COLUMN ONE : A Long, Hard Fall From Grace : Derrel Thomas was a Dodger. Rickey Ross was an elite cop. But each man’s life was derailed by what he calls false accusations. Now, during a drug trial, one will testify against the other.

They were both children of South-Central Los Angeles, boys from broken homes who left the neighborhood and made good. One was a baseball player known as one of the best utility men in the major leagues. The other was a cop, assigned to an elite Sheriff’s Department narcotics team.

During the 1980s, both their careers were derailed, they say, because of false accusations. The baseball player, former Dodger Derrel Thomas, left the major leagues amid rumors of drug use. And the cop, Rickey Ross, was arrested for allegedly killing three prostitutes, although the charges eventually were dropped.

The fate of Thomas and Ross became inextricably entwined in 1992 when they pulled into a McDonald’s parking lot in a gray Cadillac with $151,000 in the trunk. They were there, prosecutors say, to buy 22 pounds of cocaine from undercover agents running a sting operation.

The case, scheduled for trial this week, will chronicle the lives of these two men who found success--and later failure--at the same time, in the same city. When they next meet, the former baseball player, who has pleaded no contest, will testify against the ex-cop, who insists he is innocent.

At the time of their April, 1992, arrest, both men were broke and heavily in debt. Thomas, 43, could not get a job with a professional team, he said, because of the drug rumors. He owed $330,000 in taxes after a series of bad investments and was living at his mother’s house because he could not afford an apartment. His only income was the $1,500 Dorsey High School paid him to coach their baseball team for the season.

“I just needed some money,” Thomas said shrugging. “To take care of my family. But I can’t justify what I did. . . . I was wrong and I’ll never be wrong like that again.”

Ross, 45, also was unable to find work after the controversy surrounding the prostitute killings. He was released from jail after almost three months in custody when the LAPD admitted that ballistics test errors had mistakenly linked Ross’ gun with the murders.

Still, the Sheriff’s Department sent him a termination letter stating that when he was arrested he had been in a car with a prostitute, who claimed that they smoked cocaine together. Ross, an 18-year Sheriff’s Department veteran, later was allowed to resign.

During the next few years he could not find steady work and faced foreclosure on his Rialto house. Every attempt at obtaining a full-time job failed because of his notoriety. He applied for a bus driver job, but was turned down because he was told: “There’s too much controversy behind your name.”

His court-appointed attorney will not allow him to discuss the details surrounding his arrest with Thomas. Ross will say only that he is not guilty.

“The first time they arrested me I was unjustly accused and they had to let me go,” Ross said angrily. “Well, they’re still trying to get Rickey Ross. That’s why they went after me a second time.”

THE BASEBALL PLAYER: Cocky, Rebellious but Valuable to the Team

Derrel Thomas learned the game in the parks around South-Central during an era when baseball, not basketball or football, was the glamour sport in the inner city. He was reared by foster parents, an elderly couple known by everyone in the neighborhood as “Big Mama” and “Big Daddy.” He was lucky, he says, because they were so loving, rearing him like one of their own.

After graduating from Dorsey High School, Thomas was the first player picked in the 1969 winter draft. Within two years, at age 20, he was playing for the Houston Astros.

Some former teammates believe that success might have come too quickly to Thomas. He was cocky and he was rebellious, but he was so valuable that teams overlooked his attitude. One of the most versatile players in the game, Thomas played every position but pitcher during his career.

“When Derrel was playing, there was no better utility player in the game,” said John Young, who has scouted for several major league teams. “With some utility players, you put them in to replace a regular and you lose something in the field. With Derrel, you didn’t lose a thing.”

But during his 15-year career, he also was known for controversy. While with the Dodgers in the early 1980s, he angered coaches by making flashy basket catches--his way of paying homage to Willie Mays. Other times he refused to be positioned by coaches while in the field. He also occasionally missed team buses and planes.

The most damaging controversy came when former Pittsburgh Pirate star Dave Parker testified during a trial in 1985 that years before he had arranged drug purchases for a number of players, including Thomas. Thomas, who had no police record, was never charged in the case. But the statement, which he said was false, ruined his career and scared off teams from hiring him as a player and later as a coach.

After Thomas left baseball he struggled to find his way. He coached briefly in the minor leagues, but could not find a steady position. In the late 1980s, he coached at Leuzinger High School in the afternoons and managed Ron’s Barbary Coast, a topless bar in Gardena, at night.

When he was hired to coach the Dorsey High School team in 1992, he had quit the Barbary Coast and was trying to break into acting, landing a brief role in a baseball movie and some occasional work as an extra.

By midseason, Thomas was struggling to keep himself and his baseball team together. In a devastating incident, the starting shortstop, playing around with a gun, fatally shot himself in the head while returning from a game on the team bus. Although Thomas worked hard to console the athletes, he was grappling with his own problems at the time. He was broke, his fiancee was pregnant and he could not make his next car payment.

“At a time like that,” Thomas said, shaking his head, “you’re looking for something . . . anything . . . to bring you up.”

THE COP: From Bibles to Harleys to County Jail

While Thomas was achieving fame with the Dodgers, Ross was rising through the ranks of the Sheriff’s Department. Four years after joining the department he was named an undercover narcotics investigator at the Altadena station.

“He was a hell of an investigator,” said J. C Reiff, a retired sheriff’s detective who worked with Ross. “He turned seven or eight murder cases because he had such great rapport with people on the street.”

Ross could infiltrate drug rings because, at 6 feet and 230 pounds, with a menacing stare and an intimidating manner, he simply did not look like a cop. Ross knew more about life on the streets than many of the young deputies entering the department in the early 1970s.

He was reared in a small South-Central apartment after his mother and stepfather split up. Money was tight. His mother supported her two children by working as a maid, and when that wasn’t enough, getting welfare checks.

She was extremely religious, Ross said, but an epiphany he had in 1977 helped renew his own faith; he crashed his car into a Los Angeles church one night and landed in the hospital. Interpreting the accident as a sign from God, Ross eventually began ministering to those he believed needed help. On Sunday afternoons he preached to patients at a South-Central hospital and, on Monday nights, to prisoners at a jail on the Eastside. He often bought Bibles out of his own pocket for the inmates.

In the late 1980s, he began devoting less time to preaching. Ross said he was extremely busy because of a new job assignment--an elite multi-agency task force at Los Angeles International Airport formed to stem drug smuggling.

But some former deputies say the truth is that by the late 1980s, he had begun to change. He was spending more time with his new motorcycle buddies, roaring around town on a Harley, wearing a black leather jacket and helmet with “Mad Dog” emblazoned on the front. Ross and his buddies occasionally stopped by the Barbary Coast, where he first met Derrel Thomas.

It was during this time in Ross’ life that he was arrested for the prostitute murders. On the night of the 1989 arrest he was on his way home from the airport, heading toward the Harbor Freeway and searching for a gasoline station that would accept his county gas vouchers. While he was stopped at a light, a woman knocked on his window, saying she was stranded and needed a ride to Figueroa Street, Ross contended in a recent interview.

“She was not dressed like a prostitute; I was not looking for prostitutes,” he said. “There was never any cocaine smoking. . . . In fact, there were absolutely no drugs found in my system that night.”

Ross and the woman were soon pulled over by two Los Angeles policemen who said the car had been weaving. In the trunk, the officers found Ross’ backup gun, a loaded 9-millimeter Beretta pistol. LAPD ballistics experts connected the gun to the string of highly publicized prostitute killings. Rickey Ross’ nightmare had begun.

In jail he was reviled by the prisoners and the guards--sheriff’s deputies, some of whom he had once worked with. He was housed in a special section of the jail that inmates call “Death Row,” where defendants in high-profile cases are held. In the cell across from Ross was Richard Ramirez, who was later convicted in the “Night Stalker” killings.

While guards harassed Ross by calling him and Ramirez the “Double-R Murderers,” prisoners threatened him on the way to the shower. For court appearances he was transported in chains on a county bus, often surrounded by prostitutes, who screamed and spit at him during the trip.

“Sometimes I’d get to court without even being allowed to wipe the spittle from my face,” he said. “I was treated like an animal . . . almost destroyed for a crime I didn’t commit.”

After 82 days in jail, his investigator showed up at his cell one morning and said: “Pack your bags. You’re going home.” Ross shouted “Praise the Lord!” and both he and the investigator began to cry. The charges against Ross had been dropped.

“But later a great, sweltering anger came over me,” Ross said. “I had been totally ruined.”

THE STING: DEA Uses Informant to Set Up Drug Deal

Although Ross and Thomas traveled separate roads during their troubled times and descent into financial ruin, their lives would come together in early 1992. The architect of their arrests was a blond, pudgy man with a taste for Italian suits and silk ties. He was a snitch for the Drug Enforcement Administration.

DEA investigators told him that, if he acted as an undercover informant, the long sentence he was facing for drug trafficking would be reduced. His mission, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Jane Winston, was to set up a drug deal.

The informant told drug agents that he used to frequent the Barbary Coast when Thomas was the manager. The two had discussed the possibility of putting together a cocaine deal, according to court records, but one never materialized. The DEA authorized him to try again.

