"Customary though it may be to write about that institutionalized pastime as though it existed apart from the general environment, my story does not lend itself to such treatment"
About this Quote
Curt Flood opens with a polite refusal that lands like a challenge: stop pretending baseball is a self-contained fairy tale. By calling it an "institutionalized pastime", he strips away the sentimental wrapper of summer afternoons and replaces it with the language of systems, power, and governance. The phrase is doing heavy work. Baseball isn’t just a game; it’s an institution that trains people to accept certain rules as natural, even when those rules are engineered to benefit owners and constrain players.
The real target is the sportswriter habit of treating the diamond like a sealed terrarium, where politics, labor, and race can’t get in. Flood’s line punctures that comfort. "Customary though it may be" is a sly nod to the industry that profited from that separation: the leagues, the owners, and the media ecosystem that sold baseball as America’s innocent mirror while sidestepping who had leverage, who got paid, and who was expected to stay grateful.
Context matters: Flood became the face of the fight against MLB’s reserve clause, which effectively bound a player to a team like property, limiting movement and bargaining power. He’s signaling that his story can’t be narrated as quirky sports drama or locker-room adversity. It’s labor history with a uniform on. The subtext is personal, too: as a Black star in a still-paternalistic league, Flood understood that “just play” often meant “don’t question.” His sentence is a demand to widen the frame, because the frame is where the control lives.
The real target is the sportswriter habit of treating the diamond like a sealed terrarium, where politics, labor, and race can’t get in. Flood’s line punctures that comfort. "Customary though it may be" is a sly nod to the industry that profited from that separation: the leagues, the owners, and the media ecosystem that sold baseball as America’s innocent mirror while sidestepping who had leverage, who got paid, and who was expected to stay grateful.
Context matters: Flood became the face of the fight against MLB’s reserve clause, which effectively bound a player to a team like property, limiting movement and bargaining power. He’s signaling that his story can’t be narrated as quirky sports drama or locker-room adversity. It’s labor history with a uniform on. The subtext is personal, too: as a Black star in a still-paternalistic league, Flood understood that “just play” often meant “don’t question.” His sentence is a demand to widen the frame, because the frame is where the control lives.
Quote Details
| Topic | Human Rights |
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