vision of his children thriving in a nice Los Angeles neighborhood with their mother and stepfather.

“It was almost as though we didn’t need him anymore, in his mind. That really messed him up,” says Flood Jr., who didn’t see his father between the ages of 10 and 16. “I can intellectualize it today and say he chose life, and played the hand he was dealt and did the best he could.

“Still. It stings today and stung like a bastard then.”

Flood returned in 1976, and in a rather out-of-touch gesture took his kids – even the older ones – to a toy store and told them they could buy whatever they pleased. Flood and two of his sons further reconciled in 1978, as he nursed a beer at a bowling alley, pulled his 1967 World Series ring off his finger and handed it to Flood Jr., now 18.

“He said, ‘I’m sorry.’ And that was it,” he remembers. “I knew he felt horribly that he wasn’t a better father, could have done better.”

There would be one more family with which Flood could reconcile before his death.

A final appreciation

The average salary in Major League Baseball climbed in increments both steady and stratospheric since Flood’s heyday, from $19,000 in 1967 to $41,000 in 1974, topping $100,000 in 1979 and $1 million in 1992.

Despite recent stagnation, the average major leaguer now pulls in $4.36 million.

“For the players nowadays to recognize what we did for them, hopefully they do that, because we still do that for guys like Curt Flood, guys like Andy Messersmith, who Marvin went to bat for,” says Hall of Fame third baseman George Brett, who debuted in 1973 and topped the $1 million plateau in 1982, when he signed a long-term contract with Kansas City.

“Because that was it. That was the start of the union.”

But Flood lived largely in exile from the game for many years, as he struggled with alcohol and aimed to patch up his family life, and stung from a lack of support when he challenged the reserve clause.

It got better just in time for his baseball brethren.

As the union, hoping to avoid unilateral implementation of a salary cap, girded for a walkout in August 1994, they summoned Flood to address the membership. His impassioned speech, with that singular concept that still applies – “Don’t let them put the genie back in the bottle” – lent a crucial bit of historical context before the walkout. Another court ruling in favor of the players sent them back to work in April 1995.

A fresh appreciation for his sacrifice could have guided Flood – who remarried in 1986 to longtime companion Judy Pace – into rewarding golden years. But in 1995, just a year after his MLBPA address, Flood was diagnosed with throat cancer.

He passed away at UCLA Medical Center on Jan. 20, 1997, two days after his 59th birthday.

That’s the age now of his eldest son, who pivoted from a career in public relations to non-profit development and communications, with a focus on health and wellness of minority girls; he oversees the foundation that bears his father’s name. Flood’s oldest daughter, Debbie, pursued a career as a social worker and children’s court advocate; another sister, Shelly, works as an addiction counselor.

Their lives have, to a degree, been framed by their father’s personal and professional struggles. The latter re-defined an industry, one that now markets and monetizes player movement even as it works to contain salaries.

Earlier this month, Miller was elected to the Hall of Fame by a committee that included Brett. Flood is now in the Cardinals’ Hall of Fame but not Cooperstown’s, still something of a castoff despite his undeniable impact.

Perhaps only he could foresee what was to come in an industry that knew only one way.

“I doubt Curt or anyone – on or off the field in any sport -- could fully contemplate the significance of the stance he took back in 1969,” says Clark, “but as a child and student of the civil rights movement, Curt had a heightened sense of awareness about justice and fairness.

“The stand he took affected all athletes who have enjoyed free agency for the last half century.”