When he helped the Cardinals win the 1964 World Series, Flood decided to move his pregnant wife and four kids from Oakland to a bigger house in a better neighborhood. How do you regain that?”įor Flood, the most troubling part about the way he was treated wasn’t that he was discriminated against and called the N-word while playing baseball in the southern United States, it was that he and his family faced racism in his own backyard. “When you lose your dignity you lose an awful lot. “I think it was something that he could never forget,” said Jim “Mudcat” Grant, one of Flood’s ex-teammates, in an interview with HBO a few years ago. He later told his wife he was so shaken that he sat naked on a chair in the crowded locker room and silently cried. Louis Cardinals outfielder Curt Flood is shown, March 1968. The man grabbed a long stick with a nail on the end of it to pick up Flood’s jersey and pants, then dropped them onto a nearby stack with the dirty gear belonging to the other Black players. After their first practice, Flood mindlessly tossed his uniform on top of a giant pile of others, only to be immediately yelled at by the clubhouse attendant. 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. and Coolidge Ave., just off I-580, where a modest, rectangular sign tells all they’ve arrived at “Curt Flood Field,” a multi-purpose space used by high school and youth teams. The most tangible evidence of Flood’s impact in his hometown can be found at the corner of School St. Sadly, just as Flood feared, he may be a forgotten man today. 20, 1997 due to complications from throat cancer. It’s been nearly 25 years since Flood, the kid who grew from an Oakland playground legend into a three-time All-Star, two-time world champion and once-in-a-lifetime baseball pioneer, died in a Los Angeles hospital. He wondered if sabotaging his own baseball career to help other players win their freedom - in what he really saw as a civil rights issue - would just be a footnote in sports history. Click here for a look at what Tommie Smith and John Carlos - the enduring emblems of athlete protest - think about today’s movement.Ĭurt Flood, a complicated man with a convoluted legacy, spent the final years of his life consumed with fear he’d somehow be forgotten. GAME CHANGERS: This is the second in a series of stories chronicling the Bay Area’s rich history of sports figures fighting for equality.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |