![]() Two months into my time there, the baseball strike hit. Gelf Magazine: How did you get the idea for the book?īrad Snyder: I was a very young reporter for the Baltimore Sun, fulfilling a childhood dream like in Roger Kahn's The Boys of Summer of covering the team I grew up rooting for, the Orioles. (Also, you can hear Snyder and other sports-book authors read from and talk about their works at the free Varsity Letters event presented by Gelf on Wednesday, December 6, in New York's Lower East Side.) Following are edited excerpts from the interview. Snyder, 34, spoke to Gelf by phone about how the legal fight for free agency has made baseball better, how he came to terms with the flaws of his book's hero, why this fall's World Series was a publicity boon, and what Flood would have thought of his book. ![]() Flood's personal foibles pale in comparison to the missteps of former and current Supreme Court justices, cowardly fellow players, and venal owners, who conspired to make this tale a tragedy, albeit one with a triumphant epilogue as Flood sobers up and makes peace with baseball more than a decade after his trial. Snyder's gift, as a lawyer and journalist, is to present Flood and the book's other characters, warts and all. He sold artwork produced by others as his own, was financially irresponsible, womanized, drank to excess, and let his playing skills prematurely erode during the case. Yet Flood is also a deeply flawed character. Flood himself never benefited from his selfless struggle, and died in 1997. ![]() Flood's trial failed in a questionable Supreme Court decision, but opened the floodgates for free agency and today's economic structure that more-equitably splits the lucre between players and owners. Flood sacrificed enormously, interrupting his career with his hitting and fielding skills still near their peak to wage a lonely battle that would, if successful, have benefited his fellow players, who nonetheless mostly declined to stand up and be counted. Flood is unquestionably the hero of Snyder's account, a man inspired by his own hero, Jackie Robinson, to agitate for economic freedom in baseball.
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