Painting the Corners Read online

  We won the Pennant the first year I took over the team, and then the World Series against the White Sox three years later. That came after O’Malley broke a lot of hearts and moved the team to LA. I ran the club for five seasons, which was more than enough for me. Then I got moved up to assistant general manager, which I was willing to try for a while, but being inside all day drove me nuts. I begged the team president, Bunny Durango, to get me into something else. He came up with a scouting job on the west coast and down into Mexico, and I grabbed it. That’s what I did for the Dodgers the next eighteen years until I hit the big sixty-five and got out of the game for good.

  Since then, the writers in town have been great, inviting me back every year and giving me a seat at the head table. I remember when this shindig used to cost 25 bucks and draw a couple hundred people. Now, they pull in over 700, which is about every seat they can squeeze into the Sheraton ballroom; and the price to come through the door is three times what it was back then. So I always get there early and start mixing with the crowd right away because I know there’s lots of them who’ve got stuff they want to ask me about. And the truth is that’s the part of the night I get the biggest kick out of.

  People want to know things like, “How did the other Dodgers feel about Jackie Robinson when he first made the team?” or “How did Duke Snider stack up against Mays and Mantle in center field?” Another one I hear a lot is, “Was Sandy Koufax the best left-hander you ever saw?” That one’s easy. I just say, “You tell me who was better.”

  Then there’s folks who are big on details and ask things like did I ever see three triples in a row, or who hit the longest home run in Ebbets Field while I was there. I have to stop and think about questions like that, and sometimes I just say I don’t know.

  But at the dinner a week ago this guy came up to me, and he had half a dozen different Dodger buttons pinned on his jacket, including one with a picture of me and Peewee. We had a good laugh about how I only looked a couple of years older than in the picture, and then he threw this one at me: “With all the ball games you’ve seen in your career,” he said, “is there one game that sticks out in your memory from all the others?”

  That’s something I knew I’d never been asked before, but I didn’t have to think more than a few seconds before a certain game came right back to me. And it was like I’d just seen it played that afternoon. “Yup, there sure is,” I told him, “and it’ll probably surprise you to hear it wasn’t even in the Big Leagues.”

  Well, a few other folks heard the question, and I guess they could tell from the way I answered that there was a good story there. So they moved in closer and I told them everything just as I remembered it.

  It happened near the end of my first year scouting, while the wife and I were driving up and down the Pacific coast from Washington to Mexico nine months a year. I spent the day checking out ballplayers at the colleges and all the local parks while she stayed back at the motel watching her soaps and knitting something or other for the two grandkids we had. We were outside San Francisco on a trip, heading back to LA to rest up for a week or so, when I got a message at the motel to call my office. Harry Pidgin was the GM at the time, and that turned out to be the last year O’Malley kept him on the payroll because the club finished in the basement, too many games behind. He wasn’t bringing in enough talent for the team to do any better.

  Anyhow, Pidgin said he had an unusual assignment for me, and I found out he wasn’t kidding. It had to do with this kid named Darnell Humboldt who’d been serving time in San Quentin for five years — since he was eighteen years old. He’d been sent up for killing the cashier in an all-night convenience store. It was one of those dumb early morning murders you read about where the guy usually gets away with all of 50 or 60 bucks for his trouble because the clerk who went home at midnight already dropped off the night’s take in a bank deposit box just down the street. Humboldt’s lawyer was pushing for a new trial, claiming some important new evidence had just turned up, and a story in the LA paper caught Pidgin’s eye about how there was a chance the kid might go free.

  The reason Harry got interested right away when he saw it was that Humboldt had been the best high school baseball player in LA for three years running. Everyone who’d seen the kid in action had said how he couldn’t miss making it in the Big Leagues someday. He started playing for San Quentin when he got sent up, and every so often there was a blurb in one of the home town papers about something he did, like hitting three home runs in a game or finishing up with a .450 batting average.

  What Pidgin told me was that San Quentin was going over to Alcatraz to play on Sunday and he wanted me to scout Humboldt in that one because the Alcatraz club had a great record and would be good competition. It wasn’t anything I would have volunteered to do, so I hemmed and hawed a little when he came out with it, hoping he’d send someone else. But Harry said he’d already checked into the arrangements and I didn’t have to worry about anything happening to me while I was there.

  “It’s part of the job, Joe,’ he said. ‘That’s why you’re getting paid to scout.”

  I didn’t want him thinking I was getting lazy or anything so I tried to make a joke out of it and said he had me between the Rock and a hard place. He liked that one and laughed. Then he told me where I had to be at exactly ten o’clock that Sunday morning.

  The boat that took us over to Alcatraz could probably hold about 50 people. It was what you’d more than likely be on if you were celebrating your anniversary and took the wife on one of those candlelight harbor cruises at night. I could see where a four or five piece band would set up and play at the back end and folks would be dancing, kind of squeezed together on a small floor, or sitting around with drinks in their hands.

  When I first got on, there were three other guys up front, standing in the narrow passageway that leads to the bathrooms and the front deck. They were just staring out toward the Rock, sitting there in the middle of the bay. I figured they might have been the umpires for the game. Ordinarily, I would’ve gone over and asked, but Harry told me I was supposed to mind my own business and not try to get friendly with anyone.

