Baseball in the Big House

Baseball in the Big House
Originally uploaded by catherine magma.

Today was the day. Off to prison. No, not like that, or for that, should i say. A guy that occasionally plays with my pickup hardball team hooked us up with a woman who organizes baseball teams to play against the San Quentin Giants. We sent them our driver's license #'s and Soc. Security #'s and passed the screening process and today at 8 am we showed up at San Quentin. On the drive over the prison jokes were never ending. After waiting around for awhile at the entrance we went through two checkpoints and then walked through the main courtyard, around a building, and POW we were in the yard. I think most of us had assumed that we would be separated from the general populace by some kind of barrier but no, we were right there walking through the inmates.
They have a field that the inmates built that covers about half of "the yard" and it's pretty nice although the infield has no grass. It was a beautiful day and there were lots of guys out in the yard. Most of them wearing their prison blues but a lot of them had their shirts off sporting a variety of tattoos. One that stood out was a guy who had Co Co County across his stomach(Contra Costa County). They didn't really look all that scary which might be misleading.
Charley Manson used to be at San Quentin and it was said that he used to run out onto the field while they were playing. I would have liked to have seen that.
In addition to the ball field there is a basketball court, horseshoes, and even a tennis court. There was a doubles match going on and one guy was wearing tennis whites. Probably a white collar criminal who somehow didn't make it into the country club correctional facility.
There was also a large bandstand with instruments already set up. The band hadn't started yet and the sound system was blasting the Allman Bros. song "In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed". I didn't ask how she died.
I think we were a little nervous.
We were only allowed to bring our baseball stuff, no cameras, phones, street clothes, etc. Cigarettes are okay but only for another three weeks and then they become "contraband".
We got our cleats on and took some infield. I immediately let a ball go through my legs and Aaron, who was trading off with me at shortstop said to be careful 'cause I was showing weakness.
I wasn't really that nervous...what was the worse that could happen? A shiv in the kidney? hmm.
The game started. Their pitcher was called Stretch for obvious reasons. He was about 6'6" and built like a rail. He had a pretty quick fastball and a hard late breaking curve.
First inning was scoreless 3 up 3 down on both sides.
Top of the second we got a bit of a rally going and scored 3 runs to take the lead on some hard won hits. We had eighteen guys (which was too many) and everybody was batting. I batted tenth and at my first at bat I sat on his curve and whacked one down the third base line. Unfortunately the third baseman made a fine play and I was thrown out. But I felt okay with that and at the bottom of the second went out to play shortstop.
Of course the first batter would hit to me. I fielded it cleanly and threw him out at first. Yes. My first put out in prison. Sweet.
The next guy up for them ropes one to right center that bounces over the barbwire topped chain link fence. Ground rule double. As he pulls up at second I say, Hey, nice hit. He doesn't even look at me.
Okey dokey.
After that was a bit of mayhem as they scored 6 runs and got our our pitcher fairly rattled. He isn't one of our regular guys and since he had organized the event he had started himself as pitcher. He definitely would not have been any of our guys first choice. After the inning ended he said he wanted to throw one more inning and was pretty much told to hand the ball over to someone else. It didn't really matter though, they ended up scoring eighteen runs total to our four. Aaron, the other shorstop, hit one over the right field fence for a home run which was our only other run in the game.
I got up again in the sixth and got a base hit over the shortstops head. We ended up only getting six hits and I think, the official tally on our errors was also six, but I think we definitely had more than that.
During the game some of the inmates came up and chatted with us though the fence near the dugout. They were good guys and were giving us shit. They particularly liked Brian and got on us when he was pitching and we made some errors. Of course Brian had dropped two easy fly balls when he was playing centerfield but they didn't mention that.
The inmates could walk all around the yard and even stand or sit at the edge of the outfield against the fence. There were a bunch of guys out there and the rule was it if it hit them it was a ground rule double. In about the eighth inning a guy was sitting out there and he had a giant silver belt buckle that was reflecting the sun right into the batters eyes. He was totally oblivious and the home plate umpire had to yell out to him to cover it up.
At a couple times during the game suddenly all the inmates would freeze and get down on one knee. It was kind of eery. When there is an emergency the guards ring a bell and all the inamtes have to get down and freeze so the guards can see what is happening. We were told to remain standing. Then they would sound the all clear and everything would go back to normal. It happened twice while we were there and no one on our team heard the warning bell. All of a sudden the players would get down and we would realize the bell must have gone off.
It was a good game, we had fun and afterwards we lined up to shake the opposing teams hands and they all seemed like nice guys who were appreciative of us for coming out to play them.
We have plans to go back and play them again. Hopefully with the jitters gone and a trimmed down team we can be a little more competitive. I'll definitely go back-I'm batting .500 in the Prison League.