The Man who Sued Major League Baseball (Rather than go to Philly)

21:21Business History Podcast Host:I think it's worth talking about here. Like, you know, he came up in the minor leagues in the 1950s, just a few years after Jackie Robinson became the first black professional baseball player. When Flood was in the minor leagues, he was playing in the South, mostly. And so, you know, he would have to wait on the bus while his white teammates went into a restaurant. One time, the trainer of his own team yelled at him for putting his uniform in the laundry with the white players. The trainer actually, like, fished it out with a stick and sent it off to the black laundry. Even once, Kurt Flood made the majors.

21:57Business History Podcast Host:He was a major league baseball player. He rented a house. And when the landlord found out he was black, he said, you can't rent this house and I'm going to block the door with a shotgun. And Kurt Flood actually sued that guy for the right to just live in the house that he had rented as a major league baseball player. So Kurt Flood's seen the civil rights era come not just in theory, but in his own life, in baseball. He's like lived through all of these changes. Yeah. And so Marvin Miller lays all of this out for Kurt Flood and Kurt Flood says, OK. But for all of that, if I do win, will it help, you know, will it help other players?

22:35Business History Podcast Host:And Marvin Miller says, yeah, it will. And Kurt Flood says, OK, let's do it. So they decide to sue baseball. We'll be back in just a minute.

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25:53Business History Podcast Host:Hey, it's Jacob Goldstein from Business History. In our new series, American Genius, we tell the stories of three great writers who changed the way business works in America. Our first episode is about Benjamin Franklin, who, among many other things, was a best-selling business writer. Take a listen. He's writing this much later in his life, consciously creating this image of himself. And I do want to emphasize how unusual this model is at the time, this self-made man myth, because you don't want to be self-made. It's low class to be self-made. You know, this idea that we have today is the opposite.

26:35Business History Podcast Host:Right. And it comes from Franklin. Today, there is the derisive term nepo-baity. Well, exactly right. And these days, if you are a billionaire, you had better have a Benjamin Franklin story about starting in a garage, coming up with the idea from nothing. And here is Benjamin Franklin inventing it right before our eyes. This has been brought to you by Odoo. To listen to more of our American Genius series, listen to business history. New episodes release every Wednesday on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

27:17And we're back with the story of Kurt Flood. So how do you litigate this case, right? There have been these two precedents against this concept. Clearly, the Supreme Court, of all the things they have to deal with, does not want to deal with America's pastime.

27:30Business History Podcast Host:Yeah. So, well, the first thing is you find a good lawyer who knows his way around the Supreme Court. and the union finds what seems like a great lawyer for flood, a guy named Arthur Goldberg, who had in fact been a Supreme Court justice. Wait, you could just hire Supreme Court justices back in those days? This part is actually shocking to me. He had stepped down from the Supreme Court to be the ambassador to the UN, which like today would never happen. So either the Supreme Court was less of a big deal then or the UN was more of a big deal or both. I don't know, but it's weird. I mean, he got to live in New York City.

28:03Business History Podcast Host:True. That's how much better New York is than D.C. So this guy, Arthur Goldberg, says he'll take the case. He just wants the union to pay his expenses. He believes in it. And he and Flood decide to start, you know, because precedent is so clearly stacked against them. They're going to fight the case in what every reporter loves to call the court of public opinion. They're going to take the case to the people to try and, you know, convince America that the Reserve Clause is wrong. And so their first move is to send a letter to the commissioner of Major League Baseball, one Bui Kuhn. And it's a public letter.

28:41So, Robert, as our designated reader, read us an excerpt from the letter. Dear Mr. Kuhn, and the millions of people we have published this to who can also read it. Dear Mr. Kuhn, after 12 years in the Major Leagues, I do not feel that I am a piece of property to be bought and sold irrespective of my wishes. I believe that any system that produces that result violates my basic rights as a citizen and is inconsistent with the laws of the United States and of the several states.

