“If Cooperstown is the place where the history is kept, then in the absence of Curt Flood … there’s a continuity issue,” his son said.įlood’s surviving children are behind a lobbying campaign to spread the word about his legacy to professional athletes and their unions, sports agents, entertainment figures, journalists and younger fans not familiar with his story. Now, nearly 23 years after his death in January 1997, Flood’s children and others are heralding what they call his heroic sacrifice in a push for his enshrinement in Cooperstown, New York. ‘No doubt Curt Flood should be a Hall of Famer’: former tennis star Martina Navratilova “He had been ostracized by the game he loved,” said daughter Shelly Flood, 58, a drug and alcohol youth counselor in Los Angeles. He was shunned by MLB, sports writers and even former teammates.
He drifted apart from his five children and battled alcoholism and money problems. It also effectively ended Flood’s career, leaving him a broken man. His rejection of the reserve clause was the advent of free agency, which gave professional baseball players more control over their careers and allowed them to reap the massive contracts many players receive today. “After 12 years in the Major Leagues, I do not feel that I am a piece of property to be bought and sold irrespective of my wishes,” the letter read in part, with Flood not accepting his team’s right to trade him to the Philadelphia Phillies. Louis Cardinals wrote a brief but momentous letter to then Commissioner of Baseball Bowie Kuhn challenging the league’s stranglehold over its players.
On Christmas Eve 1969, the former All-Star center fielder for the St. “It was a long road back and, just as he was coming full circle and being of service to his community and young ball players, he became ill with throat cancer and died at the same age I am today.”
“My dad lost his health and his way,” said Curt Flood Jr., who’s 59.
#Curt flood made agency possible for free
A half century after Curt Flood’s defiance paved the way for free agency in professional sports, his surviving children are lobbying for their once-estranged father’s induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.
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