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Curt Flood
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Color photograph of Curt Flood in uniform.

Credit: Image Donated by Corbis - Bettmann

In 1969, Curt Flood finished what Pennsylvania-born ballplayer John Montgomery Ward had started almost 100 years earlier. In refusing a trade to the Phillies, Flood challenged baseball's reserve clause - which players likened to economic slavery - setting in motion the modern system of free agency.

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