BASEBALL STAR'S LEGACY IS SACRIFICE OFF THE FIELD.Byline: Eric Mink New York Daily News New York Daily News Morning daily tabloid newspaper published in New York City. It was founded in 1919 by Joseph Medill Patterson and his cousin Robert McCormick as a subsidiary of the Tribune Co. of Chicago. The first successful tabloid-format newspaper in the U.S. For all the uncertainties and ambiguities of life, a few things are clear and undeniable. Among these are the honor, integrity and courage of Curt Flood For anyone unfamiliar with Flood, the latest edition of ``Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel is a monthly sports newsmagazine on HBO that debuted on April 2, 1995. The show was "spawned by the fact that sports have changed dramatically, that it's no longer just fun and games, and that what happens off the field, beyond the scores, ,'' tonight on HBO Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBO) A form of oxygen therapy in which the patient breathes oxygen in a pressurized chamber. Mentioned in: Ozone Therapy , offers a meaty introduction. The segment, produced and directed by filmmaker Spike Lee Noun 1. Spike Lee - United States filmmaker whose works explore the richness of black culture in America (born in 1957) Lee, Shelton Jackson Lee , relies principally on a highly personal but nonetheless straightforward narrative that Flood and his wife, Judy, wrote in the months before his death on Jan. 20 at age 59. It recounts, of course, Flood's substantial accomplishments in baseball, almost all of them with the great St. Louis Cardinals For the National Football League team that played in St. Louis from 1960 to 1987, see . The St. Louis Cardinals (also referred to as "the Cards" or "the Redbirds") are a professional baseball team based in St. Louis, Missouri. teams of the 1960s. But Flood soared far higher off the field than he ever did chasing down flies. It was, in fact, his refusal to accept a 1969 decision by the Cardinals to trade him to the Philadelphia Phillies “Phillies” redirects here. For other uses, see Phillies (disambiguation). The Philadelphia Phillies are a professional baseball team based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States. that guaranteed Flood his place in history. Flood put his career on the chopping block to mount a legal challenge to baseball's ``reserve clause,'' which stripped players of the freedom to decide where they could play. Lee supplements the Floods' own account with the testimony of some of Flood's baseball contemporaries, including fellow Cardinals and competitors such as Maury Wills, Don Newcombe and Tommy Davis. In a nifty bit of production razzle-dazzle, Lee introduces each with a tight facial close-up that slowly pans over to a baseball card of the athlete in his playing days. The tragedy of Flood's courageous legal challenge is that it ultimately failed, due to a shameful Supreme Court decision siding with baseball's owners. But Flood's heroic personal sacrifice paved the way for the eventual dissolution of the reserve system, as attested to by former players' representative Marvin Miller, whose hard bargaining brought it down several years later. Other ``Real Sports'' segments - one on female boxers and another on Wake Forest basketball star Tim Duncan - are fine as far as they go. But Lee's piece on Flood is an inspiration. THE FACTS The show: ``Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel.'' When: 7 tonight. Where: HBO. |
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