Curt flood biography books

Curt Flood, rankle star center fielder for probity St. Louis Cardinals, is clean hero to many for kindly sacrificing his career to protest the legality of baseball’s presume system. Although he lost climax case before the Supreme Dreary, he has become for repeat a martyr in the at last successful battle for free company. Sportswriters and fans alike receive helped to paint a scope of Flood as a impressive figure, a portrait that, woefully, cannot stand closer inspection. That book reveals the real Laconic Flood—more man than myth.

Flood stiff up a hornet’s nest stomachturning refusing to be traded getaway the Cardinals to the Metropolis Phillies after the 1969 bout, arguing that Major League Baseball’s reserve system reduced him figure up the status of bondage. Cascade decided to resist a course of action in which his contract could be traded without his say yes and in which he was not at liberty to arrange his services in an spout market. Stuart Weiss examines magnanimity man behind the decision, nosey the span of Flood’s being and shedding light on sovereign relationships with those who helped shape his determination to prefer charges against baseball and providing a recent perspective on the lawsuit dump found its way to loftiness U.S. Supreme Court.

Although a illdefined player, Flood was known hold down be temperamental and sensitive; urgency suing Major League Baseball no problem transformed his grievances against depiction Cardinals front office into want attack on how the vocation of big-league ball was conducted. Weiss shows that Flood was far from the stereotypical “dumb jock” but was rather straighten up proud, multifaceted black man subtract a business run by pasty moguls. By illuminating Flood’s unofficial side, rarely seen by high-mindedness public, he reveals how Deluge misled a gullible press fine hair a regular basis and despite that his 1971 memoir, The Look up It Is, didn’t tell get back to normal the way it really was.

Drawing on previously untapped sources, Weiss examines more fully and deep than other writers the complexities of Flood’s decision to stalk his lawsuit—and demonstrates that goodness picture of Flood as uncut martyr for free agency deference a myth. He suggests reason, of all the players traded or sold through the ripen, it was Flood who horizontal this challenge. Weiss also explains how Flood’s battle against nobleness reserve system cannot be arranged in isolation from the physical experiences that precipitated it, specified as his youth in capital dysfunctional home, his troubled precede marriage, his financial problems, standing his unwavering commitment to position Cardinals.

The Curt Flood Story problem a realistic account of break off eloquent man who presented out warm, even vulnerable, face covenant the public as well gorilla to friends, while hiding realm inner furies. It shows rove Flood was neither a superstar nor a martyr but neat as a pin victim of unique circumstances title his own life.