Customer Reviews

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

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If you consider yourself any type of fan of baseball history, this is a must read !! This book reveals a streetside look at the history of some of the greater players of the game, their roots and the difference a life can take based on a few right or wrong choices. Blackie Schwamb crossed paths with some of the greats of baseball in both minor league and major league games - albeit while on his long way to prison. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Wrong Side of the Wall by Eric Stone tells the tragic story of Blackie Schwamb, a talented baseball pitcher who was bent on self-destruction. Growing up in the boom days of Los Angeles, Schwamb was attracted to the glamour and money associated with the local gangsters. Before he even tried to make it in baseball, Schwamb associated himself with gangsters, working as an enforcer due to his size. He was probably talented enough to make it to the major league, but his drinking, womanizing and running around with gangsters ruined him. He blew games due to his drinking, didn't show up for days on end, and, finally, killed a man when he had been drinking. He lost the prime years of his career to his time in San Quentin and Folsom Prison.

Ironically, those years in prison became the highlight of his baseball career. He was a successful pitcher against teams that fielded semi-pro and pro players. But, even in prison he was beset by depression.

Wrong Side of the Wall is one of the saddest baseball stories I've ever read. Schwamb's prison career showed his potential, but he couldn't adjust to any success in the outside world.

Wrong Side of the Wall is a reminder that bad apple athletes are not new to our times. Eric Stone tells the story of the wasted life of Ralph "Blackie" Schwamb, a professional baseball player in late forties, who threw away an opportunity fantasized by many of us since childhood. Schwamb gravitated toward the criminal element of Los Angeles and also happened to have major league pitching talent. With 1940's Los Angeles as a backdrop, the book portrays his road to the major leagues marked by the milestones of dropping out of high school, alcohol abuse, petty and violent crime, two years in a naval brig during World War II followed by a bad conduct discharge, subsequent work as an enforcer for L.A. gangsters, and being a neglectful husband and father to boot. Along the way he also developed a talent and liking for baseball. Baseball seems to have been at most a hobby that somehow led to a contract with the St. Louis Browns and a half season (and one win) in the big leagues in 1948. What could have been a Cinderella story and tale of redemption turns into a self-destructive, nasty, and ugly story of screw-ups, drunkenness, and blown opportunities. Schwamb must have had huge potential to get up to the big leagues so quickly (albeit with the St. Louis Browns) and his obliviousness to the opportunity left me stunned. Then a little over a year after his summer with the Browns and back in Los Angeles, Schwamb was arrested and convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. At San Quentin and later Folsom, without many of the outside distractions Schwamb came into his own and played the best baseball of his life. Baseball was a big deal in California prisons back then and he was the star of a team that often dominated the San Francisco Recreation League and many semi-pro teams. The descriptions of prison baseball are interesting and a neglected niche of baseball history. Schwamb spent ten years in prison and his ability was still regarded enough for him to get a chance at a comeback with the Hawaii Islanders in the Pacific Coast League. The comeback failed and he faded into obscurity with several more relatively minor brushes with the law along with two failed marriages until his death in 1989. The book's pace with its weaving of the story into the Los Angeles setting is awkward at times. For example, the author interrupts the section on Schwamb's murder trial with a discussion of Los Angeles smog. Perhaps the most striking and memorable part of the book is the preface in which Stone describes several days spent with a prematurely aging and sick, but still volatile Schwamb in 1985. Much of the material in this book came from these sessions, however Stone took what Schwamb had to say with a grain of salt and uses other sources too. For the baseball history buffs, The Wrong Side of the Wall is a must read and is deserving of a five star rating. Mystery, crime novel readers, and those interested in Los Angeles history will also enjoy it. Stone has a lot of information about Los Angeles and its gangsters that could be used in his mysteries and I look forward to reading more by him.

Blackie Schwamb's life gorily illustrates the other side of the greatest generation. A must read for baseball fans, sure, but this book also offers a fantastic peek into a era marked with incredible highs and lows. The tragic life of a supremely talented and unscrupulous man weaves into a complex and fascinating read. Very highly recommended for fans of history, baseball and the darkeness of humanity.

Well-written and well-researched book about a complex individual who could have had it all and ended up with nothing. I never would have heard of Blackie had it not been for this book, but after I was done reading it I had to ask myself, is this guy worthy of a book? Maybe not.