29:10Business History Podcast Host:Well put. Yes. And so, I mean, I'm just going to repeat a piece of property to be bought and sold, right? Like he's clearly invoking slavery here. So then he goes on in this letter, right? And he makes his request to CUNY. He says, I want to be free to talk to other teams about playing for them. And then can you just read the last line of the letter? I therefore request that you make known to all the major league clubs my feelings in this matter and advise them of my availability for the 1970 season. Hire me. Pay me money. Sincerely yours. That parts me. Sincerely yours, Kurt Flood. And so the commissioner gets the letter.

29:45Business History Podcast Host:And a week later, and what is frankly a classy move, the commissioner calls Flood at home and reads Flood his, the commissioner's response to Flood's letter. It says in part, Robert. Dear Curtin, I certainly agree with you that you, as a human being, are not a piece of property to be bought and sold. This is fundamental in our society and I think obvious. However, I cannot see its applicability to the situation at hand you have entered into a current playing contract. Under the circumstances, and pending any further information from you, I don't see what action I can take and cannot comply with the request contained in the second paragraph of your letter.

30:23Sincerely yours, Bowie. Bowie K. Kuhn. So now you have this public debate, right? And he has a good point. You signed a contract. The reserve clause is in that contract, and you put your name to it.

30:38Business History Podcast Host:Yes. So people are talking about this now. People are talking about the fact that Kurt Flood is invoking slavery, comparing his status as a professional baseball player. Around this time, he does an interview with the most famous sportscaster in America, I think of the second half of the 20th century, I would say. Howard Cosell, a really interesting figure in his own right. And in this interview, Cosell basically says, like, Kerr Flood, you're getting rich playing baseball. You know, how can you compare yourself to someone who is enslaved? And Flood says, a well-paid slave is nonetheless a slave.

31:14Business History Podcast Host:And this is maybe his most famous quote. The biography, the sort of key biography of Flood is in fact called A Well-Paid Slave. It's like Brad Snyder is a very useful source for this show. So now this quote is out there. And this is very provocative at the time because, you know, I was alive in the 70s. And there was a feeling that in professional sports, there was finally equality. That, you know, you could look around and say, yes, but some of our best athletes, are highest paid people in the United States, are black men mostly in professional sports. And there was a kind of, I guess, patting yourself on the back for saying, like, we have overcome a lot of these things that the civil rights movement had talked about in professional sports.

32:00And here's Kurt Flood saying, no, no, you haven't.

32:03Business History Podcast Host:And yeah, and kind of to your point, like, people do not like this argument that Kurt Flood is making. Like, there's one sort of mocking article that runs in the paper under the headline, A Tear for Kurt Flood. And it says, one is forced to admire Kurt Flood when a man is making only$90 ,000, which is$800 ,000, right? When a man is making only$90 ,000, he is forced to stand up and fight. Boo-hoo. Yeah, boo-hoo is what the public is saying. So it's not going well in the court of public opinion. And now it's time to try the case in the court of law. Here comes the judge. It's 1970. The case goes to trial in Manhattan.

32:46Business History Podcast Host:And this, too, starts off badly for Kurt Flood. His lawyer is now running for governor, so probably not putting in the time he should on the trial. And Kurt Flood personally has been having a hard time. After he filed the suit, he basically stopped playing baseball. So he's suddenly gone from being this star who's, you know, on the field all the time, making lots of money, to being a guy who has always liked to drink martinis and now has too much time on his hands. And also, he's getting death threats, like multiple, basically racist death threats every day because people are so angry that he is suing baseball.

33:26And remember, they're not angry because they care about the interstate commerce clause. Right.

33:31Business History Podcast Host:It's not Sherman Antitrust Act in their death threats. No, no, no, no, no. Because there's this whole cultural context. Just to remind everyone, it's 1970, right? The U.S. is in the middle of this massive culture war, which is tied to a real war. A shooting war, yeah. In Vietnam, right? You've got the Black Panthers, the Stonewall riots. The weather underground is blowing up stuff. You know, people talk about the division today in America. But like this was a scary, divisive time. People were taking sides. And so Kurt Flood talking about what is essentially, you know, a worker compensation issue becomes one side of this fight.

