a system that held players in perpetuity. He would have overruled both precedents and reversed. He explicitly invoked Radovich and International Boxing, as cause for the Court to reverse its rulings on baseball to consistently apply antitrust legislation across all professional athletics.: Marshall clarified that he believed the particulars of Flood's case belonged at the level of the district courts as a labor dispute, where that lower court could investigate whether the antitrust violations practiced by MLB circumvented the league's CBA with the Players Association. Aftermath The ruling in Flood v. Kuhn came as a surprise to many sportswriters and scholars who were following the case. Harold Spaeth, a political scientist at Michigan State University, had predicted that Flood would prevail either unanimously or with Rehnquist as the sole dissent. Sportswriter Tom Dowling, who had been present for the oral arguments, believed that the case would be remanded, Flood awarded damages, and Kuhn would have to work with the players to create a free agency system. Despite the owners' legal victory, popular opinion had turned against the league, with some polls showing baseball fans favoring Flood by an 8:1 margin. Kuhn called the decision "constructive" and said he looked forward to discussing free agency with the players in the next contract negotiation. "The last thing I wanted was for the clubs to view the Flood decision as an excuse for doing nothing.", he wrote later. "Change was in the wind. Other sports were changing; we could not possibly sit still." Flood never returned to professional baseball. He lived in Spain for four years, owning a bar and laying carpet. Upon his return to the United States, he worked as a broadcast announcer for his hometown Oakland Athletics, as a Little League Baseball coach, and as commissioner of a senior baseball league. While working for the Athletics, he ran into Kuhn at a 1980 pregame party at Yankee Stadium. During an amicable conversation, Kuhn told Flood that while he had never doubted Flood's sincerity in pursuing the case and did not take it personally, Flood should still not have taken his Senators' salary. The Gold Glove Award Flood had won for the 1969 season but not formally received due to his legal dispute was presented to him in 1994. He was diagnosed with throat cancer in 1996 and died of pneumonia at a Los Angeles hospital in January 1997. The year