How we got free agents in baseball

Planet Money

NPR

News, Business

4.6 • 30.5K Ratings

🗓️ 6 May 2026

⏱️ 29 minutes

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Summary

Curt Flood was the best center fielder in baseball and one of the game’s highest paid players. He took the St. Louis Cardinals to the World Series three times. Then he got traded to the Phillies. He didn’t want to go. But baseball’s rules said he had no say in the decision. He could either go to Philly or quit the sport. Instead, Flood took Major League Baseball to court.

Flood argued that the league should act like any other business and let workers sell their labor to whichever team they liked. But for decades, courts had ruled in favor of the team owners. Curt’s fight would destroy his career and change the sport forever.

If you want to learn more about Curt Flood’s story, check out Business History’s original episode.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Planet Money from NPR.
0:05.6	At 4 a.m. on October 8th, 1969, Kurt Flood got woken up by a phone call.
0:13.1	Flood was 31 years old at the time, and he'd spent the last 12 years, almost his entire adult life, playing center field for the St. Louis Cardinals.
0:22.5	He was an all-star.
0:23.9	He'd led the Cardinals to the World Series three times.
0:26.7	Sports Illustrated, called him the best center fielder in baseball,
0:29.7	and he planned to finish out his career in St. Louis.
0:32.5	But when he rolled over and picked up the phone at 4 a.m.,
0:35.5	a middle manager from the Cardinals front office
0:37.8	told Kurt Flood he had just been traded to the Philadelphia Phillies.
0:42.2	Kurt Flood didn't want to go to Philadelphia. They just finished second to last in their
0:45.8	division. And on top of that, Kurt Flood was black, and Phillies fans had a history of treating
0:51.4	the team's black players badly. One black Phillies player in the 60s actually wore a helmet in the outfield
0:57.6	because Phillies fans threw batteries at his head.
1:00.9	But Kurt Flood did not really have a choice.
1:03.4	The way baseball worked at the time, when you got drafted by a major league baseball team,
1:08.4	you played for that team.
1:09.7	If they wanted to trade you, you went where they
1:12.0	traded you. He didn't like it. You could quit baseball. This was explicit in every player's
1:17.4	contract. It was called the reserve clause because teams reserved the rights to each player.
1:23.5	Carflud thought this was ridiculous. In fact, he didn't just think it was ridiculous.
1:28.0	He thought it was illegal.
	...

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