Flood Fight

Stepping Up: The Story of All-Star Curt Flood and His Fight for Baseball Players' Rights
$22.95
Alex Belth's "Stepping UP" is slim pickings. It is a sportswriter's cursory portrait of Flood sacrificing his career for the benefit of all players suffering from the restrictions of baseball's reserve system. It is a creampuff light example of what can be done without real research, and it is full of errors--major character's names misspelled, a reference to small claims court when the venue was federal district court, and much more. For a serious book about Flood, see Brad Snyder's "A Well-Paid Slave," and for a challenge to both books, see Stuart L. Weiss, "The Curt Flood Story: The Man Behind the Myth," due in April from the University of Missouri Press.

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$9.99
This is one of those classic movies you can put on anytime. It has some of the best one liners of any movie. The entire cast is first rate. You will be laughing throughout the movie.

A Well-Paid Slave: Curt Flood's Fight for Free Agency in Professional Sports
$16.00
Forty years have passed since Curt Flood refused to accept a trade to play baseball in another city. A man of immense pride and integrity, Flood vowed never to let the baseball establishment invoke its arbitrary practice of shuffling players around like pawns in a chess game; or as Flood described it---being treated as nothing more than a slave; albeit a well-paid slave.

Money wasn't the issue with Flood; it was a matter of principle for the iconoclastic centerfielder of St Louis, who had vowed to never again suffer the indignity of allowing any team to arbitrarily move him from one destination to another.

Brad Snyder's compelling story of Curt Flood's battle with baseball's reserve clause is historic, and on Flood's part, quite heroic. His legal battle, which went all the way to the Supreme Court, put the wheels in motion for what is now a player-friendly free-agent system, which handsomely rewards players with limited abilities the opportunity to become a millionaire---in just one season.

Ironically, most of today's players who have reaped such huge benefits from Flood's sacrifice know nothing about his efforts. Most of them weren't even born when all this happened.

The game has undergone an enormous change in the past four decades; Curt Flood was the catalyst, and this story is historic & extremely riveting for any fan of the game, especially baseball historians.

Support Your Local Sheriff
$2.99
This is one of those classic movies you can put on anytime. It has some of the best one liners of any movie. The entire cast is first rate. You will be laughing throughout the movie.