When Curt Flood asked for higher pay from the Cardinals back in the late 1960’s, the Cards’ shuttled him off to Philadelphia. What happens these days?
Montgomery Maulers owner Jamie LaMunyon had an emphatic response to her players’ demand for back wages: You’re fired.
LaMunyon said she will field a replacement team for the National Indoor Football League game at Osceola, Fla., on Friday, and next week at home.
“I have cut all the football players,” she told the Montgomery Advertiser in a story Thursday. “Fans will see a whole new team next week in Montgomery. Maybe they can win a game.”
The mass firings came after four Maulers held a news conference at a local attorney’s office Wednesday saying the team wouldn’t travel to Osceola if LaMunyon didn’t pay money they claimed she owed them.
Attorney Donald Jackson said some players were owed as much as $800 or $1,000 and the average was about $650.
“In all my years of a sports-based legal practice, I have never seen anything quite like this,” Jackson said. “But it’s not really surprising. The owners of this team are apparently in dire financial straits. Whether you call this a termination or a refusal to pay, it’s all the same. What she’s doing now is grasping at straws.”
