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What makes Curt Flood an interesting historical figure? Mr. Flood was a good but not great baseball player. His lawsuit, Flood v. Kuhn, against major league baseball (MLB) seeking to overturn the "reserve clause" that bound a player to the team with whom he initially signed a contract, would affect relatively few people. He lost the case, and, while it was appealed to the Supreme Court, where the verdict against him was upheld, it is typically viewed as a relatively unimportant case. Even Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, who wrote the court opinion, noted "in some respects the case wasn't very important" (xv). Nevertheless, that lawsuit has been cited in over 800 law cases, and over 500 books have considered Mr. Flood's contributions to baseball and to law. Goldman's One Man Out adds to that literature, although neither as a biography of Mr. Flood, of which there are many, nor as a legal review of the case, of which there also are many. Instead, it places Mr. Flood and his lawsuit in historical context, ground previously covered only by Neil F. Flynn, Baseball's Reserve System: The Case and Trial of Curt Flood vs. Major League Baseball (Walnut Park Group, 2006).
Baseball has been played professionally, that is, admittance charged and players paid, since 1869. Lawsuits between players and owners began in 1890, focusing on the so-called reserve clause. That clause, standard in player contracts, reserved to a team the right to a player's services for the next year. A player was not allowed to negotiate to play for other teams since his services were "reserved" for the team to which he was contracted. MLB interpreted the reserve clause...