Curt Flood

Curtis Charles Flood was born on the eighteenth of January 1938 at Houston, Texas, the third of six children of Herman Flood — a Pullman porter — and Laura Flood, a homemaker. The family moved to Oakland in 1940. He attended Oakland Technical High School, where he played centerfield for the school baseball squad under the coach George Powles. He was scouted by the Cincinnati Reds at seventeen and signed by the Reds in 1956. He spent two seasons in the Reds' minor-league system — at Tampa in the Class B Florida State League and at Savannah in the Class A South Atlantic League — and was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals in December 1957.

He joined the Cardinals for the 1958 season at twenty and held the centerfield position for the following twelve years. He played for the Cardinals from 1958 to 1969 and won the Gold Glove Award for fielding seven consecutive times from 1963 to 1969. He led the National League in fielding percentage twice (1966, 1967) and put-outs three times. The Cardinals won three National League pennants — 1964, 1967, 1968 — and two World Series — 1964 and 1967 — across his career.

His decisive transition came on the seventh of October 1969 when the Cardinals traded him to the Philadelphia Phillies as part of a multi-player deal. He had not been consulted. The trade was conducted under the standard major-league reserve clause that bound every player to his original club for the duration of his career and that the major leagues had since the National Agreement of 1879 considered the constitutional foundation of the major-league economy.

Flood refused on the twenty-fourth of December 1969 to report to Philadelphia. He wrote the same day to MLB Commissioner Bowie Kuhn requesting free agency: "After twelve years in the major leagues, I do not feel I am a piece of property to be bought and sold irrespective of my wishes. I believe that any system which produces that result violates my basic rights as a citizen and is inconsistent with the laws of the United States." Kuhn refused.

He filed suit in January 1970 challenging the reserve clause on antitrust grounds. The case Flood v. Kuhn was argued before the United States Supreme Court in March 1972 and decided in June 1972 by a five-to-three vote against Flood. He sat out the entire 1970 season and the substantial portion of his career to bring the suit. The professional retaliation he endured across the following decade was profound. The case nevertheless established the legal foundation on which the December 1975 Andy Messersmith arbitration would within four years finally end the reserve clause.

He died of throat cancer at Los Angeles on the twentieth of January 1997, at fifty-nine.

He is honored here as the foundational figure of baseball free agency.