Customer Reviews

Stepping Up: The Story of All-Star Curt Flood and His Fight for Baseball Players' Rights

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The book is only 202 pages long, but author Alex Belth has written a very interesting account of Curt Flood's career as a baseball player with the Cincinnati Reds and the St. Louis Cardinals in addition to the role he played in helping to grant players the free agency they enjoy today. Of course it was Flood's years with the Cardinals in the 1960's that distinguished him as one of the game's top flight players. After establishing himself with the Redbirds and having an art business in St. Louis Flood balked at a trade that sent him to the Philadelphia Phillies following the 1969 season. With the help of Marvin Miller and the Baseball Players' Association he decided to challenge baseball's right to trade him against his will. Although he ultimately lost the battle in the United States Supreme Court, this case provided the catalyst that ultimately gave free agency to players through the subsequent case involving Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally in which arbitrator Peter Seitz told baseball owners to come to an agreement with the players regarding the reserve clause. The game's owners refused to do this, Seitz made his ruling, and the reserve clause became a thing of the past. Although free agency came too late to help Curt Flood today's players owe a great debt of thanks to him for the role he played in making them the multi-millionaires they are today. This is a book that should be in any serious baseball fan's library.

The fans at the great stadium in the sky are doing continuous waves for Alex's compassionate, insightful and moving portrait of a real American hero, Curt Flood. Stepping Up is a thoroughly enjoyable read with a balanced view of the business of baseball and its relationship to world around it. Long live Curt Flood and his new biography!

I was excited last fall when I found out a new book on the life of Curt Flood was going to be published. How disappointed I was after reading the thin biography by Alex Belth.

Belth does little new research in the life and times of Flood. He relies upon material about his career in baseball, his fight players' rights and an oftentimes misunderstood/controversial life off the field that was already available to the public.

What especially demonstrates a lack of material outside the lines is Belth's over-reliance of play-by-play concerning Flood's baseball exploits. Instead of analysis of the man on the field of play, Belth goes to the stats book to reduce valuable pages in this thin text to nothing more than a baseball almanac.

The book reads as if it is a draft of a screenplay instead of a true exploration of a multi-dimensional figure that Flood was as a person and player. If nothing else, this was yet another case of a black man waging a battle against a white-dominated institution for the betterment of many.

But, Flood is as much a historical figure in the rising tide of black's demanding justice from the white power structure as he is an employee willing to risk his career in a labor dispute. Belth fails to juxtaposition both issues for that time in U.S. history.

For those seeking a better read on Curt Flood, you'll need to seek out the book he penned in the 1970s, which is as much an exploration/opinions of those times as it is autobiography.

And I hope that the future will bring a biography that is truly a holistic exploration of Curt Flood.

Because the story of Curt Flood's fight to put an end to baseball's reserve clause is one of courage, the book is worth reading. It is, however, probably the worst edited book I have ever read. Let's hope that subsequent editions correct the myriad of mistakes.

Think 'civil rights in sports' and you automatically think of Jackie Robinson - but there's another black baseball player who also fought on behalf of all players to choose which team they played for, a story revealed in STEPPING UP: THE STORY OF CURT FLOOD AND HIS FIGHT FOR BASEBALL PLAYERS' RIGHTS. It's the first biography of the three-time all-star who sued Major League Baseball and brought his case all the way to the Supreme Court for justice. Surprisingly, this is the first biography of Curt Flood, detailing his life, his sports achievements, and his battle against a vast system of built-in injustice. An outstanding recommendation for civil rights and sports collections alike.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Alex Belth's "Stepping UP" is slim pickings. It is a sportswriter's cursory portrait of Flood sacrificing his career for the benefit of all players suffering from the restrictions of baseball's reserve system. It is a creampuff light example of what can be done without real research, and it is full of errors--major character's names misspelled, a reference to small claims court when the venue was federal district court, and much more. For a serious book about Flood, see Brad Snyder's "A Well-Paid Slave," and for a challenge to both books, see Stuart L. Weiss, "The Curt Flood Story: The Man Behind the Myth," due in April from the University of Missouri Press.