FANFEST NOTEBOOK : LeFlore Now Helps Steer Youth in Right Direction: Education

Ron LeFlore is the poster boy for positive change, and his message is simple: Stay in school, avoid drugs and don’t find yourself in prison.

Ron LeFlore has been there, done that.

There was a 6 1/2-year stint at Jackson State Prison in Jackson, Mich. That is heroin, marijuana, some cocaine and armed robbery. The latter landed him in the big house at 19.

LeFlore, 44, was at the San Diego Convention Center on Saturday for Upper Deck’s All-Star FanFest. As fans filed past for his autograph, it became all too clear that the eyes of the next generation are on the big-leaguers.

Nowadays, he’s preventing other disadvantaged youths from making the same mistakes he did on the streets of East Detroit.

He came out of it by playing baseball in what turns out to be an extraordinary story that took him from the pen to the penthouse. He led the American League in runs (126) and stolen bases (68) for the Detroit Tigers in 1978 and stole a National League-leading 97 bases in 1980 for Montreal.

The year he made the All-Star Game, 1976, he had a 30-game hitting streak, batted .316 and was second only to Rod Carew in American League fan balloting. He went 1 for 2, getting a single off eventual Cy Young Award winner Randy Jones.

By the time LeFlore’s nine-year career ended in 1982 with the Chicago Cubs, he had amassed 455 stolen bases and a .288 career batting average.

Today he is part owner of a Grand Slam batting cage franchise in Largo, Fla. He also works extensively with shelters for the homeless and abused children in Clearwater.

“A lot of them don’t have father figures and I try to do whatever I can, as a male, to give them that,” said LeFlore, who has two children, Alexander, 12, and Georgia, 11, who live with his first wife.

He tries to get the underprivileged youths involved in sports and academics.

“The most important thing going for them now is academics,” LeFlore said. “You have to be some kind of special person to become a major league baseball player and there’s not a lot of jobs open for them. A lot of kids’ dreams and aspirations are to be professional baseball players, and I think it’s a big letdown to a great deal of them who do not make it. That’s why they need something to fall back on, and it’s education. And they’ve always got a job when they have an education.”

LeFlore was that special kind of person who could play the game. He managed to get a prison furlough and then made the most of a tryout with Detroit Manager Billy Martin.

“I had that opportunity and there was no way I was going to blow it,” LeFlore said. “There was no pressure on me. The pressure I had on me was in prison. Going to a ballpark was no pressure whatsoever.”

LeFlore says he now has an opportunity to steer kids in the direction he was never steered.

“I’m really appreciative of being in the position I’ve been in because not all guys who’ve played professional baseball can go to a kid and give them the example that I can give them, as far as coming up in a drug-infested, crime-related area,” LeFlore said.

“It’s been a hell of an experience for me and now I have an opportunity to help and assist kids that are in shelters like I probably could have been myself . . . The jobs weren’t available in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s, so we had to scuffle and do whatever we could, and I knew my parents couldn’t provide for me so I tried to get involved in the life of crime.”

His kind of town: Steve Garvey drew the largest crowds of autograph seekers when fans waited 90 minutes to pass him and Nick Willhite at the Upper Deck Heroes of Baseball. When it was time to leave, the line thinned to half what it was and several dozen gathered around Garvey. The affable former first baseman of the Dodgers and Padres signed a few, then was whisked through back doors and lobbies to Screen Training, where fans provide voice-overs for video replays of great moments in baseball. Garvey stood behind behind the unsuspecting Bill Proctor and son Dan, 7, of Santee, as they called Garvey’s Game 4 homer to beat Chicago in the 1984 National League Championship Series. Garvey then got in on the call.

Sound bites:

Bill-- “. . . It’s going, it’s going, back to the fence, he jumps at the fence, it’s out of here! Home run, Garvey.”

Garvey: “Oh my God, it’s amazing.”

Bill: “Tim Flannery’s going crazy, he’s ready to go surfing right now.”

Garvey: “And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a night for all time.”

Bill: “There was no doubt about that.”

Garvey: “No doubt about it. They should erect a small plaque or monument there, don’t you think?”

Of course, Garvey got the plaque, Bill got what he said was the greatest thrill of his life, and speechless Dan didn’t blink for two minutes.

Where’s Ringo? Rushing through exhibits and lobbies with fans in tow, it was suggested that this felt like Beatlemania.

Said Garvey: “I’m the short one.”

Uh, no thanks: Steve Reed of San Bernardino waited 90 minutes for Garvey’s autograph and was first in line when he left. Asked what he thought about getting Dave Kingman (who was signing next) instead of Garvey, Reed said: “Kingman? Four-hundred home runs? I just get Hall of Famers.”

Expanding view: Ollie Brown, the first selection in the expansion draft by the Padres in 1969, said there will be no extra pressure on whoever becomes the first player taken by the Florida Marlins and Colorado Rockies.

“Most guys were in situations where they were playing behind somebody and you just wanted the chance,” Brown said. “You have pressure to prove to your old organization that you could play and pressure to prove to the new organization that you can play.”

FanFest Notes

All-Star pitchers who will participate in a 45-minute roundtable discussion Monday at 6 p.m. are Rick Aguilera, Dennis Eckersley, Jeff Montgomery, Norm Charlton and Doug Jones . . . Industry people were impressed by FanFest. World Sports Entertainment Group, various agents, and Allan Finehirsh, who is the vice president of the Major League Baseball Players Alumni Association, took a tour. A FanFest spokesperson said their reviews “were exemplary.”