One Man Out : Curt Flood Versus Baseball

When Curt Flood, all-star center fielder for the St. Louis Cardinals, refused to be traded to the Philadelphia Phillies in 1969, he sent shock waves throughout professional baseball that ultimately reached the Supreme Court. Flood challenged the game's reserve-clause system that bound players to teams as if they were property; and while others had previously spoken out against this arrangement, which had been protected by Congress and the courts for a century, he was the first to pursue his grievance as doggedly or as far. Concise and balanced, and written in a fast-paced narrative, One Man Out takes readers back to the pre-steroid era, when baseball was as much a passion as a pastime-and when race was often still a factor. Book jacket.

Robert M. Goldman is a professor of history in Richmond, Virginia, and an avid baseball fan