A Most Nimble Thief and Underpaid Shortstop

 

Louisville Kentucky - The Slugger's HQ

EDITOR'S NOTE:

Baseball season is just around the corner

so let's take a peek into the past ... 

John Dillinger’s baseball card

"I'd like to have enough money to enjoy life; be clear of everything 

- not worry; take care of my old man, and see a ball game every day."  

-- John Dillinger

A Most Nimble Thief

& Underpaid Shortstop

by Jamie Jobb

Notorious gangster John Dillinger died in a law enforcement ambush outside Chicago’s Biograph Theatre when he was only 31 years old. At the time – July, 1934 – press and public considered that gruesome scene a worthy exit for the murderous thug who’d spent a third of his brief life behind bars.  

Few folks recall Dillinger when he stole bases instead of cash – as a local legend known as “The Jackrabbit”. That was Dillinger’s baseball nickname as he grew up a sandlot bully, Cubs fan and “usual suspect” in the Roaring 20s of central Indiana, and later more famously, on Chicago’s South Side. The nickname stuck after Dillinger went to prison, where he stood just over five-foot seven-inches tall and weighed a mere 157 pounds.  He was renowned as the Jack-be-Nimble who could leap over tellers cages in big city banks.

Before his life of crime, Dillinger tried to lead a normal life. That proved to be difficult.  After deserting the Navy in 1922, Dillinger returned home to marry a teenager and try his hand at baseball, playing for several central Indiana semi-pro teams not unlike the new half-paid ball clubs that sprang up near San Francisco in recent years. It was – and still is – a tough way to make a living.

* * *

Playing for quick summer cash, Dillinger eventually settled in as star shortstop/second baseman for the Martinsville Athletics who rode his bat to a 1924 Indiana championship.  Of course, “The Jackrabbit” was swift on the base paths, but in Martinsville his bat is what dragged home the bacon.

His team-leading batting average also earned him a $25 gift offer from Old Hickory Furniture Company – which is still in business! Unfortunately, the Athletics could not provide enough steady income to sustain his baseball career, so Dillinger teamed with league umpire William Edgar Singleton to plot more lucrative post-season pursuits – as armed robbers.

The umpire was known locally as a drunken poolroom layabout who was a full decade older than the shortstop. He also happened to be a seasoned ex-convict. And Dillinger must have forgotten what most Little Leaguers learn -- it’s never a good idea to get too cozy with the umpires!

At any rate, the ump and the shortstop were better at baseball than they were as hoodlums:  They botched their first job – robbing an elderly grocery store owner. Dillinger attacked the owner with a gun and a metal bolt wrapped in cloth while Singleton waited in a getaway car. 

Their plan went awry when the old man turned out to be tougher than expected.  He disarmed Dillinger and beat him back -- while the getaway vehicle sped off.  The Jackrabbit eventually escaped the crime scene, but both he and the umpire were soon apprehended. For his efforts, Dillinger was rewarded with a maximum state penitentiary sentence of 20 years.

* * *

Although John Dillinger had plentiful chances to play ball at Indiana State Prison, he spent most of his incarceration sharpening his criminal interests with seasoned professional crooks as “teammates”.  After nine years behind bars, he was paroled just as the Depression hit its nadir in 1933.  With his baseball years behind him, Dillinger had little choice but to resurrect his banking “career”.

A big fan of the Chicago Cubs, Dillinger kept “bankers hours” – robbing financial institutions in the morning and retreating to Wrigley Field in the afternoon. Folks joked that Dillinger never would commit to a bank without first consulting the Cubs’ home schedule. Local law enforcement authorities knew the former infielder attended Cubs’ games, but they were disinclined to tip off J. Edgar Hoover’s G-Men in a time of Prohibition. 

But as The Depression dragged on and Dillinger worked his way up to Public Enemy Number One, the FBI eventually persuaded Chicago’s Police Department to institute a 40-man “Dillinger Squad” to help flush out the gangster who everyone knew was “hiding in plain sight” at ballparks and movie houses throughout the Windy City.

