Home : Time Off For Play : Baseball :

Bad Boys Of Summer

A Tradition Of Prison Ball

San Quentin inmates get a few innings of freedom on a rough diamond

A buzzer sounded, the steel-bar door opened, the visitors entered San Quentin's gated community. A man with a high-powered rifle strolled along the top of the north wall toward the guard tower. Fired up and eager to play, the Giants had already taken the scraggly field -- throwing their gloves at wicked grounders, shagging down long fly balls in a wild, gusty breeze reminiscent of the old 'Stick.

Some inmates were too busy to watch the game -- throwing horseshoes, playing pinochle on picnic benches, killing time in groups of three or more. But the San Quentin Giants didn't let the poor turnout get them down. They were happy just to have the chance to do something most state inmates can't -- play hardball for a major-league California prison. A far cry from last week's All-Star Game, which preceded it by a few days, the prison-yard showdown could hardly be called a pitchers' duel. It was one of the worst drubbings in prison history -- yet ultimately, pure sportsmanship won out.

San Quentin may have the seediest ball field in America: an all-dirt diamond with faint chalk lines and an outfield corrupted by molehills. The local nine can't play a road game, key players go to solitary rather than the disabled list, and the fans' threats have to be taken seriously.

But the view of Mount Tamalpais beyond the right field wall is divine. And the home team looked almost respectable in their Giants uniforms, donated by a major league team across the Bay. "This is the only team to shake your hand before the game," said outfielder Ryan O'Neil of the visiting semi-pro Novato Knicks. "They're so grateful to see you."

Neither team had a full roster. Tony Gonzales, the Giants' ace pitcher, was under lockdown with other Hispanic inmates after a fight on his cell block. Another Giants pitcher had a sore arm after sitting in "the hole" -- "administrative detention," the warden calls it -- for two months.

The Novato Knicks could scare up only a dozen guys willing to play hooky from their real jobs and risk a prison yard brawl. "The first time, they impressed us. They jumped on us quickly," said Giants right fielder Larry "Popeye" Faison, referring to the Knicks' 7-2 victory in May. At 50, Popeye -- playing his eighth season for the Giants while doing time for second-degree murder -- was the oldest player on the field. "Takes me a while to limber up," he acknowledged.

Popeye is part of a long line of San Quentin cons who have indulged in America's pastime behind prison walls. The Giants, once known as the Pirates, do not play in a league of their own but compete against college and semi-pro teams willing to come visit them. They have a few games left this season under coach George Dykstra, including a contest on Saturday against a Mill Valley adult men's team.

Pete Steele, who pitched for the Houston Astros farm team in the Florida League before he beat up an in-law and landed in prison, took the mound for the Giants against the Knicks. "Hey Pete, let's go Pete! Let's go baby boy!" shouted a fan, one of two dozen inmates in blue dungarees who watched as the game got under way.

A pop-up, lost in the blinding sun. The ball bounced off the pitcher's skull. He bravely retook the mound -- a low-lying hump rumored to be the burial site of a lousy ump -- and retired the side. "All right, all right. Let's take 'em downtown!" a fan shouted.

Knicks pitcher Ricky Firebaugh walked two Giants batters, one of whom -- hard-charging rookie Donny Worthy from San Jose -- stole second. Steele hit a single, but Worthy was called out when he slid into home plate. The questionable call by an inmate-umpire known as "Shorty" led one ballplayer to mutter: "We'll take care of him later."

With the swing of his bat, Popeye hit a triple past the orange traffic cones that marked where the center-field fence should have been and drove in two runs. "Hey, we got this game, gentlemen. We play smart ball, we'll win it," said Giants center fielder Guy Giovia, a stand-up comedian from Long Island whose father is reputedly a big guy in the empire built up around Frank Sinatra.

But the Giants' pitcher ran into trouble with his fastball. A series of Knicks hits, two errors on bad-hop grounders, and a wild pitch put the visitors on top, 4-2. Steele's performance put some prisoners on edge. "We know where you live, dude!" a surly inmate shouted to the pitcher. "You're killing him! Our pitcher is . . . garbage!" yelled another.

In the third inning, Knicks third baseman James Simon hit a triple, followed by a double by outfielder Adrian Schau that drove in two runs. Three more runs scored when the Giants chased and bobbled a nasty grounder through the molehills. "Give it up, Pete!" a shirtless con screamed at the hapless pitcher as the Knicks extended their lead to 12-2.

But the bad boys of summer battled back. Giants third baseman Nate Rodgers, whose only previous ball-playing gig was Little League, connected with a high fastball for a two-run homer that cut the Knicks lead to 12-4. "Nice poke, baby. We're not giving up," said Giovia, who is serving two years for a string of cocaine and probation violations. A foul ball ricocheted off the windows of the guard tower. "Hey, wake up in there! Wake up!" an inmate shouted with glee.

Giants relief pitcher Andrew Zinglar took over, but the clock hands spun forward. By the end of four innings, the black-and-orange jerseys were down 15- 4. The bloodbath couldn't get worse, but it did. In the fifth and sixth innings, the Knicks stretched their lead to 27-4 -- smacking one two-run homer into the sacred Indian grounds, where Native American inmates built a ceremonial structure after the courts told prison officials to let them do so.

There were no fights, no beefs with the umpires, no one ordered off the field -- sometimes it takes a dozen cons to show how, and how not, to play the game. "Fast-pitch in prison is a beautiful thing," said Zinglar. "There are quite a lot of people on this team who will never go home." "You go to chow, and it's all segregated: blacks, whites, Asians," said assistant coach Ed Crain. "But they come out here and don't even think about it."

