Six women sit around a card table playing bingo in the recreation room of Crestwood’s Andrew Biela Center for senior citizens.
They don’t appear to be baseball enthusiasts and certainly would know a B5 before an E-6.
Bulletins on the wall alert members to upcoming events. The only baseball-related item is a group trip to a White Sox game.
Yet somewhere in this building is the Cook County Cheetahs’ office. And in the break room, one door down from that cramped office, is Ron LeFlore.
Since January, LeFlore has served as a coach for the Cheetahs, an independent minor-league team that begins its first season in the Frontier League on Wednesday night. It’s the same Ron LeFlore who electrified crowds with his daring baserunning, entertained fans with his outfield miscues and disappointed them with off-field problems.
Playing baseball is a thing of the past for LeFlore, 50. Luckily, he says, so are the myriad problems that ended his career in 1983 after nine seasons.
His focus is on developing talent, perhaps starting the next great stolen-base king on his way to “the show.”
“The oldest kid here is 27, so these are guys we can get in and really instruct,” LeFlore said. “That’s been taken out of some major-league affiliates.
“They pay so much money that they really don’t have time to instruct guys. The former major-leaguers involved in the independent leagues are totally, fundamentally sound. We have an opportunity to give these kids the fundamentals they need to get to the next level.”
There are streaks of gray evident under LeFlore’s Cheetahs cap. He is a little heavier than he was in his playing days, but he’s trim enough to claim he could still steal a base because of his ability to break down a pitcher.
It’s that knowledge, along with a certain bravado, that LeFlore is trying to impart to his charges in Crestwood.
Happy birthday
LeFlore’s first big-league tryout is etched in his memory as firmly as each birth of his four children.
It was June 16, 1972, when he arrived at Tiger Stadium on furlough from Michigan State Prison in Jackson, where he was serving 3 1/2 years for armed robbery. It was also his 24th birthday.
“I had a phenomenal tryout,” LeFlore recalled with a smile, as if he were reliving each hit and the speed with which he ran the bases. “I hit the ball in the upper deck, which I didn’t do much when I got to the Tigers. I had all the tools.”
Billy Martin, the Tigers’ manager at the time, was the man who gave LeFlore his break. Martin’s friend Jimmy Butsacaris had a friend at Jackson who tipped them off about a phenomenal talent at the prison.
After LeFlore wrote a letter to the Tigers, Butsacaris and Martin went to see him.
Martin was fired before LeFlore got to the majors. He’d later manage in Texas, New York and Oakland, and LeFlore believes Martin recognized his intensity and passion for the game.
“I beat up on (Martin’s) teams,” LeFlore said. “I think he respected me for that because he discovered a good talent and I didn’t go awry. I was a good ballplayer.”
After three minor-league stops, LeFlore reached the Tigers in 1974 and played for them until 1979, making the All-Star team in 1976. He was dealt to Montreal for pitcher Dan Schatzeder in 1980, then played his final two seasons with the White Sox.
His specialty was stealing bases: LeFlore stole 455 in his career and is the only player to lead both leagues in stolen bases, swiping 68 for the Tigers in 1978 and 97 for the Expos in 1980.
“He slid into second base so many times and with such authority, I’m surprised he didn’t break his ankles,” said Gary Carter, a teammate on the Expos.
LeFlore is quick to point out that his resume isn’t limited to impressive stolen base totals. He batted .300 or better three times, including a career-best .325 in 1977, and led the league in runs scored with 126 in 1978. He had a .288 career batting average, 1,283 hits and hitting streaks of 30 and 27 games during the 1977 season with the Tigers.
And a prominent place among Nolan Ryan’s strikout victims–LeFlore was No. 2,000 and 2,500.
“Struck me out 22 of the first 44 times I faced him,” he said. “But he didn’t get me from that point on.
“I came up as a 26-year-old rookie, so I really learned the game while I was on the major-league roster. I also played in 155 games a year, so I didn’t take many days off. If I wasn’t maimed, I was going out on the field. Today’s ballplayers don’t know what that’s about.
“I’m proud of my accomplishments. If you put it in perspective, I did more in the game during the period of time I played than some guys who played all their lives.”
By his own admission, LeFlore’s time should have been much longer.
Problems ahead
How does a major-league center-fielder allow a routine fly ball to hit him square on the head? Playing for the White Sox, LeFlore had that memorable mishap in a 1982 game against Boston.
“I partied the night before–I was out until 5 a.m.–and then I had a day game,” he said candidly. “It was a real sunny day, and Gary Allenson hit the ball into left-center field. I flipped my glasses down. They went into my eyes and I lost sight of the ball.
