“Curt made it perfectly clear that he was going to do it by himself,” said McCarver, who admitted that he wished he would have spoken out more back then in support of Flood. Save for a few-namely former players Jackie Robinson and Hank Greenburg and former owner Bill Veeck, who testified on his behalf-Flood stood alone in his fight. He said, ‘Don’t let them put the genie back in the bottle,’ and I never forgot how he delivered in that moment.” “I had the great honor of being there when Curt Flood came to speak to the players. He, along with Flood’s teammate Tim McCarver, MLB journalist and Hall-of-Famer Claire Smith, former baseball player David Cone, and Flood’s son Curt Flood, Jr., discussed the late major leaguer’s impact on the game.Ĭone recalled when Flood, nearly three years before his death due to cancer at age 59, spoke to players on solidarity as they prepared to strike. 16 Shirley Povich virtual Symposium, that current MLBer Gerrit Cole publicly thanked Flood when he signed a big deal with the New York Yankees.įlood sparked “an economic revolution,” said Georgetown Law School Professor Brad Snyder. But Merrill College Journalism Professor and veteran journalist Kevin Blackistone pointed out, as moderator of the Nov. The repeated narrative for decades is that today’s major leaguers don’t know, or care, or respect, or recognize who Flood was and what he did, journalist David Steele recently tweeted. Three years later in 1975, the reserve clause was struck down and MLB and the players union agreed to a new collective bargaining agreement that introduced free agency in 1976. Supreme Court in 1972, and the Court ruled 5-3 in favor of MLB.

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