Stepping Up - The Story of Curt Flood and His Fight for Baseball Player's Rights
Even though it is Jackie Robinson day for Major League Baseball, I always find the story of Curt Flood more compelling. As awful as discrimination of any sort is and as noble as Jackie Robinson's role was, everybody seems to forget the guy who made free agency and multi-million dollar contracts possible. 
Curt Flood took that fight on in the early seventies and was reviled by ownership and players alike. Yet, his struggle, made the game better and helped reverse the reserve clause which more or less legalized slavery in America's pastime.
Curt's story also includes the segregation struggle, racism and the institutional advantage that owner's enjoyed throughout most of the century. Belth writes a compelling story as he follows Flood's early years to his tragic end in the mid nineties. This is a long over due book about baseball's forgotten hero. It's quite sad to realize that no active player attended his funeral. While Major League Baseball probably hasn't matured enough to recognize Flood's contribution, perhaps a movement could start which would consider Flood for the Hall of Fame. His hall of fame career was cut tragically short because he took a noble stand where none had before.
Belth does an adequate job of describing the tensions between baseball and its players, along with the lead up to the trial itself. While Flood did not win his case in the Supreme Court, he did make it possible for the Players Union to negotiate a better deal and ultimately create free agency. The great man himself, Jackie Robsinson, even testified on Flood's behalf. Presumably the reserve clause is somehow in place despite the Curt Flood Act passed by Congress in 1998. Perhaps with a little more legal acumen and experience Belth could have flushed out the case a little more. It is by no means as egregious a failure as former Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg's virtual meltdown during oral argument in front of his former colleagues. It's always easier being power, than making the case to it.
Flood's failures as a husband, father and person also come to light in this account. It's touching to see his affinity for art and painting flourish despite a major league career and his visits to Copenhagen evoked a similar sympathy from me, a former traveler in that country. The actual accounts and descriptions of the game and the World Series in the book are as good as any I've read. It's shame some film producer or director like Spike Lee doesn't tell this story on the screen. It's about the individual standing up to ultimate power and greed. In the end, Flood made the game better and gets little credit for it because of the prejudice assumed by greed, self-interest, but ultimately justice itself.
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