Sports Show Organizer Ordered to Stand Trial

Paul Howard Hammack, who attracted thousands of fans to a 1990 sports memorabilia show at the Pasadena Center, has been ordered to stand trial on related felony charges that he wrote bad checks to celebrities, including baseball slugger Mickey Mantle, and ran up thousands of dollars in unpaid bills.

Hammack, who operated a now-defunct Glendale memorabilia business called Baseball Legends, defended himself without an attorney during a two-day preliminary hearing in Pasadena Municipal Court last week. Clad in bright orange jail clothing and sitting handcuffed to a chair, the defendant demanded his day in court.

“I request to be bound over to Superior Court . . . to prove my innocence,” Hammack told Judge Elvira R. Mitchell at the time in the hearing when defense attorneys usually seek dismissal of charges.

Mitchell on Thursday said she found sufficient evidence to warrant a trial on 20 counts and ordered an Oct. 10 Superior Court arraignment for Hammack, who remains jailed in lieu of $500,000 bail.

Hammack--who called himself Ernest Dent while organizing the Pasadena show--faces 11 counts of writing checks with insufficient funds, two counts of defrauding hotels, six counts of grand theft for failing to pay his bills and one count of using a false identity.

During the hearing, Hammack, 44, often spoke so rapidly that the judge asked him several times to slow down because the court reporter could not keep up.

While questioning witnesses, the defendant tried to shift suspicion to other men who worked at his business. No others have been charged, however.

Hammack said he still plans to make good on the unpaid bills and bad checks.

“I don’t feel that the prosecution showed that those checks were issued with the intent to defraud anyone,” he told the judge.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Nancy M. Naftel responded: “We don’t feel this is just a bad business deal.”

Still, Naftel said she was impressed by how quickly Hammack picked up the courtroom rules.

“He did very well,” the prosecutor said.

Hammack objected several times while Naftel was questioning witnesses. And he reacted with surprise, and often amusement, whenever Mitchell ruled in his favor.

“I got something, anyway,” he said after one such ruling.

But the judge also told Hammack that he had just incriminated himself when he admitted in open court that he had used the name and birthday of Ernest Dent, a childhood friend.

Posing as Dent, Hammack sold sports memorabilia at a Glendale shop in 1990, then set up the sports show at the Pasadena Center. He brought in such major league baseball stars as Mantle, Ernie Banks and Don Drysdale, along with former heavyweight boxing champ Joe Frazier and NBA star Kurt Rambis.

Sports fans, responding to Hammack’s ads, sent him baseballs, jerseys, photos and other items. For a fee, Hammack promised to have the items signed by the stars and send them back. Many of the items were never returned. Pasadena police investigators later retrieved 786 such memorabilia items from Hammack’s co-workers.

The show, believed to be one of the largest of its kind, was held Sept. 7-9, 1990. But when it ended, many of the celebrities and vendors who participated complained to police in Pasadena and Glendale about bad checks and unpaid bills. Hammack’s Glendale office was abandoned after the show.

Authorities said the losses totaled more than $200,000.

Some of the criminal charges involve a $30,000 check to Banks that bounced and a worthless $16,436 check issued to Mantle. A Highland Park graphics business said Hammack failed to pay for more than $28,000 in printing bills. He also did not settle bills of $13,000 to a travel agency and more than $31,000 to the firm that set up the sports show booths, authorities charged.

Steve Brener, president of a sports marketing firm, testified that he saw Hammack sign checks to former Los Angeles Dodgers infielders Steve Garvey, Ron Cey and Bill Russell for their appearances at the show. He said the checks bounced.

Police said sports stars were not the only ones who lost money.

Commodities broker Terrence Thompson, who does volunteer work for the Boys and Girls Club of Whittier, testified that he gave Hammack $1,620 of the club’s money for sports memorabilia items that were to be signed by stars, then auctioned to raise money for the club. Thompson said the check was cashed, but the club never received the items.

If convicted, Hammack faces a maximum six-year state prison sentence. He is currently serving eight years in federal prison on an unrelated charge that he defrauded a double-amputee from Texas of $67,500.