THE SIMPSON MURDER CASE : ‘I Was Somebody Who Didn’t Care About Anything’ : Childhood: The football hero grew up in a bleak housing project in San Francisco and was often in trouble. But a jailhouse visit by baseball star Willie Mays helped the youth turn his life around.

As a youngster growing up in one of the city’s toughest neighborhoods, Orenthal James Simpson seemed destined for a life of crime and violence.

Raised by his mother in a bleak housing project on Potrero Hill, south of downtown, Simpson spent his teens as the leader of a gang, fighting in the streets and committing petty crimes, such as stealing slabs of beef from a butcher’s warehouse.

“I was somebody who didn’t care about anything,” Simpson once told The Times, “and the best thing you can say about me and trouble was that I was borderline.”

But the man the world knows as O.J. had two things going for him: his extraordinary athletic ability and the intervention of San Francisco Giants star Willie Mays, who once paid him a visit after Simpson spent a weekend in juvenile hall.

The boy who wore braces on his legs because of rickets survived the projects to become one of the greatest running backs in pro football. The popular teen-ager, a natural leader in the ghetto, went on to win fame as a television pitchman and football commentator.

On top of his speed and strength, he developed poise and grace, an easy smile and a sense of modesty that helped make him a hero in his hometown and a role model for youngsters everywhere.

In a crushing disappointment to millions of fans, Simpson was charged Friday with murdering his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and waiter Ronald Lyle Goldman outside her Brentwood condo. After promising to turn himself in, Simpson eluded police for hours, then led them on a lengthy pursuit on Southland freeways before finally surrendering at his Brentwood house Friday night.

The case has revealed that Simpson had a history of spousal abuse and that police had been called repeatedly after domestic disputes, in which the former football star allegedly struck his ex-wife.

But longtime friends and residents of his childhood neighborhood refuse to believe that Simpson could have any connection to the double murder. His fans suggest that he has been framed by some powerful enemy. His friends say it is not in his character to commit such a horrible act.

“I’m having a hard time seeing O.J. in a ski mask and gloves hiding in the bushes with a knife,” said Calvin Tennyson, a boyhood friend who has remained close to Simpson. “This is a professional man, someone trained to control his emotions. I can’t see him flipping out to the point where he would kill two people and throw his whole life down the drain.”

O.J., who will turn 47 on July 9, was the third of four children born to Eunice Simpson, a hospital technician, and Jimmy Lee Simpson, a bank custodian.

The Simpsons separated when O.J. was 5 and he was raised by his mother, a strong-willed woman who did her best to keep her children in school and out of trouble.

“None of us had dads, and things weren’t easy,” recalled Joe Bell, a childhood friend and high school football teammate. “But we were all raised by strong mothers who instilled in us a desire and drive to better ourselves.”

Many mothers in the projects were on welfare, but Eunice Simpson worked long hours and frequent night shifts at San Francisco General Hospital. She and other mothers in the neighborhood helped each other watch over their children and made sure they toed the line.

“If Mrs. Simpson saw me doing something wrong, she’d slap me quick,” said Bell, who now owns a thrift shop in Richmond. “And if my mother saw O.J. doing something wrong, she’d slap him. Neighbors looked after their neighbors’ kids.”

When Simpson was inducted into the pro football Hall of Fame in 1985, he praised his mother as “the best mother a guy ever had.” At the same ceremony, Eunice Simpson confessed that she never expected that her son would achieve such fame and glory.

“He had always said, ‘One of these days you’re going to read about me,’ ” she told the crowd. “And my oldest daughter would always say, ‘In the police report.’ ”

Because he suffered from rickets--a Vitamin D and calcium deficiency--Simpson had to wear leg braces as a small child and was left bowlegged by the disease.

Nevertheless, he became a superior athlete as a youth, which conferred upon him a special leadership status in his neighborhood. He and his friends formed a gang named the Persian Warriors--Simpson called it a “social club”--and he was its leader.

In the book “60 Years of USC-UCLA Football” by Steve Springer and Michael Arkush, Simpson recounted how he and his fellow Warriors used to steal from factories and warehouses in the industrial district near the Potrero Hill projects.

“If you were bored and wanted to make some money, you go ‘hit the pie company,’ ” Simpson recalled. “Do it maybe once a month. Either sell the pies or gorge out on them. My favorite was blackberry.”

They stole sardines from one company and soft drinks from delivery trucks, but stealing slabs of beef was the most difficult, according to the book.

“It was a bitch rolling those things down the hill,” he said, “but there was no way one of those guys (the butchers) was going to chase anyone down into the projects.”

Simpson and his friends also formed a social club called the Superiors, a group of the best athletes in the projects. “He had more natural leadership ability than any youngster I know,” recalled Lefty Gordon, a social group worker at the Booker T. Washington Community Center who served as an adviser to the Superiors.

In an era before guns were readily available, most rival teen-agers didn’t mess with the Superiors, who were among the biggest and strongest youths in the city.

