I read a lot of books about baseball when there is no actual baseball going on (ok I do it when there is baseball going on too). I figure I might as well incorporate the Now Reading plugin stuff (that’s the “baseball library” link in the top nav) with actual posts.
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When Curt Flood was told after the 1969 season that he had been traded to the Philadelphia Phillies for Dick Allen, he didn’t want to go. There were a lot of reasons Flood did not want to report to Philadelphia–from the memories of being traded while he was just starting out in professional baseball that still stung to not being told himself by the team (he found out from a beat reporter). And so, he decided to fight the reserve clause.
A Well Paid Slave doesn’t paint Flood as a hero who toppled the system (his lost his famous court case, even if it did get the ball rolling) but rather a man who wanted to be a hero like the man he admired the most: Jackie Robinson. Curt Flood was a man with many flaws, which Brad Snyder shows us, but he was also a man of conviction. He was often very selfish and irresponsible in his personal life but he gave up any future he had in baseball when he got the ball rolling in Flood vs Kuhn.
Snyder’s book is long and meticiulously researched, filled with notations and sporting a huge bibliography. It’s not a romantic view of Curt Flood’s court battles, but rather an extremely scholarly effort that details all the wins, losses and hitches on the road that Flood and Marvin Miller faced along the way. A very even-handed effort, A Well Paid Slave paints a picture of Flood as a man who very desperately wanted to be someone great and help out his fellow ballplayers, but who had a very troubled personal life. The treatment of the other people involved in the case, such as Bowie Kuhn, is similar. Nobody is an angel or a demon.
A fascinating and interesting read, the only real issue with the book is that Brad Snyder’s writing is a bit dry and more academic than what one expects while reading a book about sports. This is not a bad thing–and it does show that sports can be approached as a serious topic–but don’t expect to blaze through the book.
In the end, Curt Flood did not win his case and the reserve clause remained in full effect until 1975 but his fight led the way and anyone who loves baseball owes it to themselves to learn about his trials.
