Remember Danny Tartabull? He was a pretty dang good, and underrated, slugger in the 1980s and 1990s. For a brief moment he was even baseball’s highest-paid player. He began with the Mariners, but his best years came in Kansas City where he put up a line of .290/.376/.518 (144 OPS+) with 124 homers over five seasons. From there he went to the Yankees, where he continued to be a solid producer for the most part, with an .845 OPS (128 OPS+) and added another 81 homers in four seasons. He was a journeyman after that and retired after the 1997 season.
Since then things haven’t been all that great for Tartabull. While he was a key contributor to the teams for which he played, he didn’t contribute much to his own dang children. In 2011 he was adjudged a deadbeat dad with a $275,000 outstanding child support bill for which he received a criminal conviction. He was granted probation, which he violated, and then failed to report for the six-month jail sentence he was handed. Since 2012 there has been a warrant out for his arrest.
Given that there are still enough people around who know and remember Danny Tartabull, it seems like it’d be pretty easy to track him down. He’s been a fugitive for the past five years, however, likely due to the police not prioritizing a six-month sentence for a deadbeat.
Thankfully, though, Tartabull helped them out. How? He called them:
54-year-old Tartabull has basically been under the radar ever since … until July 24, when he called police himself to report that his car had been broken into near his apartment in Agoura, CA.
When cops arrived, they ran Tartabull’s name through the system and noticed the active warrant — and immediately arrested him.
Not supporting your kids is shameful. Skipping out on a jail sentence is wrong. Calling the cops when there’s a longstanding warrant for your arrest is stupid.
Congratulations, Danny. You haven’t played baseball for 20 years, but this week you won the triple crown.