The informant, who had a history of fraud and drug-related arrests, was persistent, calling several times before Thomas agreed to meet him. Portraying himself as a wheeler-dealer with extensive business contacts, the informant told Thomas that, in exchange for locating a cocaine source, he would line up some legitimate business opportunities for the ex-ballplayer. And, of course, Thomas could make some fast money after the deal went down.

“Oh, he was good,” Thomas said, shaking his head and smiling ruefully. “I thought he was my savior. . . . I thought he was going to get me out of my financial straits . . . and not through drugs.”

Thomas said he told the informant that although he did not know any big cocaine dealers, he had a few possible leads. He then introduced the informant, according to court records, to a hostess at the Barbary Coast.

“The three of them met a few times with some potential sellers, but it didn’t work out,” Winston said. “It never led to anything.”

Because the informant was unable to obtain drugs through Thomas, federal agents told the informant to turn the deal around. The agents would provide the informant with the drugs if Thomas could find a buyer. This is what agents call a reverse sting.

Here, according to records from the DEA and district attorney’s office, is how the final chapter of the sting unfolded:

About a week after the informant announced that he had located a cocaine source, the hostess told Thomas she had found a buyer named Rick.

On April 24, 1992, the informant, Thomas and Rickey Ross met at the Barbary Coast, a smoky bar that features topless women dancing beneath flickering neon lights. Ross, who was driving a rented Cadillac, had $151,000 in the trunk. The hostess was supposed to get $1,000 of it for making the introduction, Thomas and the informant each were to get $5,000; the rest of the money was for the drugs.

Thomas, Ross and the informant headed out to a McDonald’s near the airport to make the buy. While Thomas stayed in the car, the informant and Ross met with several undercover DEA agents. Ross opened the trunk, zipped opened a small gym bag and displayed stacks of bills.

They returned to the agents’ van, where Ross was shown 10 kilograms of cocaine in a plastic bag. When he removed a small folding knife from his back pocket to test the coke, he was placed under arrest while about 15 agents, who had staked out the scene, surrounded the van.

Thomas had completed the transformation from famous to infamous.

“I sat back in that car with my hands cuffed behind my back,” he said, shaking his head. “It was the low point in my life.”

Last month, Thomas pleaded no contest to conspiring to buy and sell 22 pounds of cocaine. In exchange for testifying against Ross, he will face no more than three years in prison. Ross could be sentenced to up to 11 years.

After the arrest, many were mystified how a seasoned narcotics investigator such as Ross could have been snared in an undercover operation. But DEA spokesman Ralph Lochridge said that when Ross left the Sheriff’s Department, reverse stings were extremely rare.

And they still are controversial. Using drugs as bait, critics say, can verge on entrapment. Informants often are suspect because of their own criminal background and their motivation to do whatever is necessary to put together a drug deal.

“Supplying drugs and pressing people to commit a crime they might not otherwise commit is pretty questionable,” said Thomas’ attorney, public defender Verah Bradford. “You’re not even getting to the root problem--the people with the drugs.”

THE AFTERMATH: One Is Contrite, the Other Is Angry

Those who know Thomas say he should not be judged solely on the basis of the arrest. David Arnold, the junior varsity coach who took over the Dorsey team, recalls Thomas as a coach “who really cared about the kids.” He would come to practice an hour early every day, Arnold said, and rake the infield himself. He scoured the city for bargains so his players could have better equipment.

When asked about the effect of his arrest on the students he coached--whom he repeatedly warned to stay away from drugs--Thomas sighed heavily. He would like the opportunity, he said, to address the Dorsey student body.

“I’d tell them I made a mistake and I’d tell them not to make that same mistake,” he said. “I spent six weeks in jail. I had to sell items that were very close to me to get out of jail. . . . I created a lot of heartache for my family.”

Still, Thomas remains active in youth baseball. He umpires on weekends in Compton and helps coach young players at a South Gate park. On a recent afternoon, Thomas demonstrated how to turn a double play. He is still slender and long-legged and moves on the field with the balletic grace of a shortstop.

His future might be uncertain, but these young players, who carefully study his every move, still revere him for what he did in the past, when he was known as one of the best utility players in the game.

While Thomas is contrite, Ross remains angry. The DEA and its informant, he said, have lied about the case. “I was lured there under false pretenses. . . . There wouldn’t have been any case if they hadn’t out and out lied.”

Ross spends most of his time at the sprawling Spanish-style home in Rialto he shares with his wife, a former flight attendant, and their young daughter. Ross no longer has the look of a tough street cop. Like the other golf-playing professional men in the neighborhood, he wears polo shirts, slacks and loafers without socks.

These days, his life consists mainly of studying the Bible, attending church--and waiting for his day in court.