A Well-Paid Slave: Curt Flood's Fight for Free Agency in Professional Sports
by Brad Snyder
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Book Summary Information
Author: Brad SnyderEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Published)
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2006-10-05
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 480
Publisher: Viking Adult
Book Reviews of A Well-Paid Slave: Curt Flood's Fight for Free Agency in Professional Sports
Book Review: Well written book about one of the most important athletes of the 20th century
Summary: 4 Stars
Though not a great book, or even the book that Curt Flood may have deserved, "A Well-Paid Slave" is important American history well worth reading. The best parts are the details of how Flood grew up in Oakland in a time when baseball players came out of the city in droves as well as his minor league days in the Jim Crow Era South. Less entertaining are the legal blow by blows of his court case and all of its machinations through the American legal system. I am not a lawyer and I found the many pages devoted to the Supreme Court decision, which of course Flood lost, to be beside the point.
Curt Flood was a great and important American in the way that Rose Parks was and so many others who fought racial and economic injustice in our wonderful nation are and were. He was far from perfect, and the author's lamentations that Flood was "blackballed" ignore his alcoholism and self destructive tendencies, though Flood died sober and in recovery.
This book is worth reading for though familiar with Flood's legal battles against the baseball establishment. I just wish the author had spent more time on Curt Flood the man and less time on the court case which he ultimately lost.
Summary of A Well-Paid Slave: Curt Flood's Fight for Free Agency in Professional Sports
After the 1969 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 were no free agents, no no-trade clauses. When a player was traded, he had to report to his new team or retire. Unwilling to leave St. Louis and influenced by the civil rights movement, Flood chose to sue Major League Baseball for his freedom. His case reached the Supreme Court, where Flood ultimately lost. But by challenging the system, he created an atmosphere in which, just three years later, free agency became a reality. Flood?s decision cost him his career, but as this dramatic chronicle makes clear, his influence on sports history puts him in a league with Jackie Robinson and Muhammad Ali.African-American & Black Books
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