34:08It becomes symbolic of this bigger split in America.

34:10Business History Podcast Host:Yes. And that is made explicit in the way this is talked about in public. Like, there is this publication, Baseball Digest, that actually had a cover story about this with the headline, Kurt Flood, an angry rebel. Of course, angry black man is like a classic trope, right? It described him as in revolt against the baseball establishment. Baseball establishment. That's like saying you're in revolt against the United States of America. I mean, people talked about the establishment at the time. And so their casting flood is taking sides in the culture war. And he knew this. He actually wrote about this a little bit later and said that the way he was portrayed was like a victory for him would mean, this is the quote, God profaned, flag desecrated, motherhood defiled, apple pie blasphemed.

35:00Business History Podcast Host:Right. So he's like, knows what's going on. It's kind of having fun with it. He just doesn't want to go to Philadelphia. He just wants to be able to work for whatever company will hire him. So this is what's going on in his life. His trial is in court. He's having a hard time personally. He gets called to testify, and he's clearly very nervous on the stand. He's talking in a really low voice. They keep having to ask him to speak up. And there is this particular exchange between the judge and Kurt Flood that I think is really telling. Let's read it. Do you want to be the judge or do you want to be Kurt Flood?

35:35Judge, of course. Okay. Now, Mr. Flood, I presume you are not finding this as easy as getting up at bat. Is that right? Well, no, sir, it is not. I want you to remember other people have problems, and now you are seeing that it is not an easy thing to testify. Can you imagine that? He's basically saying, like, you are so spoiled. Your life is so easy. You're a rich baseball player. Well, guess what? Like, this is the way the real world is. It's like, welcome to it. It's not so easy.

36:05Business History Podcast Host:Yeah. And the judge is, you know, clearly the establishment. And I don't want to project too much, but I do feel like here the judge is essentially saying, shut up and go play baseball, kid. It's our game. It's the one place we can go to not think about Vietnam and protests and politics. And you've ruined it. And at this moment, what they can do is try and call some witness who will sort of play better than Kurt Flood, right? No current players want to testify because they're scared, because they can't choose who to work for, and they don't want to get shadow banned from baseball. You know who they get to testify?

36:39Business History Podcast Host:You know who agrees? The man everyone wants to see. In New York City courtroom, right? In New York? Yeah. Jackie Robinson. Jackie Robinson. American hero. American hero. I actually get, like, mushy talking about Jackie Robinson, right? The first black man to play in the major leagues in the face of, like, overwhelming racism. At this point, he's retired. He's 51. He's actually going blind. He agrees to testify, comes into the courtroom in, you know, the same city where he played baseball, New York City. He takes the stand and Flood's lawyer asks him about the reserve clause. And Robert, read his answer.

37:14Anything that is one-sided in this country is wrong. And I think the reserve clause is a one-sided thing in favor of the owners. And I think it certainly should at least be modified to give a player an opportunity to have some control over his destiny. Very measured. Very measured. Very reasonable. Right. Which is why they brought him in. Right. They're like, this is not defiling motherhood. This is Jackie Robinson. And he's just like, we should be a little more fair.

37:43Business History Podcast Host:Yes. He is a reasonable man. And he is a national hero. Right. You know what's anti-American? being against Jackie Robinson. 100%. Even the judge, even the judge asked Jackie Robinson for an autograph. Says it's for his grandson. Is it? I don't know. And, you know, now, after this testimony, people start to listen to the other side, to Kurt Flood's side. Coming from Jackie Robinson, the coverage gets better for Flood's side. Gets less sarcastic. You know, the vibes are changing, as we would say today. But the judge is not in the vibes business. He doesn't care about vibes. He cares about precedent.

38:23Business History Podcast Host:And in this instance, the legal precedent is abundantly clear. There was basically, you know, a nearly identical case 20 years before. The Supreme Court let the reserve clause stand. And so the judge rules against Kurt Flood and in favor of Major League Baseball. The reserve clause stands. They appeal, I take it? They appeal, right. Flood's lawyer basically knew they were going to lose. He says this first case is just the end of the first inning, a little baseball metaphor. They lose on appeal. They appeal again. And the case goes to the Supreme Court. The world series of courtrooms. No, but also, yes.

