How Curt Flood Changed Major League Baseball

Curt Flood 1965

Spring Training starts in less than two weeks. Pitchers and Catchers from my two favorite teams report on February 13th (Phillies in the National League; White Sox in the American League). Both teams (and their fans) find themselves in the hunt (more accurately the waiting game) for the top two free agents available this offseason. As we wait I thought we could look back at one of the turning points in the history of Major League Baseball, a time when the financial structure of the game was forever altered. Let’s go back in time to the 1970’s and the event that brought both arbitration and free agency to the game of baseball.

Prior to the 1970's teams controlled player movement with the use of player reserve clauses. Under these clauses a player could not change teams unless he was traded or released. The team held the rights to the player even after the end of his contract forcing him to negotiate with his current team or retire.

In 1969 the St. Louis Cardinals traded center fielder Curt Flood along with Tim McCarver, Byron Browne and Joe Hoerner, to the Philadelphia Phillies for Dick Allen, Cookie Rojas and Jerry Johnson. Flood refused to report to the Phillies for a number of reasons, but mostly because he did not want to be treated as a piece of property. After the commissioner refused his appeal, Flood took his case to the courts eventual losing in a 5-3 Supreme Court decision. The court ruled that baseball was a sport, not a business. As such the league was exempt from the antitrust law on which Flood's case rested.

Though a loss for Flood, his case set in motion major changes for Major League Baseball. On February 25, 1973 the league and the MLB Players Union signed off on their third Collective Bargaining Agreement. Included among the changes in the agreement was an option for any player with at least two years in the league to go to salary arbitration if unable to reach terms on a new contract. This was included as a direct result of the Flood court case as owners feared the players might one day win the right to free agency.

The first player to go to arbitration was Dick Woodson, a pitcher for the Minnesota Twins. The Twins offered $23,000 but Woodson wanted $29,000. He won his case. Between 1974 and 2012 there were 500 arbitration cases in baseball with the owners winning 57% of them. (according to the MLB players website)

A few years later during another player’s arbitration hearing, players were granted the right to free agency. Today arbitration is an important part of settling salary disputes between players and teams, allowing the two to go to a neutral party to help settle disputes. For owners this means avoiding the chaos they feared would happen if the players were given outright free agency. For players arbitration affords an opportunity to make sure contracts are based on performance and not on the fact that teams can restrict player movement.

The court case cost Curt Flood his career. His sacrifice lead to both arbitration and free agency. As a result players have seen salaries rise over the last few decades. And as we sit and wait for Bryce Harper and Manny Machado to sign on the dotted line, know that if not for Curt Flood we would have no free agents and no opportunity for our favorite teams to sign big name players.