Although he’d endured plastic surgery, dyed his hair, grew a mustache and now wore glasses – Dillinger often would be spotted in a crowd and then flee the venue before he was apprehended. After several narrow escapes at Wrigley Field, law enforcement eventually caught up with him on July 22, 1934 when he went to the Biograph to see “Manhattan Melodrama” – a talking picture about two boys who grow up in different directions: one becomes district attorney while the other goes to the electric chair. 

As he died in a shootout outside the theater, Dillinger never got “The Chair”, but one imagines, in kinder times, he would have settled simply for that spot at shortstop.

* * * 

Sparky Anderson – Hall of Fame

NOTE: Jamie Jobb published his first writings in The Middleport (Ohio) Daily Sentinel when he was ten. From that early coverage of his small town’s high school basketball games, he went on to write about all kinds of sports for The Miami Herald, St. Petersburg Times and Gainesville Sun during his college years in Florida. 

One of his mentors during that time was Sparky Anderson – Hall of Fame skipper of The Big Red Machine -- who managed the St. Petersburg Cardinals Florida League baseball club while Jobb covered the Class A Miami Marlins, before the town went all MLB after he left. 

Much of what Jobb knows about baseball can be traced back to his dugout chats with the affable Anderson in 1966, Sparky's only year in St. Pete. And from his time spent with National College Baseball Hall of Fame coach Demie Mainieri whose team won a national junior college baseball championship while Jobb edited the college paper. This article was originally developed for his local newspaper in California when the town hosted a new semi-professional team.  

* * *

Sources:

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2013/07/famed-bankrobber-john-dillinger-once-was-a-professional-baseball-player/

https://www.wvxu.org/post/obscurity-immortality-story-sparky-anderson#stream/0

https://www.fangraphs.com/tht/the-ultimate-die-hard-cubs-fan/

RadLab Rats or Picnic in People's Park

“We will defend this place
Till the last drop of beer”
– Julia Vinograd

RadLab Rats

or

Picnic in People’s Park

a dissertation in one act

by Jamie Jobb

All names, institutions, events, rodents and students

portrayed in this play are essential fictions.

No identification with actual laboratories, 

instruments, products, scientific research or sentient 

beings – enrolled or deceased – should be inferred

as none was intended by the author.

Furthermore, no Gatorade was consumed

in the making of this dramatic work.

jamiejobb@gmail.com

Traveling Light Studio

P.O. Box 12

Martinez, CA 94553

925 723-1782

(c) 2021 by Jamie Jobb

CHARACTERS:

(Short bios at page 33)

HOWARD DOBBS, aka “Dobbs”, caucasian male, 27.

CURTIS DONNER, aka “Curt”, caucasian male, 27.

MORGAN BERNARD BECK, aka “M.B.” and “Nibbs”, African-American male, 42.

JULIA-MAY BECK, aka “J.M.” and “Her Majesty”, African-American female, 43.

PEARL DALY, Japanese-American female, 49.

RUNNING SACAGAWEA, aka “Sacks”, Lakota-Nez Perce female, 55.

SETTINGS

all in Berkeley 

People’s Park – up right

Downtown Bar – up center

Cafe Strada – up left

Swift Mosaic – down right

Moore Lobby – down center

RadLab – down left

Apologies: George Hearst, Edward Teller, Glenn T. Seaborg, M.B. Curtis, Robert Cade, Frances Moore Lappe, Fat Dog, Wavy Gravy, Humphrey Bogart and Humphrey GoBart.

RadLab Rats

or

Picnic in People’s Park

Scene One

PEOPLE’S PARK, Berkeley. A winter evening. 

AUDIO: Persistent rain on plastic “roof”. Howling wind. 

PROJECTION: The Park, dark and damp.

An empty shopping cart. Under plastic tarp with

sleeping bags and blankets, PEARL and SACKS huddle. 

PEARL: He was some strange cat.  Bearded grizzly bear of a guy.  Dressed in a suit.  Didn’t look like a student at all. Too old! 

SACKS: We’re old!

PEARL: He sure talked like a student. Big mouth.  Big words!  (beat) Anyway, he didn’t see us. Tripped right over ME. Right there on Telegraph.

SACKS: It happens.