“The circles in which we all traveled in that time were very, very close to the fringe,” recalled Otis McGee Jr., another childhood friend and fellow Superior who is now a San Francisco attorney. “Many of us made it, but I can think of as many people who I grew up with who later died or wound up in prison or became drug-addicted or fell into some other trouble.”

Simpson acknowledged as much in a 1967 interview: “I could have turned out bad,” he said.

For Simpson, the turning point came when he was picked up by police at the age of 16. Simpson once said it might have been for fighting; friends recall they had stolen beer for a Superior party. In any case, Simpson spent the weekend in juvenile hall.

When he was released from custody, he expected to get a beating from his father. Instead, he received a surprise visit from his idol, Willie Mays. The meeting was arranged by social workers at the Booker T. Washington center, where Mays occasionally helped troubled youngsters.

Mays spared O.J. any lectures. Instead, the sports hero took him on a drive, stopping at the dry cleaners and going to his house in the posh Forest Hill neighborhood of the city. Simpson soon realized that Mays was a regular person with everyday problems; at the cleaners, his laundry wasn’t ready.

“I saw that he was human,” Simpson recounted. “A lot of people thought I was good and I realized I could be this guy. I could be Willie Mays. . . . I don’t think I got in any real trouble from that point on. I got a little more focused.”

Simpson, who had been suspended from school five times, began to pay more attention to his studies and focus more intently on school sports.

He played football at Galileo High School, but the team rarely won, despite his talents. To his disappointment, he did not receive any college scholarships and enrolled at San Francisco City College.

He began the season as the third-string tailback, but when the first two runners were injured he got his chance. He broke a variety of city college records, ultimately scoring 26 touchdowns and averaging 9.9 yards a carry.

Simpson hoped to go to USC as a sophomore but was again disappointed when the school rejected him because of his poor grades. He considered enrolling in another four-year university but was persuaded by a USC scout to stay at city college another season, improve his grades and then come to Los Angeles.

Even then it was clear that Simpson had his sights set on more than a football career. He chose USC not just because of its football prowess; as he once told a San Francisco Chronicle columnist, he wanted to attend “a place where I can learn which fork to use at dinner.”

Simpson married a high school sweetheart, Marguerite Whitley, in 1967, the same year he started school at USC. In an interview soon afterward, Marguerite described O.J. as a “terrible” person when they first met.

Simpson agreed, explaining: “I didn’t have any goals. I goofed off a lot. . . . I was sort of aimless.”

At USC, he became an immediate sensation, ran for 3,295 yards, led the team to a national championship and won the Heisman Trophy. He was the first pick in the 1969 NFL draft, taken by the Buffalo Bills, where he spent most of his career. In 1973, he became the first man to rush for more than 2,000 yards in a season.

O.J. and Marguerite had three children, but their marriage suffered from his celebrity status and time on the road.

“With Marguerite, as well as Nicole, women just treated him as if he wasn’t married and climbed all over him,” Bell said. “He was pursued in hotels, women would send him their panties in the mail, that sort of stuff. You’ve got to be a strong woman to deal with that.”

He and Marguerite separated during his Buffalo years. In 1978, he returned to his hometown to play out his career as a 49er. In 1979, his final year in pro football, he and Marguerite divorced.

Soon after the divorce, tragedy struck when their youngest child, 23-month-old Aaren Simpson, drowned in a swimming pool.

After his football career, Simpson worked as an NFL commentator, including on “ABC Monday Night Football.” He also has been in more than a dozen movies, recently completing a TV pilot called “Frogman.”

Success did not change Simpson, his oldest friends said, and he was generous with his wealth.

He contributed thousands of dollars to the Potrero Hill Recreation Center, where he once played basketball, and to athletics programs at Galileo High School. He also returned occasionally to visit his old neighborhoods, even filming an orange juice commercial on Potrero Hill with kids from the projects.

After he turned pro, the Simpsons bought their first place, a fancy $150,000 house with a swimming pool in Los Angeles; he flew his buddies down for a week’s vacation, wining and dining them and driving them around town in his Corvette, recalled Tennyson, who now works in the laundry at San Francisco General Hospital.

Other times, Tennyson said, he would get a phone call out of the blue from Simpson, telling him there were two tickets to Los Angeles waiting for him at the San Francisco airport.

“He didn’t forget us. Even with all that money, he remained the same old O.J. we always knew,” Tennyson said.

Referring to reports that Simpson battered his second wife, Nicole, during their seven-year marriage, Tennyson said such conduct should not prompt the public to judge the former football star harshly.

“You put a man and a woman in the same house, day in and day out, and from time to time somebody gets slapped,” he said. “I don’t think that made O.J. outstanding in America. It’s not exactly an uncommon thing.”

In his old neighborhood, youths still look up to him as a role model and proof that it is possible to escape the projects. The charges against him were met this week with skepticism.

“We always wanted to be a great star like him, not see him go up in smoke,” said 15-year-old Andrew Tanner, during a break in a basketball game at the Potrero Hill Recreation Center, where Simpson’s picture is displayed. “I really don’t think he did it.”

Times staff writer Steve Springer contributed to this report.