39:01Business History Podcast Host:Yes, yes. One fun detail about the case. One of the Supreme Court justices recuses himself because he owns stock in Anheuser-Busch, which is run by Gussie Bush and which owns the Cardinals. I guess there are eight justices there for oral arguments on March 20th, 1972. The courtroom is packed. Press box is overflowing. People are spilling out, you know, I guess, onto the courthouse steps or whatever. One person not in attendance. Kurt Flood. Kurt Flood. He is living in Mallorca, working part time as a sports announcer for an English language radio station, also working in a bar part time. And this is just a few years after he is one of the top talents in baseball.

39:46Business History Podcast Host:Yes, yes. And he's drinking a lot. Like, I think the core thing is he's drinking too much. And the case has just been overwhelming for him. So he's there. But, you know, we're going to do the trial now. Oh, yay. Oh, yay. Gather near. It starts with Kurt Flood's lawyer, this guy Goldberg. He lays out the case. You know, Major League Baseball is obviously interstate commerce at this point. So the first precedent, we can throw that out. Radio and TV are broadcast nationally. Plainly, federal antitrust law should apply. And under federal antitrust law, the reserve clause is illegal. And, you know, maybe we should mention this here.

40:27Business History Podcast Host:There's a fun detail that we haven't talked about yet, and that is this. Like, usually when we think about competition, we think about monopoly. There's only one seller of something. But this case is actually Monopoly's lesser-known cousin. Monopsony. Monopsony. Which is? Which means there is only one buyer for a product and many suppliers. And this is most commonly used when it comes to the labor market. Yeah. We don't think about it, but as workers, we sell our services every day. And if there's only one employer in an industry or a region, that person has monopsony power, meaning they can keep wages down.

41:09They can not hire you. They can fire you. Monopsony power.

41:12Business History Podcast Host:Yes. And that is also covered under the Sherman antitrust law. It's the same problem, just with a different face. Right. So that is the argument that Goldberg is making. But sort of surprisingly, given that he used to be a Supreme Court justice, he seems to be making it very badly. He's kind of off that day. He actually gets lost on his way to court, the same court where he used to work. Yeah, they haven't moved it. They haven't moved it. And he's like kind of stammering through Kurt Flood's stats in his argument. And in fact, as he's leaving the courtroom, he says, it was the worst argument I've ever made in my life.

41:50Business History Podcast Host:He spent too much time at the U.N. I guess. Or too much time running for governor. I don't know. I don't know. But he did badly. Now the lawyers for the league get up and make their case. And they say, one, obviously the precedent is on their side, unambiguous. And then two, this one is more subtle and I think more interesting. They say, look, the players have a union now, a real union. And in their collective bargaining, they agreed to the reserve clause. So it's a labor issue. This is not an antitrust issue. And that is a strong argument because it's not like they are forcing individual players to sign a contract.

42:28This is negotiated. And that reserve clause, once again, is in the contract that everyone put their name to.

42:35Business History Podcast Host:Yeah. And so if the players don't like it, that's what collective bargaining is for. You know, make a better deal when your contract comes up. So the argument ends, you know, the court goes off and a few months later, the ruling comes out. And the justices, again, as in the previous case, point out that Congress has actually considered on many occasions passing a law to make explicit that antitrust law should apply to baseball. But Congress never passed any such law, right? And so what the court infers from this behavior is Congress does not want antitrust law to apply to baseball. It's not in the Constitution.

43:17It isn't. Baseball's not in the Constitution. So they think this is kind of Congress's world and maybe they don't care.

