Johnny and Curtis
“I played with the Astros in the seventies,” an old con told me, “And I can still throw the ball a hundred miles an hour.”
“Number 8, that was my number when I was in the big leagues.”
“I was a Yankee, played with Don Mattingly in the glory years.”
My response is often “Okay, let me check that on the internet. How do you spell your name?”
Maybe I would create a fictional life if I was spending most of the years of my life in prison. I think everyone wants to be somebody and have purpose and meaning in life even if it is a fantasy. Usually I simply listen and act impressed.
There are only a few players on the Giants that I trust enough to tell their stories in a book like this. I am told so many lies, which is understandable since so many felons do not want to appear in a bad but a good light. But with Johnny and Curtis, I will take the risk.
Johnny is thirty eight years old, has been in prison for eighteen years, and is not eligible for parole until 2029. He is white, but ran with the Hispanics and is classed with that race. He looks every bit the convict, tattoos on his neck, arms, chest, and back. To me he looks like he has fetal alcohol syndrome, meaning his mother drank to excess while Johnny was in the womb.
He is bright however, very active, an excellent athlete, and is very much a dedicated Giants player. He is one of those guys who gives it all he’s got. Physically he is a wreck. His knees both need replacing and I understand at least one will be after the season is over. About the seventh inning, a hot day, maybe two more innings to go and Johnny won’t come out of the game. He has learned to ignore the pain, which I can see he has once in a while.
Johnny is easily angered though. He tries to keep in under control but it flashes out now and then. He and Mario will get into some real scary arguments and I have to get in the middle of it for fear the lower yard officers will make a report about it. He told me, and I guess it is common knowledge, that he killed more than one person, maybe a few, and he knows he earned the years he has to do.
Last week he saw his son, Little John, for the first time in six years. The son, now eighteen, has grown up without a father, and the mother, Johnny’s wife, is divorcing him. Not unusual when a wife has waited nearly two decades already and is facing a couple more of these. Johnny wears jersey #29 and he asked me if I could find another Giants jersey with #29 on it and send to his son. Along with eight photos of Johnny taken on Opening Day, the jersey was sent off priority mail yesterday.
Curtis, aged forty nine, is a three striker and a parole hearing scheduled for 2029 would seem like a big break for him. He is not eligible for parole until 2044. Three strikes, three felony convictions, earns a long stretch in prison. The law is peculiar to California and was an effort by the voters to put the worst criminals away for a long time. It probably works, but it also condemns many non-violent offenders, who may be capable of being rehabilitated, to a situation that is hopeless.
At the beginning of the baseball season I handed out a sheet of paper to the Giants players where I had some questions about their lives. Curtis’ response was by far the most extensive. At age six he was molested by an older brother, which continued for many years, and which was followed by his father sexually abusing him as well. Very sordid, so much so I wish I had never read it. Though he married and fathered two children, his life was a mess.
Curtis liked to smoke crack cocaine; it destroyed his life. He robbed places, small time stuff, to get money for drugs. Once he burglarized a relative’s cabin in Big Bear, southern California resort area, and picked up a strike. Strike one, a robbery in 1985, strike two, another robbery in 1989 (Curtis claims he did not do it), and this last one got him a nine year sentence but he did only five due to good behavior. Strike three was a robbery and a forth strike, a burglary–both in 1995. His sentence was fifty years to life. What he needed was rehabilitation in an appropriate setting.
His wife divorced him, he has lost contact with his parents, and doubts he will ever go home–he has no home to go to anyway. He is convinced he will die in prison and he hopes it will be sooner than later. From time to time he is placed on suicide watch.
He never feels safe from the sexual predators. He is a small man, and now nearly fifty he is an easy target. He has been raped in prison, more than once, and lives in constant fear of being attacked. To this day he is constantly worried about it happening again and cannot get it off his mind. Unfortunately he has no group he runs with and is forced into being somewhat of a loner.
Curtis is a Christian, but does attend chapel services. The last chaplain treated him so poorly that he is soured on the whole chapel experience.
A few games back Curtis brought me a letter from a prison doctor–no more throwing baseballs for him. He had surgery to reattach a ligament in his right shoulder but when I asked that he play second base he said yes, and did, despite the pain. Curtis will now take over the 3rd base coaching box and give the signs which I will flash from the safety of the dugout. Hope I am not putting Curtis in harm’s way, but I cannot see the ball coming off those aluminum bats anymore plus it gives him an active role on the team.
There is a three striker who plays on the A’s and I am glad he received a long sentence. We are all a little safer with him behind bars. Curtis on the other hand, in my view anyway, should have been released a long while ago. The difference between the two men illustrates the near impossibility of creating a level playing field in terms of corrections and rehabilitation. On paper, both convicts look the same, but they are radically different from one another, and the prison system, despite its growing sophistication, is not equipped to deal with the nuances.