Wild In The Strike Zone includes poems about Alabama Pitts and other Outlaw ballplayers

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Wild-in-the-Strike-Zone-Baseball-Poems-9780692719701/330146125 

If you want to learn more about the mystery of Alabama Pitts, get Hank Utley and my book, which includes the Pitts Family History as told by his niece.

https://www.amazon.com/Outlaw-Ballplayers-Interviews-Profiles-Independent/dp/0786426144/ref=sr_1_1?crid=14DRF9S7TMQ4H&keywords=outlaw+ballplayers&qid=1701695251&sprefix=outlaw+ballplayers%2Caps%2C120&sr=8-1 

Philadelphia Eagle Photo of Pitts

 

Players After Prison from HOF

https://baseballhall.org/discover/short-stops/players-after-prison 

Coverage of Ed Pitts' Death

 

Babe Ruth--Alabama Pitts Poem

 

GOAT

 

At the Sing Sing Prison

Babe Ruth sat in the electric chair

Smoking a cigar and telling jokes.

He was there to play the prison team,

The Black Sheep, but found time

To visit the real murderers’ row,

Where he would ask a prisoner

“You know what time it is?”

Then laugh and say,

Why would you need to know?

He’d come from a party somewhere

And drove his car to the gate and then

Inside to the field overlooking the Hudson.

In the game he hit three home runs

Then pitched the last inning

To show he still could.

When Alabama Pitts, who the warden

Had bribed to play with conjugal visits,

Hit a homer off the Babe,

He was all about him,

Telling the Times reporters

About the great ballplayer

Locked up in Ossining.

Was the Babe,

Who got the talk started,

That sent him arching

Toward his tragedy.

 

 Alabama Pitts Meets the Valdese High School Baseball Team, 1939

There were some boys 

Who wanted to try him

That first day on the ball field

Behind the rock school on Main Street.

My daddy said you a jailbird, coach,

A tall lad with a fuzzy little mustache said.

Yeah, mine too, the stout kid who had

On the team’s one set of shin guards piped in.

A cloud covered the sun for a moment,

And it got dark all at once like in a movie.

I served my time, son.

And let me tell you, I can outhit, outthrow,

Outfield, and outrun every one of you

Small town shit kicker hicks.

I’ve lived in New York City.

I’ve done time in Sing Sing Prison.

I’ve played football for the Eagles

And baseball against Babe Ruth.

Now which one of you peckerheads

Thinks he can get a pitch past me?

He grabbed a bat and stood by 

The wooden slab that passed for home plate

And waited to begin his coaching.