Louisville Kentucky - The Slugger's HQ
EDITOR'S NOTE:Baseball season is just around the cornerso 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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/
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