HBO's Curt Flood film comes at right time

History often is kinder to pioneers than life is, as we saw in the case of Roosevelt's own John Mackey, an early NFL labor leader who died last week after a long struggle with dementia.

Wednesday brings another reminder when HBO Sports premieres "The Curious Case of Curt Flood," who famously challenged baseball's reserve clause and lost big in a battle that later helped win a war.

"Curious" is an apt word for Flood's story. But the 90-minute documentary tells a tale as sad as it is odd, featuring a principled man with a self-destructive streak that eased only near the end of his 59 years.

Even for those of us old enough to remember him taking on baseball, the depths of his problems in the aftermath -- alcohol abuse and a self-imposed exile in Spain among them -- are a revelation.

After a recent screening, I asked Marvin Miller, 94, the former executive director of the players' union, what he thought of it. "I think it's a very, very fine film," he said. "The only thing bad about it for me was having to relive the worst moments of the past."

Miller said he warned Flood from the start that as much as he was right morally, he would lose in the courts, given that the reserve clause -- which kept a player his team's property even after his contract expired -- had survived earlier challenges.

Lose he did, even though he had former U.S. Supreme Court justice Arthur Goldberg arguing on his behalf before the Court.

Miller said he tried to talk Goldberg out of comparing Flood to a slave, fearful of the inevitable negative press, given that Flood was being paid well and that he had the right to quit. But Goldberg insisted.

"I hate to be right when I predict terrible things," Miller said. "I predicted the press was going to make fun of it, and I was right."

It probably made no difference in the end. The union was convinced that the reserve clause would fall not in the courts but through collective bargaining. That it did, in 1975.

Flood did not directly achieve that victory, but his stand was pivotal in changing public perception of players.

"Fans didn't understand that players were property," Miller said. "In terms of what we're talking about, they were no different than cattle, no different than sheep, no different than machinery. That was how they were treated."

Fox analyst Tim McCarver was supposed to go with Flood from the St. Louis Cardinals to the Philadelphia Phillies in a 1969 trade. Flood refused to report, precipitating his legal challenge.

"I remember someone asking me if I'd be willing to do what Curt did and I said, 'No, I can't afford it,' " McCarver recalled. "That was the stance of most players in those days."

McCarver hadn't yet seen the HBO film when we spoke, but he said he hopes it will introduce a new generation of fans -- and players -- to the sacrifices Flood made.

"It gives you an idea of how much courage it took to be the only one to take that stance," he said.

The fact that the film arrives as two other major sports are in labor disputes adds to its relevance. It also illustrates how much times have changed.

By the time of the 1994 baseball strike, most active players did understand and appreciate Flood's place in history. But he had little time to enjoy it before dying of throat cancer in 1997.

"He regarded it not so much as an antitrust case, which is what it was, technically," former MLBPA attorney Richard Moss says in the film. "He regarded it as a civil rights case, and that's what it really was."