Small Potatoes

0712blog

With Fred on lookout, I would surreptitiously and furtively switch an expensive Rawlings or Spalding baseball into the box that contained the cheaper sawdust-filled baseball that lost its shape and became a square ball after hitting it a few times.

The Spalding and Rawlings baseballs would last a long time. Even after the cover came off, you could wrap it in black electrical tape and continue using it. That is, if you could get a Spalding or Rawlings baseball.

Rawlings and Spalding balls were out of my budget so what else can a poor 14-year-old boy do? Today, a Rawlings official Major League Baseball baseball costs $16.95 and way back, it was proportionally as expensive and unattainable. That is a lot of dough.

I switched balls and proceeded to the cashier who was none the wiser and I had a ball that wouldn’t lose its shape after a few hits.

This was before bar codes and security cameras. It was not exactly a Bernie Madoff caper or the great train robbery and the EJ Korvette store was not going to be forced in bankruptcy over switched baseballs. The chain did shut down a few years later but I accept no responsibility for the economic downfall.

My juvenile criminal career almost always involved pilfering from wealthy chain stores. I never took from friends, although I regularly grabbed coins from the big, black, pressed cardboard family piggy bank before my sister found out and turned me in.

The baseball caper was one of a series youthful, quasi-criminal acts that probably started during summers in Staten Island when two of us would collect the empty bottles that were stored in shopping carts behind Vinnie’s candy store. We’d then bring them back to Vinnie where he would give us 2 cents on the small bottles and a nickle for the big ones.

It wasn’t dishonesty, it was being entrepreneurial. And anyway, Vinnie probably jacked up the prices on his candy bars to cover for breakage and loss.

And in college, I had very little mad money and I loved music and still do. It was a rather easy scam. I would buy an album, take it home, replace the new record with an old one that I no longer enjoyed and then put it in the new jacket and return it at the store.

And then I could use the proceeds for the next switcheroo and that way I had the latest Beatles and Stones albums. I had many enjoyable moments listening to the Beatles’ “Abbey Road” that I acquired through an illicit act. Otherwise I couldn’t afford it and would never have known the beauty of such masterpieces as “Come Together” and “Mean Mister Mustard.”

It was not an elaborate scheme so I am surprised that the cashier never checked inside the returned album. I would say that the employee trusted customers but the truth has more to do with a laissez faire attitude by the employee, commonly known as who cares.

Being in style also was not in the budget. So keeping with the simplest route, while a high school stockboy at the now-defunct Robert Hall Clothing Store, I would take the trash out at night and include a nice shirt and pants or maybe a belt. After I closed, I drove to the rear and retrieved the duds from the dumpster. It wasn’t like I was Robin Hood but the next day I brought some of the purloined clothes to school and gave them away to friends.

In college, I worked at the area McDonald’s and it was easy enough to ring up a very low tab for a great number of burgers and fries for friends. If the manager saw, he never said anything. I also was permitted to bring unsold items back to the dorm where I gave them away and won great popularity that faded soon after I quit McDonald’s.

Another after-hours scam involved theft of paint brushes, paints and easels from the store where I worked that sold arts and crafts and outdoor furniture. I rationalized that I was underpaid as my pay relied on commissions from the outdoor furniture sales and I was a lousy salesman who suggested that customers try another store for a better deal on lawn chairs.

Additionally, I used the brushes, paints and easels to create my artistic masterpieces of which none ever sold and none were critically acclaimed.

Fortunately I was never caught and fortunately as I have matured, I have left the world of the petty criminal. But I see how shoplifters are commonly in court where highly-paid lawyers and highly-paid judges give sanctimonious advice and levy fines that may seem small but are major for anyone with no capital.

Through journalism, I got to know members of a radical gang who were later arrested and convicted of robbing banks. They called their thefts “expropriations” and that they were only realigning capital away from the oppressive system to those who would create a new system based on the Marxist philosophy or “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

Each member of the gang had a poor upbringing in a rough area of Boston. And each got involved in petty crimes as younger men and women before they turned to more serious matters. I don’t think any of them on their ill-fated, lifelong criminal careers started by snatching bottles for deposits.

The court system did not accept the rationale of expropriation and the bank robbers were all sentenced to long prison terms and the last I heard, two had died, one was still in prison and another had been paroled.

I think of myself as honest with a strong sense of right and wrong. Somehow, it just didn’t seem that wrong to pinch a good baseball or a Beatles album or a new shirt or a paintbrush.

I just know that people who are wealthy enough to afford Wilson baseballs don’t need to switch them with cheaper balls. And the people with money don’t have to scrounge around for two cents or nickle deposits or save their pennies to buy a new shirt. And for sure, those with the financial means can simply go to the art store and buy whatever brushes, paints and easels they need.

I have not stolen a thing in more than 50 years nor have I been tempted to steal. The statute of limitations has long since expired so I have no qualms about my latest discussion of self-flagellation.