Ron LeFlore: Naughty American

SAN DIEGO (TNA) – Ron LeFlore is the luckiest son of a bitch who ever lived, that rare figure in American history who got a mulligan with their life – a complete do-over. It’s as if the Creator saw him throwing his life away so spectacularly and blessed him for it. How else can you explain a heroin-addicted drug dealer serving 5-to-15 for armed robbery going on to play center field for the Detroit Tigers?

You can’t. It’s preposterous.

What makes the tale of LeFlore even more absurd is that he had never played baseball before being sent to jail. Not Little League, junior high school or high school ball. Nothing. To think that less than three years after leaving prison he would be starting in left field in the 1976 MLB All-Star Game boggles the mind.

For most of the 60s, Ron LeFlore was just another lazy, drug-addled criminal on the streets of Detroit, snorting blow, shooting heroin, stealing from pimps and prostitutes, and running from the cops.

“I got a lot of practice running from the police, even when I was young,” he admitted in his 1978 autobiography “Breakout: From Prison to the Big Leagues.”

In fact, the milestones in LeFlore’s life read like a perverse resume: He started smoking at age 9, drinking at 11, smoking dope at 13, and shooting heroin at 15; he lost his virginity to a prostitute at age 12; by his 17th birthday, he had already been arrested a dozen times and spent a year and a half in the state reform school.

“While other kids were in school studying algebra and geography,” he wrote in “Breakout,” “I was standing on the corner, drinking wine and smoking grass.”

LeFlore was a degenerate, but he was no idiot. Some of his schemes were as brilliant as they were brash. While working as a bag boy at a supermarket, he noticed that clerks deposited envelopes of cash through narrow slots beneath the cash registers. One day, during business hours, LeFlore strolled into the market and crouched behind one of the registers. Using a stick with a piece of gum on the end, he removed all of the envelopes and casually strolled out. The haul netted him $1,500.

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Ron LeFlore has the wildest resume of any pro athlete. He was a heroin-addicted drug dealer serving a sentence for armed robbery who ended up being an All-Star center fielder.

He was kicked out of so many high schools, his parents lost track of which one he was attending. After one expulsion, not wanting to tell his parents, LeFlore convinced a local prostitute to pose as his mother so that he could register at another school.

At 10 he realized that women like a man in uniform, so he lied about his age and joined the Boy Scouts. He was too young to be a Boy Scout, but he wanted nothing to do with the Cub Scouts.

“I thought the Cub Scout uniforms looked sissy-ish,” he explained in his autobiography.

At 14, he had decided his path in life: He would become a pimp. But even the life of a pimp looked like too much work. In practice, he became a pimp con, promising to lead guys to hookers, only to take all their money. He later saw how easy it was to sell drugs and decided to deal.

LeFlore didn’t have any work ethic to speak of, and never became a major dealer, pimp, or thief. Instead, he was an opportunist, looking for the shortest path to the easiest score. In his autobiography, he waxed nostalgic about summer evenings when he would hop the fence at the Stroh’s Brewery, steal beer off delivery trucks, then spend all night drinking, smoking grass, and playing basketball with friends.

“I had become the best thief in the neighborhood,” he said proudly in his autobiography.

When he began doing hard drugs, he started hanging around a harder brand of criminal – drug dealers with caches of automatic weapons. Not that any of this concerned him. “I thought, ‘Hey, I’m involved with people who are really criminals!’” he wrote. “That made me feel good – real good.”

He saw guns as the way to bigger, easier scores. But guns would be his undoing. In January 1970, LeFlore was arrested for armed robbery after he and two friends held up a local bar. The judge looked at the escalation of LeFlore’s crimes, called him “a menace to society,” and sent him away for 5-to-15 at Jackson State Penitentiary.

But prison did little to straighten out LeFlore. (“I made up my mind to be a rebellious prisoner,” he admitted in “Breakout.”) He stole stuff, brawled, and sold “spud juice,” or prison wine. When assigned a job picking potatoes on a farm outside the prison, he refused and was sent to solitary confinement for three and a half months.

It was in the darkness of “the hole” that LeFlore had an epiphany: all his acting out was only hurting himself. If he didn’t change his attitude he’d spend the better part of his life behind bars.

Right there, alone in a darkened cell, he began the journey that would lead to center field at Tiger Stadium. To kill time, he did pushups and situps – thousands of them. He would pace for hours in his cell, three steps up, three steps back.

When he got out of solitary, he was in exquisite shape and talked himself onto the prison baseball team. Though he’d never played the game, he found he was a natural, hitting the ball harder and running faster than anyone in the prison. Some of the older prisoners – perhaps to instill hope – planted the idea in LeFlore that he could play professionally.

Hope was the missing ingredient. LeFlore developed a work ethic and spent hours on the diamond. He also became a model inmate. Prisoner B115614 had a goal: he was going to play professional baseball.

As it turns out, a fellow inmate knew someone who knew Billy Martin, manager of the Detroit Tigers at the time. The inmate badgered his friend to put in a good word for LeFlore with Martin.

And as luck would have it, Martin was scheduled to visit the prison to give a pep talk to inmates. The friend did mention LeFlore, and during his visit, Martin met with LeFlore for a few minutes, telling him, “Son, whenever you’re at Tiger Stadium, come out and I’ll give you a workout.”

LeFlore, if nothing else, knew how to hustle. He played up the off-hand invitation to prison authorities and won a 48-hour furlough to try out for the Detroit Tigers.

He awed the Tigers, of course, then earned parole and signed a minor league contract. LeFlore was a feel-good story, but the ball club learned that the ex-con posed some unique problems.

As a parolee, he wasn’t supposed to cross state lines. But could he travel for “business,” the team wondered. He also wasn’t allowed to fight. But what happened if there were a bench-clearing brawl? Could he participate?

One thing that LeFlore was encouraged to do was steal … bases. And LeFlore swiped a lot of them during a combined season of Single and Double A ball.

In August 1974, he made his major league debut. The home fans loved him, but at road games LeFlore heard the chants of “Jailbird!” and fans told him to “go back to prison.” However, he played well and attained cult status nationwide over the next two seasons.

In 1976, he played in the All-Star Game. President Ford came through the locker room and shook the players’ hands before the game. When he got to LeFlore, he stopped and said, “We Michiganders have got to stick together.”

The moment overwhelmed LeFlore. Here was a former heroin addict and drug dealer three years removed from the state pen, and the President of the United States was congratulating him. In 1978, Hollywood noticed, and made a film “One in a Million: The Ron LeFlore Story,” starring LeVar Burton.

LeFlore would play nine seasons in the majors for the Tigers, White Sox, and Expos, from 1974 to 1982. He finished with a career .288 batting average and 455 stolen bases.

It would be heartwarming to say that LeFlore left the criminal life behind after leaving prison. But he didn’t. The White Sox released him in April 1983, six months after he was arrested for possessing amphetamines and two unregistered weapons.

Then in 1999 he was arrested for failure to pay child support. The incident made headlines because it occurred outside of Tigers Stadium, immediately after LeFlore had participated in on-field festivities to commemorate the final game at the park.

After saying, “That won’t happen again,” he was arrested in 2007 on the same charges.

Ron LeFlore is a legendary figure in American sport. Really, he shouldn’t be in The Naughty American Hall of Fame – he shouldn’t even be alive. But through personal resolve, God-given talent, and pure, dumb luck, LeFlore showed that even a drug addict and thief can go from naughty to nice, and to center field at Tiger Stadium.

Ron LeFlore, welcome to The Naughty American Hall of Fame.