Adam Henig, "Baseball's Outcast: The Story of Ron LeFlore" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

About this episode

Adam Henig discusses the life and career of Ron LeFlore, a former inmate who became a Major League Baseball player.

When twenty-three-year-old Ron LeFlore played his first organized baseball game, it was in a yard at the State Prison of Southern Michigan where he was serving five to fifteen years for armed robbery. An extraordinary athlete, the Detroit native had luck on his side: his coach, a convicted felon, had connections to the Detroit Tigers. Within three-and-a-half years, Ron went from a prison inmate to a Tiger centerfielder. In Baseball's Outcast: The Story of Ron LeFlore (Bloomsbury, 2026), Adam Henig tells for the first time in full the unbelievable life and career of Ron LeFlore. Blessed with blinding speed and a powerful swing, Ron shed his jailbird past to become one of the game's premiere hitters and its most dangerous base stealer during the latter half of the 1970s. His rags-to-riches life story became a bestselling book and a made-for-television movie starring actor LeVar Burton, fresh from his performance in Roots. But the good times did not last. Less than a decade after making his Major League debut, Ron was finished with baseball. Baseball's Outcast is not just another book about the rise and fall of a troubled athlete. Henig goes deeper, tracing the star player's family…

People in this episode

Guest: Adam Henig

Topics covered

• baseball
• criminal justice
• athlete biography
• sports history
• overcoming adversity
• racial issues

Keywords

• Ron LeFlore
• Adam Henig
• baseball
• Detroit Tigers
• criminal justice
• athlete biography
• LeVar Burton
• 1970s baseball
• sports history

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Detroit Tigers, Bloomsbury

Places: Detroit, State Prison of Southern Michigan

More episodes of New Books in Policing, Incarceration, and Reform

• Kristian Williams, "Policing the Progressive City: Portland, Oregon, from Settlement to Uprising" (AK Press, 2026) · June 7, 2026 · 1h 7m
• David Petruccelli, "A Scourge of Humanity: The Origins of Interpol and the End of Empire in Central and Eastern Europe" (Oxford UP, 2025) · May 31, 2026 · 1h 3m
• Stuart Schrader, "Blue Power: How Police Organized to Serve and Protect Themselves" (Basic Books, 2026) · May 23, 2026 · 1h 24m
• Steven W. Thrasher, "The Overseer Class: A Manifesto" (Amistad, 2026) · May 19, 2026
• The Coroner’s Silence: Death Records and the Hidden Victims of Police Violence · April 9, 2026 · 58 min
• Lee Ann S. Wang, "The Violence of Protection: Policing, Immigration Law, and Asian American Women" (Duke UP, 2026) · April 1, 2026 · 1h 10m