Buck O’Neil with “Mr. Cub” Ernie Banks and Lou Brock
BUCK: BATTER UP IN OLD TIMER’S GAME IN CHICAGO
The 2019 Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremony is supposed take place on Sunday July 26, 2020 in Cooperstown, New York depending on Pandemic Coronavirus. If all goes well once again, Buck O’Neil, Curt Flood, and Maury Wills will be nowhere to be found during the induction ceremonies. Their being overlooked won’t be because of steroids.
I met Curt when the Washington Senators defied the baseball Gods/owners and signed him. I encountered him having lunch in Frank’s Restaurant on Florida Avenue NW on a rainy day in 1971. I introduced myself and he treated me to lunch. The next week he was gone. We would not meet again until San Francisco somewhere in the 80s. Former DC weekend sports anchor Martin Wyatt was working as a sports anchor at KGO TV in the Golden City he was hosting a tribute to Legends of the Game. He invited me and Hattie to the tribute. Curt Flood, Jim Brown, Al Attles were among the legends being honored.
THE GREAT CURT FLOOD AND THE EQUALLY GREAT TED WILLIAMS
CURT, HATTIE T. AND AL ATTLES HANGING OUT TOGETHER IN SAN FRANCISCO
Curt is the author of the most heroic individual acts of resistance in modern Major League Baseball history, will be excluded. This year’s inductees — Harold Baines, Roy Halladay, Edgar Martinez, Mike Mussina, Mariano Rivera and Lee Smith — are incredibly worthy. But none of them has Flood’s revolutionary resume, although each benefited from Flood’s act of defiance. After the 2000 season, for example, Mussina used free agency to leave the Baltimore Orioles and sign a six-year, $88.5 million contract with the New York Yankees. None of July’s inductees sacrificed as much so that future generations of major league players could reap the rewards. Curt has been a thorn on a rose that still sticks in the side of Major League Baseball. While most players were too cowardly to support Flood, Jackie Robinson showed up in court and openly embraced him. Thanks to Robinson, baseball has become a global game. Flood, to this day, is seen by some as antithetical to the big business interests of baseball — of all sports. He was a star player who pushed back against the restrictive status quo. His absence from the MLB Hall of Fame is further proof an “Even Playing and Forty-Acres & Mule” proves we are the only ones who are playing fair.


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