Viva El Birdos and LB get some National Respect.

I submitted LB's interview with Alex Belth to the Wall Street Journal Yesterday and our favorite blog has gotten a bit of national respect.

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From the excellent St. Louis Cardinals blog Viva El Birdos comes a transcript of an interesting conversation with Alex Belth, author of "Stepping Up: The Story of All-Star Curt Flood and His Fight for Baseball Players' Rights."

Mr. Belth explains that he became interested in Mr. Flood, whose effort to overturn the reserve clause restricting player movement and salaries failed just a few years before the advent of free agency, while working as a post-production assistant on Ken Burns's "Baseball," which contained searing interviews with the former Cardinals star about the abuse he endured in the Jim Crow era.

"One of the things Flood had said was that he believed in the American Dream: if you work hard, you will be rewarded for that," Mr. Belth tells Viva El Birdos. "And Flood really did live the American Dream. He was the underdog who made it. ... But he also lived the underbelly of the American Dream as well -- the debasement of being a black ballplayer in that time, or being a black man, period, in the time in which he played. I think that made success very difficult for him. All of a sudden, he could go into a restaurant where he hadn't been able to get seated several years before, and people were kissing his [butt]. And he had to look at the waitstaff or the bussers, who were black, who were not accorded that same sort of treatment. So here's a guy, he lives the American Dream, but because he is black and he is outspoken he exposes the hypocrisy of the American Dream at the same time."

If you'll forgive a Fixer a moment of self-indulgence, Jace was also fascinated by Mr. Flood, and wrote this appreciation of his life and legacy way back in January 1997, shortly after Mr. Flood's untimely death from throat cancer at 59.

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Here is the link to Jace's (Jason Fry's) story:<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB854133610804936500.html?mod=article-outset-box>

Unfortunately, The Wall Street Journal (www.wsj.com) is a subscription only service