  There were five state cops on the boat, too, talking with each other along the side away from the dock. Every couple of minutes one of them looked over toward the pier to see if anything was happening. They were dressed in full uniform, like they were going to a parade, with their gray, baggy pants stuffed inside those tall brown boots they must have spit shined that morning. And all of them had on large, wire-framed sunglasses. There was a lot of laughing going on, but I thought they all looked kind of nervous.

  At about ten-thirty a yellow school bus came down the wharf and pulled up alongside the boat. I don’t know if they could see out the tinted windows from inside, but we couldn’t look in. Maybe ten minutes went by before the front door opened and three prison guards stepped out. The cops moved over to my side of the boat to see what was going on.

  The prisoners who came off the bus were all dressed the same, like a college football team traveling to another school for a game. They had on red sweatshirts, khaki pants, and baseball jackets that were silver and black, like the colors of the Oakland Raiders. Their black caps had silver lettering on the front — an “S” and a “Q” that were intertwined. I found out later it stood not only for San Quentin, but for SharQues, the team name.

  The first two came down the steps, and I saw they were handcuffed together. Then, while they stood there, one of the guards opened a big duffle bag he’d pulled out of the storage area of the bus and spilled a pile of these metal shackles on the ground. He picked up a set and pinned one side around the right ankle of the first guy and the other around the left ankle of his buddy. The two other guards stood a few feet away, holding machine guns. It felt weird knowing the guys I’d be watching play ball in a couple of hours were dangerous convicts who had to be handled that way.

  One guard helped the first two prisoners get on the boat and he walked them down to
the end of the long fold-down bench that ran along the side next to the dock. At that point, the state cops got down to business and took positions opposite the bench, from one end of it to the other, about five feet apart. Each of them stood with his right hand on his pistol holster, and I could see that all the holsters were already unsnapped. Pidgin had told me that Humboldt weighed 200 pounds and was six foot three, but I couldn’t pick him out by size as the guard kept bringing them on the boat in two’s. Half of them looked big enough to go in the ring as heavyweights. I was sure that two of the smaller ones who came on together were twins. They both had big smiles on their faces as if they’d won free trips on a luxury cruise to Hawaii.

  Eighteen guys in all were moved from the bus to the boat in the same way, and they all sat side by side on the bench. The guards pulled about twenty more duffel bags out of the baggage compartment and threw them on board. Then they brought over four folding chairs. The two guards that made the trip over with us took chairs for themselves and sat down across from the players at the two ends of the bench. They had their machine guns on their laps, and never said a word to the state cops, who went back to the other side of the boat as soon as we started heading across the bay.

  When we got to the island, a few guys in civilian clothes were waiting for us. One of them recognized me from my Dodgers jacket, said his name was Dennis Renfro and asked me to go with him. Renfro was a small guy, no more than five-five, and thin, too. Both sides of the collar on his white shirt pointed way out toward his shoulders and the knot in his tie was fastened real loose. It was a strange-looking combination. But what surprised me was the leathery tan on his face, because that was something I didn’t expect to see on anyone working at a prison. I figured I’d ask him about it if I ever got the right opening, but I never did. He gave me a short tour around the place in his minivan and took me to lunch in a small dining room that he said was used only by administrators who didn’t wear uniforms. ‘You can’t eat here if you carry a gun,’ he told me. It turned out he was an assistant warden.

  “Were those three other guys on the boat with me the umpires?” I asked. He didn’t say anything right away, like he had to think about his answer first.

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “Did you get to speak to them at all?”

  I said I’d been told ahead of time not to talk to anyone and that they weren’t acting too friendly anyhow.

  “Well, the umps probably got here earlier this morning. Those guys might have been federal inspectors or a few of our own guards coming off vacation. I never noticed them. But look, the game’s supposed to start at one-thirty, so let’s get over to the field.”

  On the way there, Renfro told me he’d seen Humboldt play a few times and called him a “gifted” ballplayer. “If we kept statistics the way you do in the Major Leagues, I’m certain they’d show that Humboldt is both the leading hitter for average and home runs of any visiting prisoners we’ve seen here at Alcatraz. If he was a free man, he’d probably be making two or three million dollars a year.”

  “Does he do as well when your team plays at San Quentin?” I asked.

  “He doesn’t have that chance,” Renfro answered. “The Rocks play only at home. No road trips for our boys.”

  When we got to the ballpark, guys on both teams were still doing sprints in the outfield or playing catch in front of the dugouts. Renfro pointed out Humboldt and then explained to me that the field at Alcatraz was regarded as neutral territory.

  “Coming here to a game is definitely the biggest privilege these prisoners have,” he said. “They can lose it if there’s any kind of disturbance, even a fight among themselves. If one of them starts any trouble while he’s here, he knows what he’d face from the others if they had to miss any games.” As he spoke, Renfro slashed his throat with an imaginary knife. “So they stay on their best behavior while they’re here. In return, we don’t have any guards in the stands that they’d have to look at while they’re watching the game. Makes it more enjoyable, you know. But if a riot ever started for any reason, there are a bunch of guards down in both locker rooms who can get onto the field through the tunnels the players use, and there are more on duty outside the entrances.”

