Curt Flood & Baseball Today

With the beginning of the baseball season I am always drawn back to the memory of African-American St. Louis Cardinals player Curt Flood. Flood defied the baseball ruling establishment and led a court challenge to the “reserve clause,” a mechanism that held most players in perpetual bondage to their teams. Though Flood lost the lawsuit at the Supreme Court, with the support of the Major League Baseball Players Association he set in motion the steps that would eventually result in the end of the reserve clause and the creation, of “free agency.”

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