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

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."

"Eric Stone's riveting account of Blackie Schwamb's great baseball talent and equally great character defects is so much more than a sports story. It is a fascinating trip along a life on the edge, in and out of trouble, golden opportunities and missed chances."—Tom Brokaw, NBC-TV’s Anchor for the "NBC Nightly News"