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 to imply effectively that the right to a player's services was reserved in perpetuity. Each year's contract would extend the contract and the reserve clause to the next year.

Goldman carefully places the early lawsuits in context and contrasts them with the critical Supreme Court decision. Players typically won the early legal cases, with the courts ruling that the contracts did not possess “mutuality” since the preponderance of rights favored the team rather than the player. That legal landscape changed dramatically in 1922 when Oliver W. Holmes, writing for the Supreme Court in the Federal Baseball case, upheld a lower court ruling that organized baseball was not interstate commerce and thus was not subject to the Sherman Antitrust Act. The simple interpretation of this ruling: baseball was an exhibition rather than a business. In retrospect, it is easy to argue that the decision was not Justice Holmes's finest moment. However, Goldman provides the context, from the Black Sox scandal to the legal precedents that make the decision more understandable.

More importantly, Goldman emphasizes the basic conflicts in logic, the “Catch-22s,” that surround the Curt Flood case. The Federal Baseball legal precedent implies that baseball was not a business that crossed state lines and thus was not under federal jurisdiction based on the Sherman Act. However, when MLB was sued under state antitrust provisions, the legal ruling was that “baseball is so uniquely interstate commerce that state regulation cannot apply” (96).

Later court rulings, including the Curt Flood case, under stare decisis followed the Federal Baseball precedent. The Supreme Court reasoned that Congress had the power to pass legislation addressing the reserve clause, but Congress had done nothing, thus implicitly ratifying the Federal Baseball decision. Congress contended that other decisions facing the Supreme Court precluded any congressional action. In particular, in 1957, when Congress discussed legislative action, the Supreme Court was deliberating whether the NFL was also exempt from regulation as a monopoly under the Sherman Act. Ultimately the Court ruled that the NFL, unlike MLB, was subject to the Sherman Act. MLB could operate as a monopoly but the NFL could not!

At the time of Curt Flood's case, baseball had evolved, a players’ union had formed, and collective bargaining took place between owners and players. While this step could have precluded Curt Flood's lawsuit, in fact it simply contributed one more Catch-22. The Supreme Court noted that bargaining over the reserve clause and the rights of players was mandatory for collective bargaining. However, bargaining over the terms had been placed on hold awaiting the outcome of the trial.

The role of the lawsuit appropriately dominates Goldman's book. Had Curt Flood not filed suit, he likely would be far less famous—or infamous. However, Goldman also appropriately emphasizes how it took a player with Mr. Flood's personality and background to file the suit and see it through to completion since many prior cases had been filed and resolved. With the Federal Baseball precedent, the case ultimately had to go to the Supreme Court, and it took both a particular motive and a tenacity to carry the case through. The motive was that Mr. Flood's off-season business would have suffered. His race was likely a factor in his refusal to accept that he could be sold. Goldman traces Mr. Flood's background from the Oakland ghetto to the minor leagues to his relations with his teammates and the impact of his background on his decision to sue.

The final contextual component is the state of labor negotiations. Ballplayers in the early 1970s were well compensated but were not able to afford a lawsuit that would reach the Supreme Court. A few years earlier, such a lawsuit would have been untenable because the players’ union would not have been able or willing to support it financially. A few years later, such a lawsuit would have been unnecessary because the union had negotiated limited relief from the reserve clause. Whether the union would have been able to obtain such relief absent Mr. Flood's suit is open to debate, and Goldman puts in context how subsequent developments including changes in the reserve clause may have been shaped by Flood v. Kuhn.

A final Catch-22 is the role of Curt Flood. His name is attached to the suit and his willingness to follow through to the Supreme Court was critical to its obtaining landmark status. However, after testifying at the initial hearing, Mr. Flood essentially disappeared from the suit itself.

Goldman describes New York Times columnist Leonard Koppett's writing about the case at that time: “He believed that baseball's arguments as the case made its way through the legal system were generally ‘pathetic.’ Yet in his stories and columns he had done as much as anyone to fairly and plainly describe the issues involved and what was happening at each step of the case” (121). That description accurately portrays Goldman's contextual analysis of the Flood v. Kuhn lawsuit. One Man Out is a brief but enjoyable and sympathetic analysis both of Flood the man and of the lawsuit bearing his name, filling a valuable niche in the otherwise overworked literature on Curt Flood.