Photos were taken, a camera crew filmed Ron on the mound, then the little tour continued along the first-base line, drifting slowly as their guide rambled on about this Yankee and that one. Ron knew many of the stats and stories. No baseball had ever been hit completely out of Yankee Stadium, the guide was saying, but Mantle got close. He bounced one off the facade in right center, right up there, he said as he pointed to the spot, about 535 feet from home plate. 'But the one in Washington was further,' Ron said. 'It was 565 feet. Pitcher was Chuck Stobbs.' The guide was impressed.
A few steps behind Ron was Annette, following along, as always, sweating the details, making the tough decisions, cleaning up. She was not a baseball fan, and at that moment her primary concern was keeping her brother sober. He was sore at her because she had not allowed him to get drunk the night before.
Their group included Dennis, Greg Wilhoit, and Tim Durham. All four exonerees had appeared on Good Morning America. ABC was covering the expenses for the trip. Jim
Dwyer was there from the New York Daily News.
They stopped in center field, on the warning track. On the other side was Monument Park, with large busts of Ruth and Gehrig, Mantle and DiMaggio, and dozens of smaller plaques of other great Yankees. Before renovation, this little corner of near-sacred ground had actually been in fair territory, the guide was saying. A gate opened and they walked through the fence, onto a brick patio, and for a moment it was easy to forget they were in a baseball stadium.
Ron stepped close to the bust of Mantle and read his short biography. He could still quote the career stats he had memorized as a kid.
Ron's last year as a Yankee had been 1977, at Fort Lauderdale, Class A, about as far away from Monument Park as a serious ballplayer could get. Annette had some old photos of him in a Yankee uniform, a real one. In fact, it had once been worn by a real Yankee in this very ballpark. The big club simply handed them down, and as the old uniforms made their sad little trek down the minor-league ladder, they collected the battle scars of life in the outposts. Every pair of pants had been stitched in the knees and rear end. Every elastic waistband had been downsized, enlarged, smudged with markers on the inside so the trainers could keep them straight. Every jersey was stained with grass and sweat.
1997, Fort Lauderdale Yankees.
Ron made fourteen appearances, pitched thirty-three innings, won two, lost four, and got knocked around enough so that the Yankees had no trouble cutting him when the season was mercifully over.
The tour moved on. Ron paused for a second to sneer at the plaque of Reggie Jackson. The guide was talking about the shifting dimensions of the stadium, how it was bigger when Ruth played, smaller for Maris and Mantle. The film crew tagged along, recording scenes that would never survive editing.
It was amusing, Annette thought, all this attention. As a kid and a teenager, Ronnie had craved the spotlight, demanded it, and now forty years later cameras were recording every move.
Enjoy the moment, she kept telling herself. A month earlier he'd been locked up in a mental hospital, and they were not sure he would ever get out.
They slowly made their way back to the Yankee dugout and killed some time there. As Ron absorbed the magic of the place for a few final minutes, he said to Mark Barrett, 'I just got a taste of how much fun they were having up here.'
Mark nodded but could think of nothing to say.
'All I ever wanted to do was play baseball,' Ron said. 'It's the only fun I've ever had.' He paused and looked around, then said, 'You know, this all sort of washes over you after a while. What I really want is a cold beer.'
The drinking began in New York.
From Yankee Stadium, the victory lap stretched to Disney World, where a German television company paid for three nights of fun for the entire entourage. All Ron and Dennis had to do was tell their story, and the Germans, with typical European fascination with the death penalty, recorded every detail.
Ron's favorite part of Disney World was Epcot, at the German village, where he found Bavarian beer and knocked back one stein after another.
They flew to Los Angeles for a live appearance on the Leeza show. Shortly before airtime, Ron sneaked away and drained a pint of vodka. Without most of his teeth, his words were not crisp to begin with, and no one noticed his slightly thick tongue.
As the days passed, the story lost some of its urgency, and the group-Ron, Annette, Mark, Dennis, Elizabeth, and Sara Bonnell- headed home.
The last place Ron wanted to be was Ada.
He stayed with Annette and began the difficult process of trying to adjust. The reporters eventually went away.
Under Annette's constant supervision, he was diligent with his medications and stable. He slept a lot, played his guitar, and dreamed of becoming famous as a singer. She did not tolerate alcohol in her home, and he seldom left it.
The fear of being arrested and sent back to prison consumed him and forced him to instinctively glance over his shoulder and jump at any loud noise. Ron knew the police had not forgotten about him. They still believed he was somehow involved in the murder. So did most folks in Ada.
He wanted to get out, but had no money. He was unable to hold a job and never talked about employment. He hadn't had a driver's license in almost twenty years and wasn't particularly interested in studying a driver's manual and taking tests.
Annette was arguing with the Social Security Administration in an effort to collect the back payments for his disability. The checks stopped when he went to prison. She finally prevailed, and the lump sum award was $60,000. His monthly benefits of $600 were reinstated, payable until his disability was removed, an unlikely event.
Overnight, he felt like a millionaire and wanted to live on his own. He was also desperate to leave Ada, and Oklahoma, too. Annette's only child, Michael, was living in Springfield, Missouri, and they hatched the plan to move Ron there. They spent $20,000 on a new, furnished, two-bedroom mobile home, and moved him in.
Though it was a proud moment, Annette was worried about Ron living by himself. When she finally left him, he was sitting in his new re-cliner watching his new television, a very happy man. When she returned three weeks later to check on him, he was still sitting in his recliner with a disheartening collection of empty beer cans piled around it.
When he wasn't sleeping, drinking, talking on the phone, or playing his guitar, he was loitering at a nearby Wal-Mart, his source for beer and cigarettes. But something happened, an incident, and he was asked to spend his time elsewhere.
In those heady days of being on his own, he became fixated on repaying all those who'd loaned him money over the years. Saving money seemed like a ridiculous idea, and he began giving it away. He was moved by appeals on television-starving children, evangelists about to lose their entire ministries, and so on. He sent money.
His telephone bills were enormous. He called Annette and Renee, Mark Barrett, Sara Bonnell, Greg Wilhoit, the Indigent Defense System lawyers, Judge Landrith, Bruce Leba, even some prison officials. He was usually upbeat, happy to be free, but by the end of every conversation he was ranting about Ricky Joe Simmons. He was not impressed by the DNA trail left by Glen Gore. Ron wanted Simmons arrested immediately for the 'rape, rape by instrumentation and rape by forcible sodomy and murder [of] Debra Sue Carter at her home at 1022 1/2, East 8th Street, December the 8th, 1982!!' Every conversation included at least two recitations of this detailed demand.
Oddly enough, Ron also called Peggy Stillwell, and the two developed a cordial relationship by phone. He assured her he had never met Debbie, and Peggy believed him. Eighteen years after losing her daughter, she was still unable to say good-bye. She confessed to Ron that for years she'd had a nagging suspicion that the murder was not really solved.
As a general rule he avoided bars and loose women, though one episode burned him. Walking down the
