A Well-paid SlaveA Well-paid Slave

After the 1969 baseball season, the St. Louis Cardinals traded their star center fielder Curt Flood to the Philadelphia Phillies, setting off a chain of events that would change professional sports forever. at the time, there was no such thing as free agency. Baseball players were bound to their teams for life by a paragraph in the standard player contract known as the reserve clause. As a result, players could not receive fair market value for their services. More important, players had no control over where or for whom they played. When a player was traded, he had two choices: Report to his new team or retire. Curt Flood chose door number three: He sued Major League Baseball for his professional freedom.
Flood was not a typical ballplayer. Artistic, well read, fiercely intelligent, and politically active, Flood was strongly influenced by the example of Jackie Robinson, who personally recruited Flood in to the civil rights movement. After twelve years with the Cardinals, Flood's roots had grown deep into the St. Louis soil. He also had established a photography and portrait-painting business in St. Louis, which he stood to lose by moving to Philadelphia. Unlike countless others before him, Flood refused to have his life uprooted against his wishes and was willing to sacrifice his baseball career so that no future player would have to endure a similar indignity.
A Well-Paid Slave provides the first in-depth look at Flood's lawsuit and its impact on both professional sports and the man who had the courage to see it through to the highest court in the land.
Traces the landmark 1969 Supreme Court case between All-Star center fielder Curt Flood and Major League Baseball, documenting how he fought to play for the team of his choice at the cost of his career and placement in the Hall of Fame but paved the way for future players to become free agents.
Traces the landmark Supreme Court case between All-Star center fielder Curt Flood and Major League Baseball, documenting how he fought to play for the team of his choice at the cost of his career and placement in the Hall of Fame but paved the way for future players to become free agents.