HBO Sports yesterday held an invitation-only advance screening of its latest documentary "The Curious Case of Curt Flood," an event that drew former MLBPA Exec Dir Marvin Miller, current Exec Dir Michael Weiner, Flood's widow Judy Pace Flood, MLB Exec VP/Baseball Operations and Flood's former teammate Joe Torre, longtime baseball publicist and author Marty Appel and MLB Properties/VP Programming & Business Affairs Elizabeth Scott. Miller, interviewed extensively for the film, praised the film following the screening, but acknowledged it was difficult to relive the Supreme Court proceedings in which Flood failed to overturn baseball's long-running reserve clause. "It was a great film. ... But it's really tough to see a court simply rely on prior decisions as opposed to the arguments of what was going on [in Flood v. Kuhn]," Miller said. The Supreme Court, by a 5-3 vote, acted on the principle of stare decisis and ruled in favor of MLB, upholding two prior challenges to the reserve clause, even as it admitted the original grounds for baseball's antitrust exemption were tenuous. "The Curious Case of Curt Flood" is set to premiere on July 13, the same day as Showtime's full debut of "The Franchise," its reality series on the MLB Giants. Miller, not surprisingly, also levied
support for the NFLPA, obviously in the midst in a labor battle of their own with the league that includes a lockout nearly four months old. "They are the wealthiest of all the team professional sports, but despite that, they have the lowest salaries. They have the shortest careers and they have the worst injuries," he said. "This is entirely caused by a $9 billion a year industry with their demands that despite [management's] affluence, the players should give them a billion dollars of the stupid salary cap." Miller also called NFLPA Exec Dir DeMaurice Smith "a bright man with his head in the right direction."
