This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

And we return to our American stories.

Up next, an unusual story about baseball and a baseball player you likely haven't heard of

named Kurt Flood. He was a three-time All-Star back in the 70s, seven-time Golden Glove winner,

but perhaps his most important contribution to professional baseball had to do with

sports contracts, how athletes are paid,

and how major league baseball is run.

Here to tell the story is author and commentator and one of the best baseball writers of all time,

George Will with his story.

Take it away, George. Thank you, George Will with his story. Take it away, George.

Kurt Flood was for many, many seasons, a premier outfielder.

Most of the years were the St. Louis Cardinals.

He grew up in Oakland in the Bay Area, we should say, really, with Frank Robinson and

Ricky Henderson and Joe DiMaggio and all kinds of great baseball players came out of the rich baseball culture of the San Francisco,

Oakland Bay Area. And in the 50s, he became a minor league player, largely in the South,

which is where most minor league teams were, because most major league teams were in the North.

And he experienced the segregated South. This was the South

before the public accommodation section of the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed. He would

travel with his teammates on the team bus. They would go in the front door of the restaurant

to get food. He would be handed food out the back door.

He would relieve himself on the side of the road because he couldn't use the restrooms.

...