PEARL: Yeah, he should-a known.  Everybody sees us sit there every day.  Same spot, outside Amoeba Records.

SACKS: Manners! 

PEARL: Anyway, I get up, follow the cat. He don’t notice.

SACKS: We’re invisible, Pearl.

PEARL: Fine. I follow him five-six blocks, toward campus. Suit and tie!  (beat) What he don’t know won’t hurt ME.

SACKS: Might hurt HIM – not US!

Pause.

PEARL: So I track him up Bancroft, into Cafe Strada.  Ya know – we can sit there, no hassle.  Who’s gonna say squat to us?  Everybody there looks homeless anyway … Or at least one-foot-out-the-door.

SACKS: Don’t let it hit you in the backside, kids!

PEARL: So I sit there. Close enough to study the students.  He orders his luxury lappe (sic).  Sits and sips and seems to wanna wait for somebody.  (beat) He just stares out into space.  Not stuck on his phone.  Or his lapdog computer.  (beat) So naturally, I know he’s up to something.

SACKS: They usually are ... college kids!

PEARL: You know that’s a great spot to fish for bits of bagel and cold coffee. 

SACKS: No bagels between semesters!

Pause.

PEARL: The food they throw away – students! (beat) After a while the cat’s friend shows up.  Another beard.  Another burly Bear. Suddenly the first beard talks about his “project at the Lab”, he calls it the “Goldwater Project”.  He talks like some Mad Scientist. 

SACKS: They usually are ... students. 

PEARL: Then they talk a ton of math.  (beat) I just can’t dig it. 

SACKS: It happens.

PEARL: Plenty leftovers sitting there so I don’t care what they say. After a couple minutes of math, first cat says he’s got this “Experiment” unquote.  What he says drops my jaw clear to the sidewalk. (beat) He says he has a machine to take GOLD out of water!

SACKS: Goldwater? 

PEARL: Mining student … in the mining department. 

SACKS: Mining department?!?

PEARL: The University – they have a department for miners. Like the fire department. They go to mines instead of fires. 

SACKS (perplexed):  What about the Goldwater?

Pearl pulls Sacks close.

PEARL: Listen, this is big.  Very very big. I can’t believe he talked about it.Right there in public. Out in the open: GOLD ... from water!  Forget the Lottery. (beat)  RunningSacks, we could be rich, my friend!

SACKS: Aren’t California’s gold mines all played out?

PEARL: They are! They’re shut, locked up!  But that’s the beauty of it – there’s all this old Goldwater trapped up there in those mines.  Just sits there – over a hundred-fiftyyears. He said the water’s full of gold.  And silver.  And heavy metals and stuff! I mean – it’s like they left us another Mother Lode! Locked up in that water. 

SACKS: Well, well, well – we don’t say! Gold’s in the water – water’s in the well!

PEARL: It’s just all dammed up. (beat) Waiting there for a couple of native Americans like us to take it.

Pause.

SACKS: You’re Japanese-American!?

PEARL: Correct … 

Pause.

PEARL: You’re Nez Perce. 

SACKS: … and Lakota Sioux!

PEARL: (beat) Can’t get more Native American than that!

SACKS: Bombs away!

Pause.

SACKS: These are WHITE guys, right? 

PEARL: Great White Hunters! 

SACHS: Kill things … spread disease. 

PEARL: Correct.  (beat) They know all about water in California. How precious it

is. How much it costs to keep it clean.  They know where to find the 
money to get it out!

SACKS: You always said we live in a Cadillac Desert! 

PEARL: People gotta drink!

SACKS: We’re too thirsty for earthquakes. Whole state’s on fire!

Pause.

PEARL: Anyway, first beard said he’d figured out how to take out the gold.  Plus make the water safe enough to drink! He said that would give them two kinds of products for profit.  One wet, the other dry.  He said they’d make a fortune.

SACKS: That’s pretty smart! (beat) For college kids.

PEARL: And get this: To get it out – they “extra-act” (sic) it. With bananas!

SACKS (goofy grimace):  What?