43:24Business History Podcast Host:And also, I think it is really fair to say when you look into the sort of details of like the opinion and the concurring opinion and whatever, they are still they are still just on this very. Maybe it's weird. I don't know what kind of vibes level treating baseball as something other than a business. Right. Like they actually one phrase they use is an exception and an anomaly. Baseball is an exception and anomaly and an anomaly. Hard to say. And there's this line somewhere in there. And it's this. And I kind of love it. It kind of gives away the game. They say, if there is any inconsistency or illogic in all this, it is an inconsistency and illogic of longstanding that is to be remedied by the Congress and not by this court.

44:13Kind of like Walt Whitman. I contain multitudes.

44:16Business History Podcast Host:Yeah, or like, don't blame me. I voted for Congress. They are washing their hands of anything having to do with baseball. Yeah. Understandable. You don't want to mess up the game. People care. So Kurt Flood loses. The Reserve Clause stays in place. But the story is not over yet. We'll have the end of the story in just a minute.

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46:55Business History Podcast Host:Hey, it's Jacob Goldstein from Business History. In our new series, American Genius, we tell the stories of three great writers who changed the way business works in America. Our first episode is about Benjamin Franklin, who, among many other things, was a best-selling business writer. Take a listen. He's writing this much later in his life, consciously creating this image of himself. And I do want to emphasize how unusual this model is at the time, this self-made man myth, because you don't want to be self-made. It's low class to be self-made. You know, this idea that we have today is the opposite, right?

47:37Business History Podcast Host:And it comes from Franklin. Today, there is the derisive term nepo-baiting. Well, exactly right. And these days, if you are a billionaire, you had better have a Benjamin Franklin story about starting in a garage, coming up with the idea from nothing. And here is Benjamin Franklin inventing it right before our eyes. This has been brought to you by Odoo. To listen to more of our American Genius series, listen to Business History. New episodes release every Wednesday on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

48:20And we're back. It's the top of the ninth. Great flood is down. Steps to the plate.

48:26Business History Podcast Host:It becomes clear that over the sort of arc of Kurt Flood's case, public opinion has in fact changed. People have stopped thinking of baseball players as, you know, grown men who are lucky to live every boy's dream and have started thinking of them as workers, as people who have a job, right? who are making more and more money and are switching loyalties and leaving cities. And there's a kind of like recognition of what baseball really is. Yeah, a business, right? For example, after the verdict against Flood comes down from the Supreme Court, the New York Times writes, Robert. Oh, I got it, got it, got it, got it, got it.

49:10Business History Podcast Host:Long fly ball to Robert Smith. And he catches it. The highest court in the land is still averting its gaze from a system in American business that gives the employer outright ownership of his employees. They're already kind of using Kurt Flood's language. Right, ownership, outright ownership. That is very much Kurt Flood language, right? And in fact, it seems to be popular support, right? Like there is a poll that comes out around this time and by a significant margin, people side with Kurt Flood and the players. And so, you know, the players feel this shift. And around the same time, Miller and the players' union notice a sort of more technical detail that follows from the Kurt Flood case.

49:57Business History Podcast Host:And that is this. Remember, part of the owner's argument was, this is a labor issue, not an antitrust issue. If the players don't like it, they can renegotiate. And so the union's like, okay, great. They pull out the contract, they iron it out, they put on their glasses, and they see in tiny, tiny print. Yeah, so what it says in tiny, tiny print is, if a player gets to the end of his contract and refuses to sign a new contract, But, quote, the club shall have the right to renew the contract for the period of one year. Ah. One year. And that's a little bit unclear, right? One year from now. Can you point to the words one year and say, well, one year from now?

50:45Like, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. That is what the owners have always done.

50:48Business History Podcast Host:They have crept in that petty pace. Yes. Yes. The players think, well, maybe it means I cannot sign and play for one year. And then I'm free. I'm free. And so as part of this kind of vibes shift, the union has gotten the league to agree to take disputes to an independent arbiter. Right. Goes to arbitration. A few years after the Curt Flood case, a few players decide to test this language to see what does it really mean. And they refuse to sign. and they play another year without signing. And at the end of the year, their case goes to arbitration. And the arbitrator says, it says one year. 365 days.

