[November 12th
marked the
125th anniversary of the signing of America’s first professional
football player, William
“Pudge” Heffelfinger. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy Pudge and other
groundbreaking professional athletes, leading up to a weekend post on Trump and
sports!]
On three
documents that together help tell the story of the athlete whose stand
for players’ rights changed professional sports forever.
1)
Flood v. Kuhn (1972): At
the end of the 1969 season, Flood’s 12th in his highly successful
Major League baseball career, the St. Louis Cardinals traded him to the lowly
Philadelphia Phillies. Angered by the total lack of control that professional
athletes had over their own careers and destinies, and (he told the players’
union) emboldened
and inspired by “the change in black consciousness in recent years,” Flood
refused to go along with the trade, instead writing a letter to Commissioner Bowie
Kuhn in December 1969 requesting that he be declared a free agent. Kuhn
denied his request, Flood sued Kuhn and Major League baseball for violating
federal antitrust laws, and the case eventually went all the way to the Supreme
Court. In its June 1972 decision, the court ruled 5-3 in favor of Kuhn and MLB,
citing as predecent 1922’s Federal Baseball Club v.
National League. But the case and Flood had set irrevocable forces in
motion, and they would lead to numerous changes in both baseball and
professional sports, including the creation
of precisely the free agent category for which Flood had argued.
2)
The Way It Is
(1971): Unfortunately, Flood himself was never able to benefit from those
changes. Blacklisted from baseball following his lawsuit, he sat out the entire
1970 season (receiving what teammate Bob
Gibson estimated were an average of “four or five death threats a day”
during that time); the Cardinals then traded him to the Washington Senators,
and he played 13 games for them in 1971 before retiring from the sport. Later
that year, he published a groundbreaking memoir, The Way It Is, that linked his own story and life to impassioned
arguments against the reserve clause
and other elements of baseball’s anti-player policies. Flood’s text is rarely highlighted
on lists of either American autobiographies or baseball books; while it’s not
particularly compellingly written, it certainly offers a new and important perspective
on both professional sports and (among other categories) African American identity
and life, and deserves to be more widely remembered and read today.
3)
The Curt
Flood Act of 1998: Changes such as free agency took place and evolved over
time, but it took twenty-five years before Flood’s legacies for professional
sports and players’ rights were cemented at the most national and legal level.
That happened with two Congressional laws, 1997’s Baseball Fans
and Communities Protection Act (in the House) and 1998’s Curt Flood Act (in
the Senate). Together, these laws established once and for all that major
league baseball was subject to the same antitrust laws as all other American
corporations, and that players were thus protected by those antitrust laws as
well. Both laws were crafted in honor of, and the Senate’s law was named in overt
tribute to, Flood, who had passed
away from complications from throat cancer in January 1997 (just two days
after his 59th birthday). While he thus tragically did not live to
see the most sweeping results of his stand and activism, I hope and believe he
knew how much he had changed professional sports, and the lives of professional
athletes, through his courage and commitment.
Next
AthleteStudying tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other athletes or related histories you’d highlight?
No comments:
Post a Comment