hbo documentary on curt flood...

debuted the other night. watched it this afternoon. don't believe we've discussed it here at SportsJournalists.com. hbo did its usual fine job. if you have a teenaged son or are under 40 yourself it's a must-see. so much of his story has either never been common knowledge or has long been forgotten but, after jackie robinson, flood is probably the most important baseball since integration.

it should ABSOLUTELY be a must-see for every current major league reaping the rewards flood never did. being the old fart i am, i was familiar with the primary backstory but surely not the details. even legendary tough-guy bob gibson, flood's teammate, admits he didn't have the stones to stand by flood's side during the supreme court hearing. and flood's lawyers thought
and among they'd pulled a coup by getting former supreme court judge goldberg to represent them before the court but he turned out to be a disaster, ill-prepared and mailing it in...

biggest surprise to me: i had no idea flood's second wife was Judy Pace, the beautiful actress who played gale sayers' wife in 'brian's song.' one more piece of inane trivia jammed into my cranium.

 

Didn't see the show, but read somewhere that it says Flood's career as an artist was totally fraudulent. This was a common storyline associated with him in the '60s, that he was an exceptional portrait artist.

 

My greatest regret from my days as a sportswriter goes back to an old-timer's game (or some such thing) in Atlanta in the late 1980s in which he was a participant. One of my coworkers suggested I do a piece -- a column, really, because I was the daily sports columnist then -- and I honestly didn't know squat about him so I didn't even bother. God, I wish I could go back and do that piece now.

 

I was a big Cardinals fan when all that was going down, and I couldn't believe they traded him in the first place, especially to the Phillies. He paid a steep price for his principles, but every baseball free agent who has ever cashed a big paycheck owes him a debt of gratitude.

 

The documentary paints Flood as a tragic figure, but a tragic figure largely of his own making. And I think that's probably pretty close to the truth.

He got screwed over and blackballed by baseball yes, but he was also an alcoholic and apparently not much of a husband or father. He's not the first successful and/or well-known man who exhibited paradoxical integrity in his professional and personal lives.

As for the portrait controversy, Flood's biographer flat-out says — and appears to produce documented evidence — that Flood's portrait business was a fraud going all the way back to his playing days, as does his late-in-life girlfriend. Apparently, he would mail photos to an artist in Los Angeles, who would paint the portraits for him.

Flood was a complicated guy no doubt, but I don't think that — or the thrust of the documentary — impugns what he did for the rights of professional athletes.

 

Told to his face by then Cardinal skipper Solly Hemus in 1960 "that he'd never make it" obviously must have been an incentive to CF. Then again, the Reds traded him away to the Cards for three guys the great Jim Murray described as "unknown to the slot man at the Sporting News."

Surprised the HBO doc. didn't mention Curt Flood attended the same Oakland, CA high school(McClymonds) as Vada Pinson and Frank Robinson, and that all three shared the same Cincinatti outfield in the late 50's.

Winner of seven straight Gold Gloves, too bad he wears the goat horns for the '68 WS. (If only Lou Brock had slid on Willie Horton's throw to the plate in Game 5).

 

Sirs, Madames,

Interviewed him once (1994). Said that he didn't like the stories that portrayed him as bitter or broken, which is not surprising. Said he didn't like the stories that portrayed him as angry at baseball, which is surprising. His line, which I didn't buy and here paraphrase, is that he couldn't be angry at something that gave his friends so much pleasure. Noble sentiments, I guess, but I think he was trying too hard.

YHS, etc

 

Bill Russell was at that high school, too, at the same time.