A Well-Paid Slave by Brad Snyder

ball out here.’ ” Police caught the man, and Wagner, though not the deftest fielder, at least tried to catch fly balls again.
    Flood and the Carolina League’s other minority players thrived despite the torrent of racial abuse. The league’s best players were black or Hispanic, including future major leaguers Wagner (51 home runs, 166 RBIs), Hall of Fame first baseman Willie McCovey (.310), infielders Tony Taylor and Jose Pagan, and pitcher Orlando Pena. Flood outshone them all. He led the league with a .340 batting average, set a league record with 133 runs, tied for the league lead with 190 hits, finished second to Wagner with 128 RBIs, walked 102 times, stole 19 bases, and hit a team-record 29 home runs. He dazzled teammates with his running catches in the outfield and led the league with 388 putouts. Pesky proclaimed Flood the league’s best prospect. The Carolina League named him its player of the year. “I lit up that league—I carried my ballclub, and if that sounds like bragging, I don’t care,” Flood said. “I played like I was on fire to prove to myself that you can always overcome anything from the outside.”
    Despite accolades from the league and quiet admiration from teammates and opponents, Flood was miserable all season. He did not care whether his team won or lost. There were times when he despised his team’s pitcher so much that he contemplated making an error on purpose. He never did. “Pride was my resource,” he said. “I solved my problem by playing my guts out.” But for the first time in his life, baseball was not fun. It was a job, and a miserable one at that.
    After the season’s final game, Flood was excluded from the team party at an all-white establishment until owner Tom Finch, a Thomasville furniture dealer and friend of Sam Bercovich’s, intervened. Nothing could change Flood’s mind about High Point-Thomasville. By the end of the season, his weight hovered around 135 pounds. His face looked gaunt. He was exhausted. But he knew he had played his way out of the peckerwood league. “I believe that I would have quit baseball rather than return there,” he said.
    The Reds rewarded Flood for his fine season by calling him up to the major leagues. He had never been to a regular-season major league game before playing in one. On the plane flight to join the team in St. Louis, the airline lost his bag containing his baseball spikes and other equipment. He could not even get out of the Carolina League with his shoes. In St. Louis, he borrowed spikes from one of his new Reds teammates and traded his Hi-Toms uniform number 42 for a Reds uniform bearing number 27. The following spring, and for most of his major league career, he wore number 21—half of Jackie Robinson’s number.
    A week after joining the team, Flood found himself at Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field on the same diamond as his hero. The Reds, Dodgers, and Braves were locked in a pennant race, with the Reds just two games behind the first-place Dodgers. On September 16, the Reds trailed the Dodgers 3-2 with two outs in the top of the ninth inning. When third baseman Ray Jablonski and catcher Ed Bailey both singled to keep the Reds’ hopes alive, Cincinnati manager Birdie Tebbetts sent Flood to pinch-run for Bailey at first base. At that moment, Flood represented only one thing to Jackie Robinson—the winning run. Flood never made it past first. Robinson scooped up pinch hitter Stan Palys’s ground ball at third base and threw to first for the final out. It was the only time the two men shared the same major league field. After the season, the Dodgers sold Robinson to their crosstown rivals, the New York Giants. Robinson had already decided to retire and accept an executive position with Chock full o’ Nuts. He later explained that he wanted nothing more to do with the game or the racist people who ran it.
    The Reds, who regarded Flood as