51:31Business History Podcast Host:Yeah, they did it. They played for a year without a contract. Now they are free, or as we would say today, free agents. Let's just pause here because this is Kurt Flood winning. This is what he wanted. He knew it wasn't going to matter for him, but he wanted to shift the balance of power. And it seems like his case really was instrumental in making that happen. So now these players who challenged the reserve clause and who won in arbitration can do the thing Kurt Flood wanted to do, right? One of these players is a Dodgers pitcher named Andy Messersmith. He'd been making around$100 ,000 a year pitching for the Dodgers.

52:12The arbitrator says he can go work for any company, any baseball team that will hire him.

52:18Business History Podcast Host:And the Atlanta Braves offer him$1 million for three years. So they're immediately more than tripling his salary. And every baseball player is like, huh, right? And, I mean, the Dodgers at this point. The Dodgers are like, you can't do that. And they're like, we could offer more money to our player and encourage him to stay. Like what a normal business does when they want to keep an employee. And they don't. Yeah. And he goes to make more money with the Braves. And all of a sudden, everyone's like, wait a minute, baseball players are underpaid. Yeah. By definition, because we've just seen this in the marketplace.

52:59Yeah, yeah.

52:59Business History Podcast Host:Finally, the free market speaks and they're worth three times as much. And so now it's 1976 by this point when this happens. And the overall union contract for the players is up for renewal. And now in this context, the players have all the leverage, right? But interestingly, interestingly, they don't want it to be just a total free-for-all, free market at all times for all players. In part because of that valid concern that the owners have always expressed, right? Like, it would be bad if the richest team could buy up all the best players all the time. If it ruins baseball, then it ruins the players' future earnings.

53:40Yes.

53:41Business History Podcast Host:The pie gets smaller for everyone, right? Ultimately, they want a bigger share of a bigger pie. So they can negotiate this. This is the great thing about free market capitalism. Yes. And so what they negotiate is this deal where the team that drafts a player does still have six years of essentially control over them. So, you know, the sort of draft and farm league and, you know, picking good players without being rich still matters. But after the sixth year, players can go free agent. Similar things are happening in basketball and football. There are cases that the players win in both of those sports that makes it easier for them to go free agent, although in the NFL it stays pretty hard for players to go free agent for a while.

54:26Business History Podcast Host:And they all end up coming up with various ways to manage this sort of regulated competition problem. Like, you know, you have salary caps, you have a luxury tax, various ways so that the richest owner can't just buy up all the talent. And it works, right? Sports stay competitive. They stay popular. In fact, obviously, they get more and more popular, more and more lucrative. And, you know, the bottom line is, of course, there's tons more money in sports today. But the key question for this case goes back to that division you were talking about at the beginning, right? Labor versus capital. How much goes to the players versus the owners?

55:08Business History Podcast Host:And when Kurt Flood brought his case, about 25 percent of team revenue went to players, about a quarter. Today, it's about half. So, like, the percentage going to players has doubled. And I'm sure if you listen to AM Sports Radio, they debate this all the time. I mean, there are probably people who say, like, they're putting in all the work they should get 100 percent of the – whatever. But that's – it doesn't matter because that's the negotiation. That is what a strong worker and a strong workers union can negotiate with strong management. And it happens in every industry where this sort of has to get worked through.

55:46Business History Podcast Host:Yeah. I mean, it is the case. I feel like people do still love to complain about players being overpaid. Right. That same thing that Gussie Bush was talking about in the locker room in 1969 still feels true today. Sure, they have one bad game and you're like, we're playing him$10 million to suck. Yes, to play baseball, to suck. And so I do still think there is that vestigial thing of like they're playing a game. It's wrong to pay them so much. But like it's a business. And like if you think they're overpaid, like maybe there's a business case. Like, are the Dodgers losing money by paying Shohei Ohtani$70 million a year, asterisk, mostly deferred?

56:32And I think these days, with the number of ways people are getting extraordinarily rich, Shohei Ohtani looks pretty good as someone who is maybe the best of his generation. Yeah. Provides so much joy, so good at what he does. Yeah. Let him have the money.