PEARL: They take the gold out somehow.  He said it’s “extra-acted” out of the water. (beat) That specializes it somehow.  With “nano bananas”, something like that.  Makes it more expensive gold. “High-Grade Gold” is what he called it. 

SACKS: Must have lots of carrots (sic), that gold. 

PEARL: They’re making it right here in Berkeley!

SACKS: Where?

PEARL: At the Lab ... The RadLab.

SACKS: The Rat (sic) Lab?

PEARL: The RAD-Lab … like “Radical, man!”

SACKS: Don’t they call it something else?

PEARL: “The RadLab” – that’s what Old Hippies call it.

SACKS: We’re Old Hippies, Pearl.

PEARL: I know where that Lab is! I been there a lot.  Bike delivery.

SACKS: Where is it?

PEARL: Up the hill, above the Greek Stadium.

SACKS: Bitch to bike up there!

PEARL: Yeah.  Big round building, been there forever.

SACKS: Is it that big round thing Fat Dog calls “Oppenheimer’s High Church”?

PEARL: Yeah! The one with all the windows in a circle around the top. It’s easy toGet inside. I’ve done big drops like that before. Nine years in Circus Oz, you lose all fear of heights. (beat) I just need enough rope to rappel me from the roof to the floor.

SACKS: Why we wanna do that?

PEARL: Do I have to (Desi Arnez accent) ‘esplain everything, Lucy?

Pause.

SACKS (dawns on her): … to “extra-act” the gold? 

PEARL: Let the kids have the water.  We’ll take their gold!

SACKS (thinking it through):  Can’t weigh much, if it’s dust.

PEARL: Piece of cake – all crumbs!

AUDIO: Hard rain on plastic. 

Pearl searches under blanket.

PEARL: Where’s that Lottery Ticket?

Sacks hands Pearl newspaper Tearsheet and Lottery Ticket.

SACKS (dejected):  Wrong numbers again.

LIGHTS

Scene Two

Downtown Bar, evening. 

AUDIO: Muffled voices. Clinking glasses and bar din.

PROJECTION: Upscale bar with leather booths.

Agitated couple MORGAN and JULIA-MAY BECK sit with drinks.

MORGAN (looks around):  I miss Blakes!

JULIA-MAY: Dive!

Beat.

MORGAN: Brennans!

JULIA-MAY: Down on the tracks … Dead end!

Pause.

MORGAN: The old Durant, Henry’s Publick – that was a great bar!

JULIA-MAY: Dump! 

MORGAN: Block from campus.  We got great shots there!

JULIA-MAY: We could get SHOT there!  Perhaps you recall the deranged Iranianstudent who held thirty-three hostages at Henry’s in Nineteen-Ninety?  Huh?  One of our students died in that stupid shootout.  Remember?

Pause.

MORGAN: Nothing pleases us, does it? 

JULIA-MAY (sips, grimaces):  Impossible to get good mixed drinks in this town! If you wanna good cocktail, you gotta go to L.A.

MORGAN: Stupid one-mile rule! Who thinks students can’t ride a mile for alcohol? Another dumb idea from your Campus That Cares! (beat) Oh, how we yearn for Berkeley in the Sixties! What does our “Dean of Students” candidate have to say about that?

JULIA-MAY: You know, we weren’t here in the Sixties! Anyway, that limit used to be two miles then. It was a stupid TWO-mile rule! (beat)  Where the hell is she? 

MORGAN: Traffic, running late.

Long Pause.

JULIA-MAY: Another stupid idea – your so-called “open marriage”!

MORGAN: I thought we’d expand our horizons.

JULIA-MAY: Good God!  You might have mentioned she’s an Uber driver  (beat)with two kids!

MORGAN: Comes in handy sometimes. 

JULIA-MAY: You thought Uber would expand our horizons?!? 

MORGAN: You know I lost my car!

JULIA-MAY: (sarcastic) Gimme a Lyft! (pause) Morgan Bernard Beck, untenuredprofessor of mining.  Married, but footloose and fancy free. You’re long overdue to upgrade your C.V.!  And you’ve got enough mileage now from your D.U.I.s!

MORGAN: Keep kicking that dead mule on down the road!

JULIA-MAY: There’s too much slack on your tenure track!  That does not make me look good. 

