Wrong Side of the Wall: The Life of Blackie Schwamb, the Greatest Prison Baseball Player of All Time - Hardcover

Stone, Eric

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1592284396 ISBN 13: 9781592284399

Publisher: The Lyons Press, 2005

Synopsis

An account of Ralph Blackie Schwamb, one of the best baseball prospects ever to come out of Los Angeles, who became the greatest player in the history of prison baseball.

About this title

Review:

"Baseball rarely edges into "noir," but this compelling biography by Eric Stone reads as if it had been filmed in black and white in the golden age of film noir Hollywood. Mesmerized by the waste of it all, yet tempted to hope because of his talent, we follow the story of a brilliant but flawed player, Blackie Schwamb, whose career was derailed through the tragic consequences of gangland connections."--Kevin Starr, University Professor in History, University of Southern California, California State Librarian Emeritus, author of Coast of Dreams: "California on the Edge, 1990-2003" and the other six volumes of the "Americans and the California Dream" Series "Blackie Schwamb pitched in the American League for the St. Louis Browns. Blackie Schwamb pitched in Folsom and San Quentin . . . You'll finish Wrong Side of the Wall asking yourself, 'What if . . .'"--Joe Garagiola, former major league ballplayer, radio and television broadcaster, and author of "Baseball is a Funny Game" "As a ten-year-old St. Louis Browns' fan, I saw the apple-cheek side of baseball and loved it. Eric Stone's look at the dark underside is eerie, fascinating, and impossible to put down."--Win Blevins, author of "Beauty for Ashes," and numerous other award winning historical fiction and non-fiction books

From the Back Cover:

Set against the grime-and-glitter backdrop of mid-twentieth-century Los Angeles, Wrong Side of the Wall is the true story of a talented young athlete in the days before special ability in sports was a ticket to riches. Faced with a choice of probable success in the revered but grueling world of major league baseball or the easy money, fast times, and glamour of organized crime, Ralph "Blackie" Schwamb tried to have it all. But the pull of the underworld was inevitably too strong, and Blackie, a rising star pitcher for the St. Louis Browns at twenty-two, was behind bars for a brutal murder at twenty-three.
Wrong Side of the Wall grabs the reader like a fast-paced novel, breathlessly racing through Depression-era and World War II Los Angeles and into the postwar economic boom, plunging into a world-from Mexico to Canada-of gangsters, nightclubs, girls, guns, gambling, and booze-and baseball, mostly behind prison walls. Permanently separated from all chance of success-straight or crooked-by his penchant for screwing up, Blackie established himself as a legendary prison-yard baseball pitcher and hitter. He was so renowned for his heat that baseball scouts came from around the country to match hitting prospects against him, and major and minor league players regularly came to San Quentin and Folsom prisons to get the chance to play against the prison phenom.
When at last Blackie got out of jail, he was too old and battered to make the cut. A childhood friend says of Blackie, "I looked up and he had tears in his eyes. And he said, 'You know . . . I really could have been something.' I guess I got a little misty-eyed myself. What could you say to the guy? He had ruined his life, and a few others along the way. You have to live with yourself, and sometimes that's punishment enough."

About this edition

• Publisher: The Lyons Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1592284396
• ISBN 13: 9781592284399
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 310