Just prior to signing the lease he was in St. It wasn’t until after Flood had signed the lease, that the owner had discovered that he was a black man. When he got there, he was barred from entering by the owner who was armed with a shotgun. He had signed the lease and went to the home with his pregnant wife and four small children. At 26, Flood a native of Houston, Texas, rented a home in the suburb of Alamo. It’s a lot like how Universities treat student athletes today, only the schools are further protected from having to pay their indentured servants by the corrupt NCAA (National College Athletics Association).Ĭurt Flood was a proud man and he had experienced unfairness before in his life, and knew that his only option was to seek redress through the courts. Under the reserve clause a player could not contract under his own authority, and was reduced to a form of servitude, retirement being his only recourse. Essentially the reserve clause allowed the team owners to treat the players as property, and a player was bound to that team for life unless he was traded or released. In 1969, players were still bound to a team under the “reserve clause”. Instead he went to his lawyer and then to the director of the Players Association, and informed them that he wanted to sue Major League Baseball… At the end of the 1969 season the Cardinals traded him to Philadelphia.įlood refused to go to Philadelphia. He won the Gold Glove award seven consecutive seasons, played on three pennant winning Cardinal teams, and collected two World Series rings. He began his Major-League career with the Cincinnati Redlegs in 1956 before landing in St. Curt FloodĬurt Flood was a good baseball player. Louis Cardinals.īASEBALL WAS SOCIALLY RELEVANT, AND SO WAS MY REBELLION AGAINST IT. Louis Cardinals were a very close second.īaseball season is almost here, and I figured why not tell a story about law and baseball, and to make it even better, an outfielder for the St. My aunt was a Catholic nun, and she would tell you that her first love was Jesus and the St. Some of my fondest memories are of sitting in my Aunt Mary’s house on Main Street listening to Jack Buck and Mike Shannon call a game on a lazy Saturday afternoon. I come by it honestly, being raised to love baseball. It took a straight trajectory to left-center field finally coming to rest in the grass just to the left of the fountains. Not only did the ball rise skyward as if shot from a cannon, it appeared as if it would never come down. Being so close, I heard the deafening crack of the bat at the same time I saw the contact. The ball left the pitcher’s hand and floated toward home plate as if in a vacuum. I could see his chest deflate and then inflate as he raised his bat. He stepped into the box and planted himself like a statue. He approached the batter’s box in a glide, he didn’t even walk like a regular human being.įirst, he pawed at the dirt with his left foot, stepped back and did the same with his right, stepped back again and beat the dirt from his cleats with the butt of his bat. Bo Jackson was a physical freak of nature. When Number 16 came to the plate for the first time I could not resist being excited. A Cardinals fan, I politely cheered for them based upon our shared Missourianhood. I don’t remember the score, but I do remember the Royals won that day. When I did finally speak, I told my dad, “Mom can probably see us on TV from here!” When the usher finally led us down to our seats I could do nothing but look around, mouth agape, in absolute wonderment. We were in the second row of seats right behind home plate, in Kaufman Stadium, Kansas City, Missouri. I’d attended quite a few pro baseball games with my dad, most of them at Busch Stadium, but we had never sat in seats like this. I was either ten or eleven years old that summer, exactly what day, I can’t quite remember, but what happened, I will never forget. To me it would never have mattered who was playing, or where the game was being played, if the game was baseball, and my Pop was the one taking me. I did and still do bleed Cardinal red, but my dad was given tickets to a Royals game and invited me to go with him. The air was thick with the smells of smoked meats, roasted peanuts, spilled beer, and freshly raked dirt.
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