![]() He led Flood out to a back alley to catch a taxi ride to another hotel where the Black players were staying.įlood and the other Black players had to dress separately in the locker room, sometimes having to change into their uniforms in a small shack beside the field. He took a taxi to the Reds’ lavish hotel, only to be greeted by a hotel employee, who told him it was for Whites only. That’s where Flood got his introduction to the Jim Crow laws of legalized racial segregation. It started in 1957 when he was 19 years old, after the Cincinnati Reds signed him following his senior year at Oakland Tech and flew him to Tampa, Fla. Louis Cardinals in the 1960s.īut even fewer still remember the uncomfortable stories of racism Flood endured, which tormented him for much of his life. He was an even better defensive center fielder than Willie Mays, winning seven straight National League Gold Glove Awards for the St. ![]() (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)Ī few people also remember Flood was quite a player. “Me as a Black man, I’m probably a lot more sensitive to the rights of other people because I have been denied these rights.” Arif Khatib at Curt Flood Field. “In the history of man, there’s no other profession except slavery where one man is tied to one owner for the rest of his life,” Flood said then. Secondly, he viewed baseball’s old Reserve Clause, which bound a player to a team for as long as the team wished, as just a version of indentured servitude. He told MLB Players Association director Marvin Miller he didn’t care if suing baseball would end his career as long as it would ultimately benefit other players and those to come. First, like his hero Jackie Robinson, who famously broke baseball’s color line, Flood felt he’d found a noble mission he could champion.
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