Our Gang (9 page)

only two of the candidates from the Professor's list,

may I ask if we can each add two names of our own,

should we think we have more that warrant

suspicion?
TRICKY:,
Well, let me ask you a question.

Is this a deal you want to make?

LEGAL COACH:
Well, if you want to think of it

that way, that's okay with me.

TRICKY:
I'd prefer to. Otherwise it might seem that I

was changing my mind because I'm indecisive. But

if it's just a matter of a payoff for something or

other you'll deliver in the future, I think everybody

here will understand.

LEGAL COACH:
Suits Me.

TRICKY:
There we are then. Two from the Professor's

list and two of your own choice.
HIGHBROW COACH:

To the list then, gentlemen.
is
Hanoi. z: The

Berrigans. 3: The Black Panthers. 4 : Jane Fonda. 5:

Curt Flood.
ALL:
Curt Flood?

HIGHBROW COACH:
Curt ... Flood.

SPIRITUAL COACH:
But-isn't he a baseball player?

TRICKY:
Was a baseball player. Any questions about

baseball players, just ask me, Reverend.

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OUR GANG

Was the center fielder for the Washington Senators.

But then he up and ran away. Skipped the

country.

HIGHBROW COACH:
He did indeed, Mr. Pres

ident. Curt Flood, born January 18, 1938, in

Houston, Texas, bats right, throws right, entered big

league baseball in 1956 with Cincinnati, played from

'58 to '69 with the St. Louis Cardinals, presently

under contract at a salary of $110,000 a year to the

Washington Senators, on the morning of April 27,

1971, with the baseball season not even a month

old, boarded a Pan Am flight bound from New

York to Barcelona, giving no explanation for his

hasty departure other than "personal problems."

Though Flood is known to have purchased a ticket

for Barcelona, he apparently disembarked in

Lisbonwearing a brown leather jacket, bellbottomed

trousers and sunglasses-there to make

connections with a flight for his final European

destination ... The question, gentlemen, is obvious:

why, a week to the day before the uprising of the

Boy Scouts in Washington, D.C., why did Mr. Curt

Flood of the Washington baseball team find it

necessary to leave the country in so precipitous and

dramatic a fashion?
TRICKY:
Oh, I think I can answer

that one, Professor, knowing sports as I do inside

and out. Poor Flood was in a slump, and a bad one.

In his first twenty times at bat this year, he'd had

TRICKY HAS ANOTHER CRISIS
59

only three hits, and two of those were bunts. Fact is,

Williams had benched him. He'd sat out six starts in

a
row against right-handed pitching. Now I may be

the highest elected official in the land, but I still

don't think I'm going to second-guess Ted Williams

when he benches a hitter. No, sirree. On the other

hand, you can well imagine the effect being benched

had upon a one-hundred-thousand-dollar-a-year star

player like Flood.

HIGHBROW COACH:
With all due respect, sir, for

your knowledge of the game, which far exceeds my

own, this "slump,"as you call it, might it not have

been just the right "cover" for a baseball player

planning to leave the country in a hurry, just the

right alibi?

LEGAL COACH:
If I get your drift, Professor, are

you suggesting that Ted Williams, the manager of

the Senators, is implicated in this as well? That

benching Flood was part of some overall plan?

POLITICAL COACH:
Now hold- on. Before we

carry this any further, I want to say that I think we

are skating on very thin ice here, when we are

dealing with a baseball figure of Ted Williams'

stature. Despised as he was by many sportswriters in

his time-and I'm sure we could call upon these

people for assistance, if we should want them-my

gut reaction is that it is in the best interests of this

administration to

6o
OUR GANG

maintain a hands-off policy on all Hall of Famers.

