Player Champion Flood Dead at 59

Curt Flood, a .293 hitter who made a lasting impact on major league baseball by opening the door to free agency with his unsuccessful challenge of the reserve system, died of throat cancer at the UCLA Medical Center on Monday. Friends said Flood had been ill for more than a year and had contracted pneumonia Friday. He was 59.

“Baseball players have lost a true champion,” Donald Fehr, executive director of the Major League Players Assn., said.

“A man of quiet dignity, Curt Flood conducted his life in a way that set an example for all who had the privilege to know him. When it came time to take a stand, at great personal risk and sacrifice, he proudly stood firm for what he believed was right.”

Fehr called Flood’s challenge of the reserve system a “courageous and principled stand that clearly cost him his career” and left all players indebted. The effort, Fehr said, “was critical to establishing the rights they now enjoy. Perhaps more than any other player, he brought the nation’s attention to the basic injustice of baseball’s reserve system.”

A three-time all-star and seven-time winner of the Gold Glove for his defensive prowess in center field, Flood hit more than .300 six times during a 15-year major league career that began in 1956.

He spent 12 seasons with the St. Louis Cardinals and was a catalyst on the World Series champions of 1964, when he led the National League with 211 hits, and 1967, when he batted .335.

After the 1969 season, however, Flood was traded by the Cardinals to the Philadelphia Phillies, learning of the transaction in a call from a Philadelphia reporter. He was 31, was baseball’s best center fielder and believed he had earned the right to finish his career where he wanted.

Or as longtime friend Richard Moss, former general counsel of the players’ union, said Monday, Flood believed he had earned the right to be treated as more than “a piece of property.”

In his autobiography, “The Way It Is,” Flood wrote:

“If I had been a foot-shuffling porter, they might at least have given me a pocket watch.”

Rejecting a $100,000 contract with the Phillies, a rare six-figure offer at that time, Flood convinced Marvin Miller, the union’s executive director, that he would go the distance in challenging a system that left players with no options regarding their place of employment and, in Flood’s and the union’s view, violated antitrust laws and Constitutional rights.

The union agreed to pay his legal bills as he sat out the 1970 season and began a series of court rejections that culminated in the Supreme Court’s voting, 5-3, on June 6, 1972, to uphold baseball’s antitrust exemption, writing that it was up to Congress to change a 50-year-old precedent.

Flood played his final 13 games with the Washington Senators in 1971, but his challenge of the reserve system, Moss said Monday, had been implanted in the minds of fans, players and even owners, ultimately leading to the 1975 decision in which arbitrator Peter Seitz overturned that system by granting Dave McNally and Andy Messersmith free agency.

Said Miller Monday: “At the time Curt Flood decided to challenge baseball’s reserve clause, he was perhaps the sport’s premier center fielder, and yet he chose to fight an injustice, knowing that even if by some miracle he won, his career as a professional player would be over.

“At no time did he waver in his commitment and determination. He had experienced something that was inherently unfair and was determined to right the wrong, not so much for himself, but for those who would come after him.

“Few praised him for this, then or now. There is no Hall of Fame for people like Curt.”

In a statement released by the union Monday, David Cone and Tom Glavine, the American and National League player representatives, said the debt to Flood can never be repaid, that all players should make certain their commitment is equal to the “commitment Curt Flood made to us.”

Flood is survived by his wife, Judy, two stepdaughters and a son by a previous marriage. In the years after his retirement, he did some coaching and broadcasting and operated a youth foundation in Los Angeles. His skill as a portrait painter, a hobby he began while playing, has been widely displayed. A Flood portrait of Martin Luther King hangs in the living room of King’s widow, Coretta.

There are other measures of Flood’s impact.

His life will soon be the subject of an HBO documentary directed by Spike Lee.

And on the first day of the current Congressional session, Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) introduced a bill removing the antitrust exemption as it applies to labor matters.

The bill is HR 21 in honor of Flood’s uniform number.

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Curt Flood On and Off the Field

* Broke into the majors in 1956 with Cincinnati Reds.

* Played 15 seasons, 12 with the St. Louis Cardinals.

* Lifetime batting average of .293.

* Three-time All-Star.

* Won seven Gold Gloves.

* Batted more than .300 six times.

* Led National League with 211 hits in 1964.

* Led National League with a .355 average in 1967.

* Played in three World Series (1964, 1967, 1968).

* After the 1969 season Flood was traded by St. Louis to Philadelphia. Rather than going where he didn’t want to go, Flood rejected a $100,000 contract and challenged baseball’s reserve system and antitrust laws. He sat out the 1970 season and began a series of court actions--all rejected--that culminated in the Supreme Court’s voting, 5-3, on June 6, 1972, to uphold baseball’s antitrust exemption. The court wrote that it was up to Congress to change a 50-year-old precedent. But his challenge of the reserve system had been implanted in the minds of fans, players and even owners, ultimately leading to the 1975 decision in which arbitrator Peter Seitz overturned that system by granting Dave McNally and Andy Messersmith free agency.