Curt Flood Changed Baseball More Than Any Man Who Played The Game. How I Hated Him!

I've been a Red Sox fan since moving to New England in 1973, and all Red Sox fans past and present feel they are the most long suffering fans in all baseball. But before I moved to RI at age 13 I lived outside Philadelphia, and no team was worse than the Phillies in the late 1960's and early 1970's. I remember a headline in the newspaper that the Phillies had gotten out of last place at some point one summer and were in next to last!. Such good news as that was very hard to come by and few and far between when I was a child.

The Phillies had one real star player, Richie Allen. A slugger who could hit for average and was decent in the field, he stuck out on the Phillies like a sunny day in an Alaskan winter. He was surly, the management didn't like him (think Manny Rameriez with a bad attitude) and Phillies fans were very hard on players particularly African American players. He wanted out of Philadelphia away from the abuse and being on a last place team. And who could blame him?

Well me. I was 10 years old and I didn't understand any of the nuances of why he would want to leave, only that he was the only player on the team who could hit his own weight. When the news came that our only star had been traded to St. Louis for Curt Flood and Tim McCarver, I was crushed. Yes they were good players, but Richie Allen was the star of the team.

Then came the other shoe: Curt Flood refused to come to Philadelphia. I didn't care why. I was 10 years old I was just angry. I remember asking my father, Well since we didn't get Curt Flood would we be getting Richie Allen back? Of course it doesn't work that way. That spring when the baseball cards came out I opened a pack and got a Curt Flood. A 1970 Topps Curt Flood ON THE PHILLIES! Well that was just too much for me to bear. I remember vividly tearing that gray bordered 1970 baseball card into as many pieces as I could. I hated Curt Flood. In 1970 the Phillies were still terrible. It was all Curt Flood's fault!

Flash forward about 14 years. I was just starting out in the baseball card business and I was at a show somewhere in southern California selling cards. And the guest signer was none other than Curt Flood. After I got over the anger that welled up in me that was residual left over from childhood, I decided to get a 1970 Topps baseball card autographed as a joke to myself. I went up to get in line, there really wasn't a line per se, just one guy talking to Curt not even getting something signed. So as I stood there planning to tell Curt how he ruined my childhood by refusing to come to Philadelphia, and how horrible he was to refuse to come to my team.

Then I started listening to the conversation going on 6 feet in front of me. This nasty, vile, poor excuse for a human being was berating Curt for ruining the game of baseball. How greedy Curt must be to have done such a thing, which led to free agency, free agency, which was worse to this gentleman than Aids and bubonic plague combined. Curt calmly explained that what he did had nothing to do with wanting more money, and only that he just wanted the right of self-determination. He wanted the right to determine where and for who he would work for.

Curt's tone was so calm and quietly assured that the man became angrier still. He called him the “N” word and explained that only someone of such an inferior race as Curt's would destroy baseball for the “good people” of America like him. Then he walked away in a huff. And then it was my turn to talk to Curt.

All my childhood anger vanished. In front of me I saw a man who had not ruined my team, but who had stood up for himself, for his dignity as a man, And I could see on his face in his body language he was paying the price for standing up still 14 years later with every SOB that he met like the man who had just verbally abused him. When I got up to the table instead of accusing him of ruining my 1970 season of watching baseball, I asked how he could take the treatment of man who had preceded me so calmly. He told me that either what you believe what you do is right or wrong and that only you had to be comfortable with it, not others. Getting angry didn't usually help. This was a man who knew of what he was speaking. He had gone though a fire of public opinion that I could not even imagine, and was still calm. A lot to admire there.

The next year I promoted my first baseball card show. I made sure Curt was my first guest. He was at our shows 4 or 5 times. Sometimes he came by himself or with actress Judy Pace, his second wife, and her 2 daughters. I remember going to Circus Circus with my friend Tom and each of us winning Giant  I mean bigger than I am ) teddy bears at one of the midway games there. ( I have a fondness for midway games) and gave them to Judy's daughters, who somehow managed to talk PSA airlines into letting them come home with them.

Curt and I became good friends. We went to dinner in Vegas often and when I bought a batting cage next to one of my stores, Curt came and held a batting clinic for all the kids in the area. I asked him once why did he do it? Why throw away a career that people would die for? The Phillies had offered him a raise in pay to go Philadelphia, and surely he had been warned and he knew where it would all end if he refused to go.

He said: “Joel, it was not the smart thing to do or the prudent thing to do.” The smart and prudent thing to do was for him to take the six-figure salary and go play in Philadelphia for as long as he could and then become an announcer or coach and be set for life. Instead he filed bankruptcy, was a pariah around baseball for years many and many of his old friends would not talk to him. No it was not the smart or Prudent thing to do. It was the courageous thing to do. It was the right thing to do. I admire him for it

Because of what he did refusing to be traded and bringing the case to the Supreme Court, all players who stay in the game become free agents. They can all now decide where they will play and who they will play for. Curt had been involved with civil rights early in adulthood. He had walked with Martin Luther King, and fought to stay in a home that the owner wanted him removed from because he was black. For Curt it was about the dignity of making one's own choices, not about million dollar paychecks. He would have taken a pay cut to choose where he worked he just wanted the right to choose. He didn't want to play in Philadelphia, and as an adult I can't say I blamed him.

He continued in relative obscurity for several years doing shows for me but not many other shows until Ken Burns made his nine-part PBS Baseball series, where he and his fight with baseball was featured prominently. He acquitted himself very well in the series and he had many more people want him for appearances.

In 1995 I was on the board of directors for the National Sports Collectors Convention. That year the national was in St. Louis, and I saw Curt's name on the list of guest stars. I went to the autograph pavilion and there was Curt and the line was snaked around the room and 100 yards down the hall. I just stood at the back of the room looking at him basking in the adoration of the fans who had abandoned him and cursed his name just a few years earlier. He saw me at the back of the room and waved me up to the table. (Promoters hate this as it slows down the signer) We caught up for a few minutes about family and what we were up to and then I pointed to the long line and said: ”This is a big difference from what we would get in Vegas.” He looked at me with a funny look and a wry smile and said: “ Joel everyone gets their 15 minutes of fame.” I suspect that he already knew he was sick. We never saw each other after that. He died of throat cancer in January 1997.

I was living on the East Coast and I couldn't get to his funeral. I talked to a friend who was there. Not one active baseball player was there. Without Curt there would not have been free agency. All those multimillionaire journeyman pitchers, all those millionaire utility infielders who never hit over .240. Curt Shilling would never had $50 million to lose on 38 Studios if Curt Flood hadn't refused to be traded. None of these players came to the funeral. I suspect they did not ever know his name. Curt Flood never got rich but every ball player should send his heirs a check. It was through his pain and suffering through his courage to do the right thing that they got rich, and also that they get to decide where to play.

Curt was a man who sacrificed everything for what he believed in, never got a reward and others reaped the benefit of his sacrifice. I will admire him for the rest of my life.