It is no secret that I have been on a “campaign” to get the late, former St. Louis Cardinals player Curt Flood into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame.
It is no secret that I have been on a “campaign” to get the late, former St. Louis Cardinals player Curt Flood into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame.
Flood was a prime and courageous mover in the struggle to end the notorious “reserve clause” and bring about what is known as “free agency,” which permits players to negotiate their own future.
In the spring of 2000, I was beginning to explore the possibilities of gaining support for such an effort, and I turned to the late Gene Upshaw, who at the time was the Executive Director of the Federation of Professional Athletes (and also the NFL Players Association).
I thought that Upshaw would be interested in such a campaign. I tried contacting him a few times but received no response.
One day I happened to be in the same meeting as Upshaw. When he got up to leave the meeting, I followed him out of the room. I introduced myself while we were both walking. He kept moving.
I explained what I was trying to do regarding Curt Flood. As he got into the elevator, his initial response to me was to inform me that the Major League Baseball Players Association was not affiliated with the Federation of Professional Athletes.
He then proceeded to ask me whether I knew what percentage of baseball players were “Black.” Before I could answer he said that it was around 10 percent. The elevator door closed at that point.
There are a number of observations to make regarding this attempt-at-discussion with the late Upshaw, but there are two intriguing points for purposes of this commentary. The first is that in the mid 1970s, the percentage of non-Latino Blacks was around 27 percent. Thus, we have witnessed a tremendous drop, which in 2008 went to slightly more than 8 percent and is now up to slightly more than 10 percent.
Yet what really intrigued me about Upshaw’s comments had to do with who he considered “Black.” Anyone watching Major League baseball sees a lot of Black faces.
Yet many, if not most of them, also come with Spanish surnames and have as their point of origin places such as Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and Panama. So, for Upshaw, Black meant African-North American and did not mean people of African descent who happened to be from Latin America.
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