TRICKY:
And what a Hall of Famer! I wonder how

many of you know Ted Williams' record. It certainly

is a record for all Americans to be proud of, and I'd

like to share it with you. Just listen and tell me if you

don't agree. Lifetime batting average, .344
.
That

makes him
fifth in
the history of the game. Lifetime

slugging average, .634.
That
makes him second only

to Babe Ruth himself! In doubles, fourteenth with

5
2
5; in home runs fifth with 521; in extra base hits

seventh with
1,117;
and in all-important RBI's, and I

really can't say enough about RBI's and how

important they are to the national pastime, in RBI's,

also seventh with 1,839. And that isn't all. Led the

league in hitting in 1941 with an average of-just

listen to this-.4o6! In
'42
again, with .356; in '47 with

.343;
in '48 with -369-(Suddenly angry) And they said

Jack Charisma was the one who had the memory for

facts! They said
Charisma
was the one who had the

grasp of the issues. Oh, how they loved to

downgrade Dixon! No wonder I had a crisis in that

campaign! They were always picking on me! My

beard! My nose! My tactics! Well, just let me say one

thing as regards my so-called "tactics": if in any of

the averages I have just quoted to you, I have

altered Ted Williams' record by so much as one

hundredth of one per

TRICKY HAS ANOTHER CRISIS 61

centage point, I will submit my resignation to

Congress tomorrow. Now that would be an unprecedented

act in American history, but I would

do it, if I had dared to play party politics with the

American public on a matter as serious as this one.

(All applaud)'

POLITICAL COACH:
Mr. President, that was a

most impressive recitation of the facts and has only

served to strengthen my conviction that it would be

utterly foolhardy to bring a slugger like Williams

under federal indictment.
TRICKY:
Good thinking.

Good sharp political thinking. Of course, with

Flood himself, we have a very different situation. To

be sure, he batted over .300 for the Cards in '61, '63,

'64, '65, '67 and '68, but never once did he lead the

league in hitting or home runs, as Williams did, and

his slugging average is almost half what Williams'

was at the end of his career.

Of course,
in
1964, Flood
did
lead the National

League in base hits with 211, and something like

that could stir up a certain amount of sympathy.

Now let me make one thing perfectly clear: I am

not saying that he is anywhere near the all-time

leader in that department, George Sisler, who got

257 hits in the year
1920,
but a fact is a fact, and we

are going to have to confront it. Those 211 base

hits could mean trouble.

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OUR GANG

HIGHBROW COACH:
Mr. President, under ordi

nary circumstances I too might be leery of bringing

a charge as drastic as whichever one we come up

with, against a man who, as you so wisely remind us,

led the National League in total base hits with 2
1I.

But Curt Flood is something more than your runof-

the-mill hitting star of yesteryear: he is a bona

fide troublemaker, and was in hot water right up to

his neck even before I put him on my list. That is

why I put him on my list: for not only has he

jumped a hundred-thousand-dollar contract and

skipped the country only a month into the season,

but he of course is the man who in
1970
refused to

be traded by the St. Louis Cardinals to the Philadelphia

Phillies, claiming that the trade denied him his

basic rights to negotiate a contract for his services

on the open market. Subsequently, he hired as his

attorney none other than Lyin' B. Johnson's

appointee to the Supreme Court .. .

POLITICAL COACH
(hopefully) : Abe Fortas!
HIGHBROW

COACH:
No, no, but almost as good.

Arthur Goldberg. G-o-l-d-b-e-r-g. And these two

instituted a suit against baseball on constitutional

grounds, asserting that organized baseball was in

violation of the Antitrust Laws, and that the

owners, by trading players from one team to

another without their permission, treated them like

pieces of property, which was both illegal and

immoral.

TRICKY HAS ANOTHER CRISES
63

Now, impugning the sacred name of baseball in

this way did not go over very well with a good many

loyal Americans, including the Commissioner of

Baseball himself, and in the eyes of many,

sportswriters and fellow players, as well as fans

throughout the country, Flood, and his mouthpiece

Goldberg, appeared to be out to destroy the game

beloved by millions. Flood, in a book he has written

on the subject, even quotes himself as saying in

conversation, `Somebody needs to go up against the

system. I'm ready." And, gentlemen, that is only one

of the selfincriminating statements that is scattered

throughout that manifesto. Of course, as if all that

he has said and done isn't compromising enoughincluding

hiring a Mr. Goldberg to represent him in

this attack upon the most American of American

sports-Flood is a black man.

LEGAL COACH:
Where is he now, Algeria? That

would sew it up for us, if he was in Algeria.

HIGHBROW COACH:
To the contrary, had he fled

to Algeria-which he has not-they would already be

selling posters of him at bat in a beret, and ads to

"Free Flood" would be appearing daily in The New

York Times, signed by movie stars and Jean-Paul

Sartre. There'd be marches and pickets and probably

one of those mule trains camping on the White

House Lawn.
TRICKY:
Oh, those mule trains! Those

marches!

64
OUR GANG

Really, I can't
stand
those things. It never failsevery

time they start marching on Washington, I'm the