This is you son. I found Venditto before he was reincarnated. Boys this is scary how true this story matches Venditto.
Ralph "Blackie" Schwamb.
Ralph "Blackie" Schwamb.
Blackie Schwamb
Ralph "Blackie" Schwamb was a part-time gangster, part-time baseball player, and full-time alcoholic. Growing up hard in Depression-era Los Angeles, he had the muscle and size to serve him well in both vocations, but in the end the booze won out. After a bad-conduct discharge from the navy, Blackie caught on with the lowly St. Louis Browns organization and made it to the majors for a brief stint in 1948. Often drunk during appearances on the mound, he couldn't count on his blazing fastball to carry him through, and he drifted back to the minor leagues. Two years and one murder later he was in prison where, for the most part sober, he did some of his best pitching. By the time of his parole eight years later, it was too late to make a comeback. 2
Get more from Ask-About-swicki.eurekster.com/Blackie Schwamb
Ralph Richard "Blackie" Schwamb (August 6, 1926 in Los Angeles, California - December 21, 1989 in Lancaster, California), was a professional baseball player who was a pitcher in the Major Leagues in 1948. After the 1948 season, Schwamb killed a Long Beach doctor by the name of Dr. Donald Buge. 1
Wrong Side of the Wall may better represent the true crime genre than baseball writing. Journalist Eric Stone asserts that as a young man he was captivated by baseball, the urban sprawl of his native Los Angeles, and stories of gangsters–all of which he weaves into the fabric of his Ralph "Blackie" Schwamb biography. 4
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. 3
Then his world caved in. He injured his arm. The last game he ever pitched was against the scary, temperamental, flame-throwing Schwamb. He heard later that Blackie had been a gangster, as well as a major league ballplayer, spent a lot of time in nightclubs and seedy bars, had killed a doctor and gone on to become the greatest prison baseball player of all time. 5
ERIC STONE, a magazine writer and editor specializing in economics and politics, is a lifelong baseball fan. A native Los Angeleno, he recently returned to live there after spending nearly seventeen years working in Asia. 7
After completing his sentence in 1960, Blackie makes a desperate attempt to resuscitate his baseball career and get back to the big leagues. But Blackie?s difficult past and ex-convict status left teams unwilling to take a chance on him. He ends up pitching one game in triple A and then realizes that he?ll never make it back to the majors. And he could have, if it wasn?t for one person always holding him back: Blackie himself. 6
Blackie pitched fairly well in Canada, but his wife got sick and wanted him back in California, so he took a leave from the team at the beginning of August to check in on her. Two months later, out on bail for a string of armed robberies he'd committed while drunk, Blackie was arrested for the murder of a local doctor. 8
Stone found the answer not in the rough-and-tumble world of the 1940s minor league circuit, which he vividly evokes, nor in the even rougher, more sordid world of organized crime in L.A. Rather, he discovered it in a broken-down old man he encountered living in a metal-slab-sided house in Lancaster, Calif. For four days Schwamb told Stone colorful yarns about his tragic, booze-soaked life. But on the fifth day, when Stone confronted Schwamb about the night he beat Dr. Donald Buge to death with his fists, Schwamb replied with a flood of tears. 9
In Stone's defense, there probably wasn't all that much of a story to begin with: Blackie Schwamb was an incorrigible drunk, he was often volatile and angry, he acted impulsively, and one day went too far. Like a lot of criminals, Blackie could be charming, engaging, articulate—he even tried his hand at writing. But in the end, his sad, painful life was one dominated by an addiction that he appeared to accept. Stone suggests that in today's world Schwamb might have gotten the help he needed and straightened himself out—at least enough to have had a major league career. But all the rehab in the world didn't cure talents like Steve Howe or Darryl Strawberry. Some people just can't avoid a destructive path in life.
Ralph "Blackie" Schwamb was a part-time gangster, part-time baseball player, and full-time alcoholic. Growing up hard in Depression-era Los Angeles, he had the muscle and size to serve him well in both vocations, but in the end the booze won out. After a bad-conduct discharge from the navy, Blackie caught on with the lowly St. Louis Browns organization and made it to the majors for a brief stint in 1948. Often drunk during appearances on the mound, he couldn't count on his blazing fastball to carry him through, and he drifted back to the minor leagues. Two years and one murder later he was in prison where, for the most part sober, he did some of his best pitching. By the time of his parole eight years later, it was too late to make a comeback. 2
Get more from Ask-About-swicki.eurekster.com/Blackie Schwamb
Ralph Richard "Blackie" Schwamb (August 6, 1926 in Los Angeles, California - December 21, 1989 in Lancaster, California), was a professional baseball player who was a pitcher in the Major Leagues in 1948. After the 1948 season, Schwamb killed a Long Beach doctor by the name of Dr. Donald Buge. 1
Wrong Side of the Wall may better represent the true crime genre than baseball writing. Journalist Eric Stone asserts that as a young man he was captivated by baseball, the urban sprawl of his native Los Angeles, and stories of gangsters–all of which he weaves into the fabric of his Ralph "Blackie" Schwamb biography. 4
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. 3
Then his world caved in. He injured his arm. The last game he ever pitched was against the scary, temperamental, flame-throwing Schwamb. He heard later that Blackie had been a gangster, as well as a major league ballplayer, spent a lot of time in nightclubs and seedy bars, had killed a doctor and gone on to become the greatest prison baseball player of all time. 5
ERIC STONE, a magazine writer and editor specializing in economics and politics, is a lifelong baseball fan. A native Los Angeleno, he recently returned to live there after spending nearly seventeen years working in Asia. 7
After completing his sentence in 1960, Blackie makes a desperate attempt to resuscitate his baseball career and get back to the big leagues. But Blackie?s difficult past and ex-convict status left teams unwilling to take a chance on him. He ends up pitching one game in triple A and then realizes that he?ll never make it back to the majors. And he could have, if it wasn?t for one person always holding him back: Blackie himself. 6
Blackie pitched fairly well in Canada, but his wife got sick and wanted him back in California, so he took a leave from the team at the beginning of August to check in on her. Two months later, out on bail for a string of armed robberies he'd committed while drunk, Blackie was arrested for the murder of a local doctor. 8
Stone found the answer not in the rough-and-tumble world of the 1940s minor league circuit, which he vividly evokes, nor in the even rougher, more sordid world of organized crime in L.A. Rather, he discovered it in a broken-down old man he encountered living in a metal-slab-sided house in Lancaster, Calif. For four days Schwamb told Stone colorful yarns about his tragic, booze-soaked life. But on the fifth day, when Stone confronted Schwamb about the night he beat Dr. Donald Buge to death with his fists, Schwamb replied with a flood of tears. 9
In Stone's defense, there probably wasn't all that much of a story to begin with: Blackie Schwamb was an incorrigible drunk, he was often volatile and angry, he acted impulsively, and one day went too far. Like a lot of criminals, Blackie could be charming, engaging, articulate—he even tried his hand at writing. But in the end, his sad, painful life was one dominated by an addiction that he appeared to accept. Stone suggests that in today's world Schwamb might have gotten the help he needed and straightened himself out—at least enough to have had a major league career. But all the rehab in the world didn't cure talents like Steve Howe or Darryl Strawberry. Some people just can't avoid a destructive path in life.