Curt Flood Loses ?Reserve Clause' Challenge

• Author: Allen Pusey
• Pages: 72-72

AP PHOTO

Curt Flood Loses ‘Reserve Clause’ Challenge

In October 1969, the St. Louis Cardinals completed a blockbuster trade with the Philadelphia Phillies.

The seven-player deal included two major stars at the pinnacle of their careers: Dick Allen of the Phillies

and Curt Flood of the Cardinals.

Allen—a former rookie of the year—had hit 32

home runs the prior season. Flood, a c enter fi elder

and .300 hitter, was a t wo-time World Series

champion during seven seasons w ith the Cards.

But for Flood, the notion that a 12-year veteran

could be bartered w ithout his permission violated

a basic personal right. A lthough he stood to make

$100,000 with the Phillies (about $668,000

today), he decided to refuse the move and sit out

the 1970 season.

Flood had been active i n the civil rights movement

of the 1960s, and his lett er to Bowie Kuhn, Major League

Baseball commi ssioner, echoed that exper ience: “I do

not feel that I am a piece of property t o be bought and

sold irrespective of my w ishes.”

Kuhn—although sympathetic—ref used, and Flood fi led

suit against the comm issioner, the presidents of the two

major leagues, and the 24 tea ms that existed at the time.

Flood received scant public support from ot her players.

To many, baseball’s “reserve clause” allowing tota l team

control of a player’s career seemed vir tually inviolable.

Baseball’s hold on the American imag ination and its

iron-fi sted control of player contracts had allowed it

to survive t he 1919 Black Sox scandal, the Great

Depression, segregation, fr anchise relocations and

two major U.S. Supreme Court decisions.

In 1914, when challenged by a newly formed league,

American and Nationa l League owners responded by

buying o most of the emerging competition. When the

owner of the Baltimore Terrapins won an $80,000 judg-

ment under the Sherman Antitru st Act of 1890, baseball

found relief at the Supreme Court. In a per plexing 1922

opinion in Federal Basebal l Club v. National League,

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. ruled that baseball—

where teams from var ious cities crossed state lines to

play before paying audiences—couldn’t be considered a

product of interstate commerce .

Likewise, when t he Newark Bears, a New

York Yankees far m club, disbanded in 1950, one

of its promising pitchers refused r eassignment

to a lesser minor league squad . When George

Earl Toolson demanded a chance to negotiate

with other teams , he was met at the Supreme

Court with a one-pa ragraph, 7-2 decision

reiterating Federal Baseball.

So in 1972, with the suppor t of the Baseball

Players Association, Flood wa s attempting to rekindle the

antitrust issue before a h istorically skeptical high cour t.

Although his lawyer, former Justice A rthur Goldberg,

argued that the clau se violated not only antitrust laws

but 13th Amendment prohibitions against pe onage and

involuntary serv itude, the response was all but assure d.

On June 19, 1972, in an opinion that began w ith a

nostalgic list of his f avorite players, Justice Harry

Blackmun rea rmed his love of basebal l and the

court’s love of its antitrust e xemption. But he expressed

hope that the reserve- clause anomaly could be cured

through la bor negotiations.

That happened in 1975, when a federal arbitrator

ruled that two players un ilaterally signed by their teams

to one-year contract s could become free agents. After a

brief court chal lenge, team owners resolved the issue in

a new labor contract wit h the players union, introducing

free agency into the la ndscape of player compensation.

By then, Flood had retired f rom baseball. He bought

a bar on the island of Mallorca in Spa in, where he stayed

until illness forced h is return to the United States. He

died in 1997. A year later, Congress enac ted the Curt

Flood Act of 1998, formally remov ing the reserve clause

from baseball’s antitru st exemption.

Last year, aft er more than 40 years of free agency,

36 Major League players made $20 million or more.

June 19, 1972

72 || ABA JOURNAL JUNE 2018

Precedents || By Allen Pusey

Curt Flood in fron t

of the federal courthouse

in New York City in

June 1970 as his lega l

challenge of baseball’s

reserve clause resumed.