MORGAN: Can’t make ME look good either.

JULIA-MAY: I’m avoiding Faculty Senate! My absence doesn’t help any slimhope I have.  (beat) It’s a national search!  Nobody on campus moves up to Dean’s Chair without strong faculty support.  You know that!

MORGAN: You gotta hold out, J.M.  Only one way to look at it.  Prepare yourself! They’ll select you, eventually.  And if the Vice Chancellor won’t call, you can rest assured nobody will ever tell you why you weren’t picked!  So … Visualize that chair!  It’s the only thing you can do.

JULIA-MAY slams down her glass.

JULIA-MAY: Dammit – you just love to let things slide, don’t you?  (beat)Tenure! Promotions.  (beat) Fatherhood! … (mocks his voice) “Visualize Father’s Day, Julia-May!” You have no idea how silly that sounds, spoken by a man with no pants.  (sneezes)

MORGAN: All things happen in due course – Junior has to wait! (beat) Who said our academic career would be easy? 

JULIA-MAY: You’re off track, Nibbs!  Don’t drive ME off track.  Julia-May Beckdoes not wander off track!

Pause.

MORGAN: Our idea’s too good, J.M. It’s too lucrative. Congress is bound to continue fund us. Everybody at DOE sees the value of our research.  We get the gold AND we get the water too!

JULIA-MAY: Well, that’s not what I’m hearing at Sproul.  Congress just made massive cuts into DOE’s budget. You’d know that if you’d read the link I posted – yesterday’sL.A. Times.

Pause.

Morgan suddenly seems threatened.

MORGAN: Has “She” talked you into moving back to UCLA?

JULIA-MAY (snaps):  “He” doesn’t like to be called “She”!

MORGAN (befuddled):  Is “She” a man or is “He” a woman?  I keep getting confused about “Them”.

JULIA-MAY: You tell me! “He” can use any bathroom “She” wants!  (beat) Are “You” paranoid? 

MORGAN: Call me trisexual!  (a fib)  You know I’ll “try” anything. (beat) Once.

JULIA-MAY: Really!?!

MORGAN (blurts): Why are you keeping Her from me?  It’s a golden opportunity.

JULIA-MAY: You know how hush-hush we have to be right now ...

MORGAN: I won’t say anything.  You know that!

Julia-May is getting very angry.

Pause.

JULIA-MAY: I’ve had it with your flirtatious lies!  Your fake fictions!  She doesn’t need to know you … ever.  That would send everything off the rails! I won’t get The Chair and you’d never be tenured ... Ten years from now we’ll find Morgan Beck still wandering the HighSierras, looking for his sacks of gold. California’s modern Jim Beckwourth – big black bear of amountain man on the loose! 

Pause.

MORGAN: I love you!?

JULIA-MAY: Three empty words.  Who loves whom?

MORGAN: No riddles! 

JULIA-MAY: You’re just another sad sack.  Grow a beard!

MORGAN (confused): Julia-May ... Beck!

Pause.

JULIA-MAY: I asked Ari to draw up papers. 

MORGAN (jumps up): What?!? 

Julia-May remains seated as Morgan stands. 

MORGAN: You can’t get a divorce in an open marriage. 

Morgan turns, scratches his head.

MORGAN: … Can you?

JULIA-MAY: Yes I certainly can.  I filed before the end of the fiscal year. 

MORGAN: No!

JULIA-MAY: Yes! I’m leaving you and your Berkeley pie-in-the-sky Gold Rush dream!

MORGAN: Julia-May, I need you by my side!  Especially now!

JULIA-MAY: You want MORAL support!?!  (beat)  Run for Congress!

Pause. Morgan gathers himself.

MORGAN: I told you what happened to the man who invented Gatorade.  Robert Cade. University of Florida.  He waited for just his right moment.

JULIA-MAY (cold):  I don’t recall.

MORGAN: He kept telling the administration that the University ought to market his product, which at the time was only produced in house for their athletic department. But the University sand-bagged him, year after year. So finally he got fed up and went straight to Stokley’s by himself. Sold the patent rights outright. Of course, then he had the University’s attention.  And his wife’s.