  The ballpark was 320 feet down the foul lines and 375 to the deepest part of center field. The grass looked like professionals took care of it, and the infield was in great shape too. There was a 30-foot-high fence around the outfield, and a sentry box, with glass walls, was built right on top of the fence at each foul line. Both boxes were in fair territory.

  Renfro saw me looking at them. “The guards in there are really supposed to be watching what’s happening on the other side of the fence,” he said. “Those are exercise areas down there. We’ve got guards in those sentry boxes all the time, even when no one’s using this field. The glass is bulletproof all around, and if a Rocks player hits any part of it during a game, you’ll hear a big cheer because then everyone gets a couple of candy bars with dinner.”

  The wooden grandstands ran just partway around the field, starting behind first base and going as far as third. The wall behind the stands was as high as the one in the outfield, but it dropped down to about twenty feet where it followed the foul lines. The first five rows were off-limits to the prisoners. Renfro said the reason was that once in a while the catcher or an infielder from the visiting team got beat up when he tried to reach inside the stands for a foul ball.

  “Some of our boys had the idea that being a loyal fan was doing everything you could to help the team win.” He thought that was pretty funny and flashed me a smile when he said it.

  Renfro told me I could watch the game with him, from a seat behind either dugout, or sit with Humboldt and his teammates if that would help me do my job any better. “The two San Quentin guards are in there,” he let me know. “Nothing to be nervous about.”

  I said I’d rather be in the stands, at least for a while, but that I’d like to meet Humboldt before the game started. Renfro said, “Sure thing,” and took me over to the visitors’ dugout on the first base side. Humboldt was sitting down, talking to the two players I thought were twins. Renfro called him and I could see him get interested real fast when he looked up and saw the name on the front of my windbreaker. He came over and Renfro told him who I was. Humboldt was a good-looking kid, with milky green eyes that caught your attention right away, and a short goatee that was trimmed just right. He seemed a lot bigger than Pidgin had said, and had arms that would have made Popeye look like the skinny kid on the beach. I told him I’d heard about his court appeal and that I was there to see what he could do in case he got out. He gave me a movie star grin and said he always wanted to play for the Dodgers, being from LA. I wished him luck and he said he’d remember we were the first team to show an interest.

  “By the way, Darnell,” I asked him, “are those two guys twins, the ones you were sitting with?”

  He turned around to look at them in the dugout and smiled again. “Those are the Berry brothers,” he said. “I call one of them ‘Straw’ and the other one ‘Blue,’ but unless I see the numbers on their backs I don’t know who I’m talking to because they both got the same face. There’s no way you can tell them apart, except that Straw’s out at shortstop and Blue’s over at second base.”

  Just then an older guy in uniform walked by, close to us. Renfro told me it was Buck Whiting, the San Quentin manager. When Humboldt said he had to go get ready, Renfro led me back to some seats on that side of the field.

  “Whiting’s been in San Quentin for almost 30 years. He’s made the trip over here plenty of times and has friends in Alcatraz who came out of his same neighborhood. The story on him is that he got tired of his wife’s nagging one day while he was watching TV and choked her to death with his bare hands. Then, when his in-laws dropped by for a surprise visit that afternoon and found out what happened, he did the same thing to them. He plea-bargained for life without parole. You ought to take a look at the size of his hands if you go in their dugo
ut.”

  The game stayed close through the first five innings, but that’s only because San Quentin had more talent in its lineup than Alcatraz. And they needed every bit of it. I couldn’t believe the crap they had to take during the game: from the Rocks, the umpires, and even the prisoners who were watching. Let me give you an idea what I’m talking about.

  First of all, I’ve been around the game long enough to know what a curveball, a slider, or any other breaking pitch is going to look like when it gets to the plate and does what it’s supposed to do. And I’ve seen the tricks a pitcher can play if he cuts up the ball before he lets it go. So I didn’t have to guess what was going on when I saw some of the SharQues swing and miss at balls that were falling off the table when they got to the batter’s box. Whiting hollered out to the home plate umpire to look at the ball a few times, but the ump never took it out of play. When his own pitcher was out there, Whiting made a couple of trips to the mound to look at the baseball himself, but couldn’t find anything wrong with it.

  The thing is, though, Whiting kept missing something that I picked up on early. Whenever San Quentin’s half of the inning was over, whoever had the ball for Alcatraz always jogged past the third base umpire on the way into the Rocks’ dugout and flipped him the ball. Then that ump casually strolled down the line to the home plate umpire and gave it to him before the Rocks came up to bat. When the ump was back behind the plate, he put that ball in a separate pocket of his jacket and threw out a new one to Whiting’s pitcher. Next inning, when it was San Quentin’s turn to hit again, the ump made sure the ball with the cuts was back in the game. So I knew what was going on out there and realized that for some reason the umps were helping Alcatraz win. But I didn’t say anything to Renfro who kept cupping his hands and booing every time Whiting showed his face on the field.