Curt flood award professional#

Oddly enough, the language of the reserve clause was ambiguous.

Unless the team chose to trade him or release him, his first big-league team would be his only big-league team for his entire career. Simply put, a player was a team's property. In 1969, players were still bound to a team for life by the so-called reserve clause. And though he was aware that it would cost him dearly, he never wavered. Those waves reverberate even to this day.

Curt flood award professional#

The decision sent shock waves not only through baseball but ultimately through all professional sports. Not only did Flood refuse to go, but he went to his personal lawyer and then to Marvin Miller, founder and executive director of the Players Association, and told them he wanted to sue Major League Baseball.

But this trade was turned out to be different from all other trades before or since: This time, one of the two principal stars-most baseball writers regarded it mainly as a swap of Flood for Allen-refused to go. But it's what Curt Flood didn't do in 1969 that helped change the game forever: He did not accept a trade.Īt the end of the 1969 season, the Cardinals traded him, along with Tim McCarver, Byron Browne, and Joe Hoerner, to the Phillies for Dick Allen, Jerry Johnson, and Cookie Rojas. He was on three pennant-winning teams with the Cardinals and earned two World Series rings. Louis Cardinals, won Gold Glove seven consecutive seasons, from 1963-1969. 293, was a three-time All-Star, and, playing centerfield for the St. (He took the 1970 season off, which is something I'll discuss in a moment.) He batted. Not that Flood suffers from such an examination.

Who Curtis Charles Flood was and precisely his significance in baseball history is something that can't be understood just by looking at the record book. If Curt Flood had not existed, not even Marvin Miller could have invented him.