A legendary Pittsfield athlete was honored Thursday by Major League Baseball's players union.

Mark Belanger, a Pittsfield High School graduate and longtime MLB infielder, was named the 2021 Curt Flood Award winner Thursday for his work as a special assistant for the MLBPA after his retirement. Belanger, who died in 1998 at age 54, was selected by a seven-member committee.

Belanger played in MLB for 18 years, all but one of them with the Baltimore Orioles. Known as one of the best defenders of his era, Belanger won eight Gold Gloves and was a key member of Baltimore's 1970 world championship team, as well as American League championship teams in 1969, 1971 and 1979.

Before reaching the majors, Belanger was a two-sport standout at Pittsfield High School, leading the baseball and basketball teams and still ranking highly on Berkshire County's boys basketball career scoring list.

His older brother Al, who still lives in Pittsfield, said Mark became the Orioles' assistant player representative to the union under teammate and Hall of Fame third baseman Brooks Robinson, and liked the role. Al said Mark was proudest of players' increased rights through free agency, obtained after Curt Flood -- the MLBPA award's namesake -- refused a trade from St. Louis to Philadelphia and, with longtime MLBPA Executive Director Marvin Miller, took MLB to court to challenge the reserve clause in the early 1970s.

"He's always been intense. Whatever he did, he was always being intense, even if it was pickup basketball between him and I," Al Belanger said Friday.

"He was, first of all, an extraordinary player; an extraordinary athlete," said former MLBPA Executive Director Donald Fehr in a video released by the MLBPA. "But he was dedicated to the union, dedicated to the MLBPA, and he essentially helped create the union in its current form."

Belanger worked with both Fehr and Miller, who was posthumously inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame this summer. The MLBPA said on Twitter that Belanger "would play a pivotal role in MLBPA negotiations of 1981, 1985, 1990 and 1994-95."

Former MLBPA attorney Lauren Rich, in the Twitter video, noted Belanger's leadership role in the midseason players' strike of 1981, his last season as a player.

"He led the 50-day strike," Rich said. "It was settled to the players' satisfaction, so I think they had great confidence in Mark."

Al Belanger said his family was notified last week of the MLBPA honor.

"It came very much as a surprise," Al said. "I know he would be extremely proud of it. I don't think he was the type that would be looking for something like that."