June 17, 2009

It was 1970, America was in turmoil, the Cambodian invasion that was announced by President Richard Nixon in May sent shock waves through college campuses.  The infamous massacres at Kent State University and Jackson State University took place in May.  Curt Flood filed his preliminary injunction in January 1970 asking for relief from baseball’s reserve clause.  When the injunction was denied the matter was set for trial in the Spring of 1970.  On April 16, 1970 Oscar Robertson filed his class action lawsuit against the NBA.  Was it mere coincidence that both Flood and Robertson brought their landmarks cases to court at the same time? Let’s look at the circumstances of each case and see what we can figure out.

Flood had been traded from the St. Louis Cardinals to the Philadelphia Phillies in late 1969.  Flood had played for the Cardinals for more than a decade, he was well established in St. Louis, and it was his home.  The Cardinals at that time were a team that was always in the thick of the pennant chase.  The Philadelphia Phillies at the time were a second division team, and the poor treatment Richie Allen had received over the prior few seasons made Philadelphia a place that Flood was not eager to go to.  (Interestingly enough, Flood and Allen were part of the same trade.)  So the question to ask is: if Curt Flood had not been traded, would he have even brought his suit? The probable answer, and this is only conjecture, is that if Flood was to have returned to the Cardinals for the 1970 season, his fight against the reserve clause would have been delayed at least for a year or two.

Oscar Robertson was an NBA superstar at the time of his suit.  Competition from the rival American Basketball Association (ABA) had at least brought some leverage to players seeking to increase their contracts over the prior few seasons.  When word of a merger between the NBA and ABA became public, that seemed to dry up any leverage a player would have at negotiation time.  Secondly, the NBA player contract, like the MLB contract, had the option year or reserve clause in its standard player contract that tied a player to his team for life.  Robertson, as head of the NBA player union and a superstar, was the right man to be the lead plaintiff.  Additionally, as a superstar Robertson had much to gain financially with an end to the option year.

Curt Flood was by himself in his suit- no other major league player openly came forward to support him, in public or in court.  Oscar Robertson’s suit was a class-action, with thirteen other named plaintiffs.  Curt Flood would sit out the 1970 baseball season, before playing briefly for the Washington Senators in 1971.  Essentially, when Flood filed his suit it signaled the end of his career.  Robertson, like Flood, was traded prior to the 1970-71 NBA season.  Robertson went to the Milwaukee Bucks, and, unlike Flood, enjoyed one of the best years of his career, leading his team (along with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) to an NBA title.  Robertson would go on to play three more seasons after the championship year.

The anti-trust exemption that baseball had enjoyed since a 1922 Supreme Court ruling was not available to the NBA.  (In simplest terms, anti-trust laws exist to prevent businesses from monopolizing a given market.)  The Supreme Court had said in 1922 that Baseball was not the type of commerce that Federal Law was intended to regulate.  The NBA went as far as the United States Senate seeking an anti-trust exemption in 1971, but Oscar Robertson and other players voiced their opposition to the NBA in this matter and thwarted the NBA’s shot at the exemption.  Thus, Oscar Robertson was winning battles early on in his lawsuit, while Flood’s track to the Supreme court was anything but victorious.

Tomorrow we look at Flood and Robertson and compare their landmark cases.