56:48Business History Podcast Host:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I certainly feel that way. And, you know, today, maybe the most kind of relevant contemporary version of this dynamic that played out in the Kurt Flood story is college athletes, right? The NCAA, which was, in fact, amateur sports. The players were, in fact, student athletes for a long time. And then more and more money started pouring into college football and basketball in particular. People, you know, millions, tens of millions of people watching on TV, huge amounts of money. And it got weird because, like, the coaches were making millions of dollars. Tons of money. They were building these giant new buildings.

57:24Yeah. The college was bringing in a ton of donations and from viewership and all this stuff.

57:29Business History Podcast Host:And the players got a scholarship. Yeah. And they were the amateurs. And it just became ridiculous. And, in fact, you know, initially there was this rule that players could sell their name, image, and likeness, right? That developed a while ago. they could basically do endorsement deals is what that meant. And it was only just this year, 2025, that a judge approved an agreement in an antitrust case, a monopsony case fundamentally, that said now colleges can pay athletes. Just now that is happening. And that is the same story. And we're even seeing this beyond sports, non-compete clauses, which used to be in some industries that said, oh, you can leave my television station, but you can't go be an anchor at the competing station.

58:13Business History Podcast Host:Uh-huh. A kind of like a reserve clause. And people agreed to them. And people agreed to them. They wrote in the contract. And now some states are saying like, no, like that's, that is a restraint of trade of the person who decides to take their talents elsewhere. And so, you know, this thing that Kurt Flood did can affect all of us who are workers because it gives everyone just a slight advantage, I think, in talking about, you know, what what are the fundamental rights you have as a supplier of labor? So the last thing we should talk about is what happened to Kurt Flood. You know, the last we heard from him, it was the early 70s, and he was working at a bar in Mallorca and drinking a lot.

59:01He eventually ran out of money, but his family helped him out.

59:05Business History Podcast Host:He got sober. He moved back to the U.S. and ultimately became recognized for what he had done. His last big public moment came in 1994. The players' union had gone on strike. It was a long strike. It was dragging out. They had canceled the World Series. So, you know, people, again, were complaining about, oh, these baseball players, oh, they have such a hard life. How can they demand more money? It's like the ghost of Gussie Bush, you know, whispering in America's ear or whatever. And the players themselves are starting to doubt what they're doing, starting to think, you know, maybe we should just go back to work.

59:42Business History Podcast Host:But like the owners had actually been accused at this time of colluding to suppress pay for free agents, right? Like it's a serious thing. It really does feel like they're trying to drag baseball backwards. And so some of the players who want to keep fighting, keep the strike going, actually call Kurt Flood in to come and talk in person to a room full of players to basically give them a pep talk. And so Kurt Flood comes in and he says, you know, stand your ground. He says, I fought so that you could be doing this today. He actually has this line that he says, don't let the owners put the genie back in the bottle.

1:00:26Business History Podcast Host:And when he finished, the players stood up and applauded. Nice. Oh, Pushkin just called. You've been traded to a Philadelphia True Crime podcast. Sorry, buddy. I'm not going. I'm not going. Let's take her to court. I'm going to write a public letter. Stonely wooded letter. Our producer is Gabriel Hunter Chang. Our engineer is Sarah Bruguer. And our showrunner is Ryan Dilley. I'm Jacob Goldstein. And I'm Robert Smith. We'll be back next week with another episode of Business History. A show about the history. wait for it, of business. Robert Smith, as you know, there is nowhere in Pushkin's office to make a video, to make a video podcast, which is unfortunate.

1:01:14Business History Podcast Host:We tried and it was described as two gray men in a gray box. And reasonably so. Fortunately for us, in an amazing coincidence, literally down the hall from Pushkin's office, there is the showroom of a company called Buzzy Space. This is a company, it's where we're sitting right now, And what they do is they design furniture and acoustic solutions that make, I'm reading here, workplaces more comfortable, more creative, and more fun. I would even say cozy. Their furniture is like sort of curved and interesting colors and I guess keeps things quiet. Yes. Honestly, I wish our office was this showroom.

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