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Posted By: Paul

I agree that Flood should be praised for his courageous attempt to challenge the reserve clause. But I don't think it's accurate to say that he made any kind of a dent in the reserve clause. He filed a lawsuit and lost. The courts said nothing that in any way suggested that the owners needed to modify the reserve clause.

I do think he probably inspired other players -- like Dave McNally and Andy Messersmith (thanks Steve for remembering them) -- to come up with other ways to get around the reserve clause. And it's possible (I don't know for sure) that Congress reacted to the Curt Flood lawsuit by threatening to overturn the Supreme Court decision as a way to put pressure on the owners. This, in turn, may have caused the owners to accept free agency as a part of a collective bargaining agreement. So in these very indirect ways, Flood certainly may have made a difference.