“People don’t remember I hit the game-winning double that day. They only remember the funny stuff.”
There was nothing funny about LeFlore’s final year with the White Sox. He had a drug problem . . . or maybe a recurrence of one he had 19 years earlier, when he used heroin as a 16-year-old.
Drugs were a more public problem in baseball during LeFlore’s time–Kansas City players Vida Blue, Jerry Martin and Willie Mays Aikens would do jail time for their involvement with cocaine, and the Pittsburgh drug trials would implicate some of the game’s biggest stars. When LeFlore was arrested in July of ’82 and charged with possessing a controlled substance and two belt-buckle pistols, the White Sox claimed he had breached his contract and promptly released him.
LeFlore was eventually acquitted of the criminal charges, but he was out of baseball.
“I didn’t think I had a substance-abuse problem, but I’m quite sure I did,” he said, his voice taking on a wistful tone. “You never think you have a substance-abuse problem, especially if you have money to pay for it.”
LeFlore’s free-agent contract with the White Sox paid him $1.2 million a year, which was big money for the early ’80s.
“It was a great lesson because I lost a career. I felt so dejected because I could have played more years. I was only 35. It was a hurting time, a really bad time for me.”
Getting his release served as a wakeup call for LeFlore, who says he has been clean ever since. He also says he came to realize baseball was, and still is, his life.
He ran successful baseball schools in Florida, tried his hand as an umpire, played in the ill-fated Senior Baseball League and managed a year in the independent Northeast League, which shares the Frontier League’s near-the-bottom place in baseball’s food chain. With the Cheetahs, he’s hoping to prove he has the knowledge and the teaching ability to be a major-league coach.
“Everyone has some baggage they bring along, but with Ron it’s all about how he relates to the kids,” Cheetahs General Manager Gerry Clarke said. “From what I’ve seen, he’s a great coach.”
Also a realistic one.
“I’m an ex-offender, so will an organization take a chance on me?” LeFlore said. “All I can say is don’t keep stepping on me for past mistakes. I’m a human being–a lot older and a lot wiser.”
Living legacy
If Ron LeFlore, the father, can’t get back to the major leagues, maybe Ron LeFlore, the son, can get there. LeFlore Jr., an 18-year-old outfielder who lives in Florida, is expected to be taken in the first five rounds of this week’s amateur draft.
“I have a contract all drawn up for him. We would love to have Ron LeFlore Jr.,” Clarke said. “I think he’s going to be offered a little more money then we can give him.”
LeFlore says he’ll advise his son on everything, from contracts to the game itself. In fact, he plans to be his son’s representative, at least early on.
“What does he need an agent for? If he makes it to the majors, then we will get an agent,” LeFlore said. “I know what the needs are in baseball, and I know what they are looking for in terms of evaluating talent.
“The organization will give so much money regardless, but I want to know what their expectations are of my son. And I just want them to be fair with him.”
LeFlore, who has two daughters and two sons, beams when discussing Ron Jr.
“He will never run as fast as I ran, but everything else is better,” LeFlore said. “He’s naturally built and rates a four or five (out of five) in all five skills. He’ll do better than I did if he makes it.”
Back in the game
Doug Brinker takes his cuts in the batting cage at beautiful new Hawkinson Ford Field. The home of the Cheetahs is just across a large parking lot from the Biela center. LeFlore watches Brinker’s every movement closely.
“With a low pitch like that, you have to drop this back leg a bit and drive through the ball,” he tells Brinker as he demonstrates the technique.
Brinker, a 22-year-old from White Bear Lake, Minn., listens closely to his coach. He has no clue who Ron LeFlore was, never even watched LeVar Burton in “The Ron LeFlore Story,” a TV movie.
“I’m hoping to hear some good stories,” Brinker said. “My dad told me a little bit about him, but he was well before my time.”
The Cheetahs’ manager, 41-year-old former Cub Chico Walker, has vague recollections of his all-purpose coach. He also has LeFlore’s baseball card, but “I would never tell Ron,” he said, smiling.
“What stood out was his speed–I was a guy who had speed, so I took notice,” Walker said. “He could run and hit for high average.”
Most of the players LeFlore is coaching are simply too young to remember him, making this labor of love a true challenge.
More than anything, it’s a beginning: today, sharing an office in the Crestwood senior citizens center; two or three years from now, coaching in the major leagues?
“This is a steppingstone to get back to a major-league affiliate,” LeFlore said. “I want to do great things here so I can be noticed and hopefully get a call from an organization.
“I feel really fortunate. I was a gifted kid, but there are so many gifted kids I grew up with who are now dead. Baseball let me get away.”