JULIA-MAY: What’s your point?

MORGAN: He’d developed Gatorade on their time, in their labs – not Stokley’s. So then the University had to negotiate directly with him. But he came out far better on the deal than if he’d waited for them to act before he did. He could have died while the administration worked out things on its own, “in due course” – as we say in the mining business.  Instead, he took the line of least resistance.

Pause.

JULIA-MAY: Are you finished?

MORGAN: I hope not!

JULIA-MAY: Nibbs, this is NOT Florida, your late great Sinkhole State! You’re ascientist – act like one! You should know California has submerged coastlines! 

MORGAN: What the hell are you talking about?!?

JULIA-MAY: Stuff sinks in these waters! When that happens, you got nothing to sell the private sector. And you know what that means to an academic reputation. Sell out or die!

She gets up.

JULIA-MAY: Adios, muchacho! 

She exits.

Morgan remains at bar.

MORGAN (dejected): She’ll never dig me.

LIGHTS

Scene Three

RADLAB, Berkeley’s hills. Same evening.

AUDIO: Faint electronic buzz. Distant voices echo. 

PROJECTION: Radioactivity warning sign “Highly Classified”.

An odd contraption of a scientific experiment,

The Instrument, is all wrapped in Aluminum Foil. 

Tinkering with Instrument are two grizzly graduate students, 

DOBBS and CURT, both in burly beards.

CURT: Rats.

DOBBS: Rats?

CURT: Rats!

DOBBS: Domestic?  Or foreign?

Curt examines base of Instrument.

CURT: Too small for Lab rats -- they're so overweight and depressed.

DOBBS: Got in from outside?

CURT: Yeah.  I keep telling Maintenance, but they don’t respond … after that last mishap. And they sure don’t listen to M.B. He needs to get off his high horse and hop on this dead mule right away – talk to his “Dean” unquote.

DOBBS: Julia-May’s in a royal snit! She won’t help him.

CURT: Nobody can help him!

Dobbs moves in for closer look at Instrument.

DOBBS: What’s the damage?

CURT: Massive. Look! 

Curt pulls out a Mess of Chewed Wiring from Instrument.

DOBBS: Good God, chewed right through!

CURT: No wonder it won’t reboot!

Curt drops the wiring Mess.

DOBBS: So … that shuts us down?

CURT: Totally.

DOBBS: Second time this semester!

Pause.

CURT: We can’t finish this term. No way.

DOBBS: Can’t we just … rewire?

CURT: Dream on, Dude.  We lost the entire data set!

DOBBS: You mean …?

CURT: It fried both backup drives, plus the main drive AND mother board. Had to happen early this morning, during monthly maintenance. 

DOBBS: I told you we shouldn’t trust M.B.’s TimeMatter app.  Where’s he find this crap – Japanese black market?

Dobbs picks up wire Mess, shakes it.

Pause.

CURT: This little mishap means I gotta get another loan.

DOBBS: Me too! (drops wire Mess)  What about our housing notice? 

CURT: Deadline passed last week.

DOBBS: I’m not sure we can live off campus now.

CURT: We won’t be able to eat.

DOBBS: And pay rent at the same time!

CURT: Berkeley’s a bitch on no budget!

DOBBS: We’ve gotta talk to M.B.  Where is he?

CURT: Having drinks, downtown with Her Majesty.

DOBBS: Don’t call her that!  (beat)  Shit!  He won’t be back tonight.

CURT: Maybe not tomorrow.

Pause.

CURT: Think he knows?

DOBBS: I don’t think so ... maybe.

CURT: I saw her going into Lunchbox Wax. (beat)  At lunchtime!

Pause.

DOBBS: We know – why can’t he see it?

CURT: His very own wife, cheating on him – openly like that.

DOBBS: With another woman!

CURT: That’s no woman, Dude!

DOBBS: And HIM cheating on her too!  You saw that Uber chick he found on Tinder!

Pause.

CURT: They’re all cheating on US!

Pause.

DOBBS: I’m gonna have to go back to tending bar.

CURT: I’m gonna have to learn how to drink, again.

LIGHTS