Chuckin' Chuck

      The little man stood on the pitcher’s mound peering in for an imaginary sign from the catcher. He giggled at the absurdity of the charade. There was no need for the catcher to throw down any fingers. The batter knew what was coming, the pitcher knew what he was about to throw, and the crowd of two dozen or so onlookers knew it as well. The little pitcher with the beady eyes and disturbing high-pitched giggle only had one pitch: the knuckleball. He threw it every time. Still, none of the previous twenty-six batters he’d faced this afternoon had even foul-tipped it once.

   The man in the batter’s box was Monroe Griffin, but the onlookers knew him best as inmate number 0048999920. He was doing seven-to-ten for putting his boss’s head in a waffle iron. Seems Monroe had been a bit sensitive about taking orders that day, which was disconcerting to his boss considering the Tupelo Tic-Toc Diner was bustling that morning. The order that set him off reminded him of his tenure as a major leaguer. A cup of coffee: that’s what made him snap that day. Lucky for Monroe, his boss didn’t die, but the left side of his face will forever sport a fetching tic-tac-toe board. He also developed a spastic twitch that occurs whenever one of his patrons orders coffee. Or waffles. Especially waffles.

Here on the well-manicured baseball diamond in yard four of the Corcoran State Prison in Kings County, California, history was being made—not baseball history but prison history. Never during his tenure at Corcoran had the warden actually been this close to his prison’s most famous inmate. Actually he is the world’s most famous inmate. Charles Manson was the little beady-eyed pitcher on the mound. That’s right. Charlie fucking Manson himself: Mr. Helter Skelter, Big Daddy of the Manson Family, Vince Bugliosi’s ticket to fame and fortune, Dennis Wilson’s pot dealer, Squeaky Frohm’s mentor. But today he was just Chuckin’ Chuck, getting ready to humiliate big, bad Monroe Griffin and complete his ninth straight perfect game.

     To the onlookers, who were mostly veteran correctional officers and prison officials, the sight of Charles Manson had always been surreal to begin with. He was not just another prisoner but an all-time pop culture freak show of immense proportions. There has been so much literature and commentary on this man that there is really nothing more to add, save for the little-known fact that he really does fold laundry quite well.