![]() Along with such greats as Bob Gibson, Roger Maris, Bill White, and Orlando Cepada, Flood comprised the nucleus of the most colorful and successful team of the late 1960s. Where had I failed Big Daddy?" (47) The firmly entrenched plantation mentality made it difficult for players even to see the injustice of the reserve clause and its implications.įlood quickly succeeded in the Cardinals' organization. I had aspired to a place at the table but had been shown the door instead. ![]() He recounts his thought process in his book: "Gabe Paul had told me what a great family they were. Calling himself "a nobody," Flood never thought of refusing to be traded in 1957 (45). Shortly thereafter, Flood learned that he had been traded to the Cardinals. In the paternalistic language befitting the baseball plantation, Paul told Flood he only wanted the best for his potential star. The next season brought more of the same for Flood: great play on the field the general manager reluctantly agreeing to renew his contract off the field. He had no choice the reserve clause granted him no latitude. It would behoove Flood to merely renew his old contract, accept promotion to a higher minor league, and continue to play hard (he wanted the ball club to think well of him, didn't he?). In the same language used by Spalding over seventy years earlier, Paul told Flood that "the club's expenses were dangerously out of hand" (qtd. Unfortunately, Cincinnati General Manager Gabe Paul held a decidedly different view. Heading into the annual contract negotiations, Flood brought very high hopes of a substantial pay raise. Near the end of the season, Flood even got to see some action with the Reds, the major league ball club. Yet in his first season of professional action, Flood hit. At the minor league camp he later attended in Douglas, Georgia, officials gave Flood the number 330-not a way to mark a guy as pride of the organization (Flood 36). ![]() Not only facing for the first time the blatant racism of the South, Flood had to overcome some tough odds on the baseball field. Shortly after receiving his diploma from high school, an optimistic young Flood boarded an airplane for Tampa and the deep South (Flood 33). Nevertheless, Flood earned a chance, and in 1956 he signed a contract with the Cincinnati organization for $4,000. Yet friends and even scouts warned Flood not to be too enthusiastic about a pro career for Flood had two strikes against him. Oddly enough, it seemed the scrawny 5-foot-7, 140 lbs. While Flood's intelligent older brother Carl quickly succumbed to crime, Curt managed to avoid most of the city's problems through his art, and later through baseball. Never just a ballplayer, even in his greatest moments on the diamond, Flood realized how fleeting baseball glory could be, and he never forgot the rough path that had brought him from the Oakland ghetto to baseball stardom.īorn in Houston, Texas as the last of six children, Curt and the rest of the Flood family moved to Oakland in 1940. Busch, Jr., long resided on the owner's yacht. still hangs in Coretta Scott King's house, and a portrait of Cardinals and Budweiser owner August A. A painting he did of Martin Luther King, Jr. His self-portrait marks the introduction to this project. Besides playing a mean centerfield, Flood owned his own photoshop, befriended some sixties reformers, and painted portraits of some of the most popular figures of his day. Flood's story, though, of course, is not just the story of a baseball player. ![]() Indeed, without some insight into Flood's life, there can hardly seem a more unlikely candidate to risk his career to topple baseball's reserve clause. 285 while collecting his seventh-straight Gold Glove. The Cardinals had struggled to a sub-par year, but Flood, a team captain, still hit. Two years later at the close of the 1969 season, things outwardly seemed little different. Fresh off a World Series championship and an All-Star selection, Flood pulled off the even rarer feat of landing a $12,000 raise. Curt Flood's Life Little Old Curt Flood: A Centerfielder's LifeĪs the 1967 season ended, things could hardly have been going better for Cardinals centerfielder Curt Flood. ![]()
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