The worst kind of crimes are people who prey on the weak and the poor

I don't believe in capital punishment, but there are certainly people -- actually types of people -- who I would just as soon be separated from the rest of us in some way.

Of course all crime is bad in one way or another, but people who take advantage of other people's trusting nature are among the worst. During the subprime mortgage scandal, there were mortgage brokers who took advantage of nervous customers by telling them they didn't qualify for regular mortgages even though they actually did.

The crooked brokers made more money, and many of the people who were tricked into subprime mortgages lost their homes.

The confused and cheated customers didn't understand it. "Why would they lie to us?"

Why indeed? Why are there so many people now who choose to make their living by cheating others instead of doing honest work?

For one thing, we seem to have become a society that glorifies the tricksters and con men among us. We glorify them and ridicule the people who work hard and just get by. We pretend to value virtues like honesty and hard work, but the people who become celebrities are the ones who cut corners.

How many times have you heard this expression in the last 20 years?

"If you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin'."

If someone steals $100 from a rich man on the street, the odds are pretty good he'll do time. But if someone swindles a thousand middle- and lower-class people out of $100 each, the odds are he'll either get away with it or get off with a fine that only takes back part of his ill-gotten gains.

Generally the only time the big-time swindlers get serious punishment -- say Bernie Madoff, for instance -- is when they've made the mistake of stealing from other rich people.

Pryor

I think Richard Pryor said it best back in the '70s, although he might have been a little too limiting in his view of who was getting hurt. He looked around and saw only black defendants. He said he realized that the "justice" system stood for "just us."

It isn't that I want to see the rich punished. As far as I'm concerned, any crimes they want to admit within their so-called class can result in a free pass. If Mike Bloomberg wants to kill Donald Trump, I would look at it the same way I would if two Mafia families went at it.

But if either of them goes after folks who are just getting by, I want to see them pay a real price for it.

As for the late great Mr. Pryor, who died eight years ago this month, I wouldn't denigrate his racial observations by saying that we're all black these days, but my guess is that Trump and others like him don't have much respect -- let alone love -- for folks struggling to get by.

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It's funny how some really great memories just disappear until something reminds us of them.

Gabe Alvarez

In 1995, when I was covering minor-league baseball, I saw the rarest of all plays, and I forgot all about it until I found an autographed baseball on eBay signed by Gabe Alvarez for only $4.95.

Alvarez was playing second base for Rancho Cucamonga, and there were runners on first and second bases with no outs. The batter hit a line drive up the middle, and both runners took off. Alvarez made a spectacular catch, stepped on second base for the second out and then tagged the other runner coming into second to complete an unassisted triple play.

When I interviewed him after the game, he told me something really fascinating. The season before, when he was still playing for USC, the exact same thing had happened. But that time, rather than tag the last runner, he threw to first and the first baseman completed the triple play by stepping on the bag.

"One of my teammates told me I could have had an unassisted triple play," he said. "I told myself if it ever happened again, this time I would tag the guy."