I read, with interest, Dr. Anthony Asadullah Samad's piece "The Curious Case of Curt Flood:  HBO Documentary misses the point.".  Dr. Samad was highly critical of the documentary, feeling that it tore down Curt Flood and did not make a case for Flood going into the Baseball Hall of Fame.  With due respect to Dr. Samad, I have a different take.

I thought that the documentary was, in many respects, gripping.  It was the story of a fighter. Indeed, it felt almost Biblical in the sense that Curt Flood went through the trials of Job.  Flood took a principled stand against the reserve clause, receiving the backing of the Major League Baseball Players Association (the labor union of the players) in order to pursue the case.  As Dr. Samad points out, the case went up the Supreme Court where, in an absolute miscarriage of justice, Flood lost.  Flood's personal decline began during that case, leading to years of alcohol abuse and depression until, after hitting bottom, he was able to resurrect himself with the assistance of both his girl friend at the time as well as, later, the woman who appears to have been the love of his life, the actress Judy Pace (who would go on to marry Flood).

Samad is correct that the documentary does not discuss the efforts that have been underway for years to get Curt Flood inducted into the Hall of Fame.  I agree with Dr. Samad that this was an error on the part of the film-makers or perhaps it was an oversight.  But what was important about this film was the sense that you had of the courage and determination of Curt Flood as a fighter.  He knew that the issue he was taking on - gaining free agency - would more than likely not benefit him in the short or long-term.  Yet he also knew that he had to take on the battle.  What the film conveys, at the same time, is that he may not have realized the toll that the fight would take on him and the loneliness and alienation that he would experience.  Part of the difficulty that Flood found himself in was, as the film demonstrates, the result of many of his friends and former colleagues from baseball leaving him in isolation.  Though the Players Association covered the costs of the litigation, many of his friends and colleagues in baseball ignored Flood as if he had the plague out of fear of retaliation by the owners of Major League baseball.  The famous St. Louis Cardinals' pitcher, Bob Gibson, who had also been a friend of Flood's, admitted as much in the documentary.

The documentary was very hard hitting.  It discussed many of the issues that were raised in Brad Snyder's book on Curt Flood, A Well-Paid Slave: Curt Flood's Fight for Free Agency in Professional Sports , including the alcoholism, various relationships, as well as the possibility that he had not been the painter for which he had been regularly credited (though he was, at least, a capable sketch artist).  None of this, however, detracts from the contributions made by Curt Flood.  It simply places the situation in a broader context.  It helps the viewer of the HBO documentary get a sense of Curt Flood-as-human being who descended into the bowels of Hell only to re-emerge like the mythical phoenix.

Curt Flood's life was complex.  But it was a life that illustrated the consequences of conduct on many different levels.  Flood took on the bastions of power in Major League Baseball only to be struck down. Yet had it not been for Curt Flood, along with Marvin Miller, the Executive Director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, it is far from clear when the players would have won the respect that came with free agency.

For these reasons i appreciated the HBO documentary.  There are too many sports figures today, let alone sports enthusiasts, who have not a clue as to who Curt Flood was, and the contributions that he made in the fight for dignity and justice.  Watching the HBO documentary one got at least a glimpse of that, a glimpse that will hopefully inspire sports fans to demand that Curt Flood be inducted into the Hall of Fame due to the contributions that he made to the sport known as baseball.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Bill Fletcher, Jr., is a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies, the immediate past president of TransAfricaForum and co-author of Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice (University of California Press), which examines the crisis of organized labor in the USA. Click here to contact Mr. Fletcher.