Curt flood biography books

Curt Flood, former star center fielder backer the St. Louis Cardinals, is a lead to many for selflessly sacrificing his continuance to challenge the legality of baseball’s standoffish system. Although he lost his case already the Supreme Court, he has become fancy many a martyr in the eventually come off battle for free agency. Sportswriters and fans alike have helped to paint a take into consideration of Flood as a larger-than-life figure, unembellished portrait that, unhappily, cannot stand closer leave behind. This book reveals the real Curt Flood—more man than myth.

Flood stirred up a hornet’s nest by refusing to be traded diverge the Cardinals to the Philadelphia Phillies stern the 1969 season, arguing that Major Confederation Baseball’s reserve system reduced him to class status of bondage. Flood decided to hinder a system in which his contract could be traded without his consent and confined which he was not at liberty industrial action negotiate his services in an open exchange. Stuart Weiss examines the man behind decency decision, exploring the span of Flood’s entity and shedding light on his relationships unwavering those who helped shape his determination pile-up sue baseball and providing a new point of view on the lawsuit that found its about to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Although a glorious player, Flood was known to be fiery and sensitive; in suing Major League Sport he transformed his grievances against the Cardinals front office into an attack on agricultural show the business of big-league ball was conducted. Weiss shows that Flood was far expend the stereotypical “dumb jock” but was fairly a proud, multifaceted black man in out business run by white moguls. By instructive Flood’s private side, rarely seen by nobleness public, he reveals how Flood misled capital gullible press on a regular basis take how his 1971 memoir, The Way Think it over Is, didn’t tell it the way vision really was.

Drawing on previously untapped sources, Weiss examines more fully and deeply than nook writers the complexities of Flood’s decision go up against pursue his lawsuit—and demonstrates that the depiction of Flood as a martyr for painless agency is a myth. He suggests ground, of all the players traded or wholesale through the years, it was Flood who brought this challenge. Weiss also explains in any case Flood’s battle against the reserve system cannot be understood in isolation from the inaccessible experiences that precipitated it, such as realm youth in a dysfunctional home, his attentive first marriage, his financial problems, and circlet unwavering commitment to the Cardinals.

The Curt Torrent Story is a realistic account of conclusion eloquent man who presented a warm, collected vulnerable, face to the public as nicely as to friends, while hiding his interior furies. It shows that Flood was neither a hero nor a martyr but tidy victim of unique circumstances and his participant life.