In the interest of mercy and imminent darkness, a decision was made to call the game after six innings. The teams exchanged handshakes. The Giants formed a tight circle, touching hands. "Check this out: We had fun! We had a great time!" shouted Zinglar. "We had a wonderful time!" echoed Giovia. In the moment, nothing else mattered. The twilight sky lit the slopes of Mount Tam. A gospel song rose from the prison chapel. "One, two, three, Giants!" the home team shouted with all its might, before heading back in to the musty cellblocks.

Jim Doyle, Chronicle Staff Writer. Hard-time hardball. San Francisco Chronicle Tuesday, July 17, 2001.

A Diamond In The Rough

The fresh sod in the outfield is a lush green, kept that way by a brand new sprinkler system. The dirt in the infield is mocha brown, as smooth and even as a countertop. From home plate, one has a majestic mountain view. The players for the home team are dressed in old-time major league uniforms, grinning and feeling blessed to be playing baseball again - blessed because they are inmates at San Quentin State Prison.

According to the new, freshly painted green scoreboard in right field in the prison's lower yard - in front of the clothing exchange trailer surrounded with barbed wire next to an insurmountable, 25-foot-high, 151-year-old ugly yellow battered wall - this is San Quentin's Field of Dreams.

Sports is a big part of prison life, offering opportunities to keep in shape, enjoy organized competition, all in the coveted fresh air of the bay. With sports, life in prison becomes more bearable, providing a respite from a drab existence in an oppressive place. At no time is this more evident than when inmates lace up their spikes, grab their gloves and take their place among the boys of summer.

Through their words and actions veterans, convicted felons all, leave little doubt as to the importance of baseball in their lives. "This year feels just like the first year we played," said Leonard Neal, a 45-year-old second baseman who said he felt like a rookie again, even though he has been on the prison's baseball team for all nine years since it was reborn. "From the first year to fix a field that was nothing, we have worked even harder this year to put in a field that is immaculate."

Is this a movie? Not yet. The story of the prison's baseball team, which was revived in 1994 by the Rev. Earl Smith, the prison chaplain, appears to be on its way to becoming a movie. Paul Cuschieri is writing the screenplay for a comedy/ drama being pitched as "San Quentin Giants" and already bought by Columbia Pictures. According to hollywoodlitsales.com, the story is "inspired by the real-life tradition of teams playing semi-pro baseball at San Quentin, a maximum-security prison. It (the movie's storyline) will focus on a new prisoner who becomes the baseball coach, much to the warden's chagrin."

Warden Jeanne Woodford is one of the baseball team's biggest boosters. She threw out one of the ceremonial first pitches when the San Quentin Giants opened their season and christened their new field and scoreboard - and dream - with a 10-1 victory over the Oakland Oaks, a semi-pro team from the Bay Area Senior League.

Flanking Woodford on the field to throw out the other ceremonial first pitches were engineers Mike Egan and Scott Burkman of Sport Choice LLC, who donated their time, efforts and expertise from the last week in March to Opening Day last week. They built a field they said is as good as the field at Pacific Bell Park, which they helped build three years ago.

They didn't start with much. "The field last year looked like a bomb was dropped on it," pitcher/outfielder Steve Negrete said. How bad was it? In 1979, Curtis Charles, a paroled ex-con from San Quentin who was attempting to play for the San Francisco Giants in spring training in Arizona, said this about San Quentin's baseball field to an Associated Press reporter: "At the 'Q,' we had rocks, glass, knives and razor blades on the field. I'm not kidding. One day last year (1978), I tried to smooth the dirt with my foot, and kicked a knife someone had stashed."

Egan and Burkman began their project by digging nine inches into the rock-solid field before reaching softer soil on which they could build. They uncovered at least three handmade knives. An armed San Quentin guard followed them every step of the way. Otherwise, the prison's baseball players - and even other inmates - were on the field volunteering to fix the field. The only time they stopped was when a warning siren went off in the prison and the prisoners are, by order, required to drop to one knee until an all-clear signal comes. "They were at my beck and call, and they were by far the most enthusiastic and energetic bunch of guys I've ever worked with," Burkman said. "They gave us everything they possibly could. They showed a different light. They showed us they were good."

Given the condition of the original field, Rev. Smith's team helped work a virtual miracle. "The best way I can describe the outfield is it was roller coaster," Egan said. By the time they were finished, Burkman and Egan had built a field that, they said, would cost $75,000 to $100,000 on the outside. It didn't cost San Quentin a cent. The prisoners, who paid for it in sweat, are eternally grateful. "Thanks for getting it level so when it rains it doesn't flood," San Quentin team co-captain Bryan Smith said during Opening Day ceremonies.

Opening ceremonies included the singing of the national anthem. Assembled teams, inmates, guards and media stood at attention, looking at an American flag flapping in the wind behind the old Boiler House, which appeared to be as far away as Mount Tamalpais.

Then, per baseball tradition, umpires went over the ground rules with the coaches at home plate. Until a new four-foot-high home run fence is built, a home run ball must clear orange traffic cones on the fly in left field and center field near the old laundry building, which now hosts conjugal visits. In right field, it's a home run if the ball lands beyond a fence in the American Indians' designated ceremonial area.

Other than that, normal baseball rules applied. "You all have the shortened strike zone and this, that and the other," said umpiring crew chief - and inmate - Kevin Hagan, who on this day got to wear a different shade of blue to work. The strike zone was much larger a few days earlier, when the two teams scrimmaged on the same field. Perhaps it shrunk for Opening Day because the home plate umpire's nickname was Shorty, who is not as short as the patience coaches, players and fans had for his ball-and-strike calls. "If you can throw it as tall as he is, it's a strike," Negrete concluded.

Although it was officially Opening Day, the prison's baseball team began practicing on its new field several weeks ago. But it was distracted by something it had never heard inside prison walls: heavy metal music. Metallica was playing a benefit concert for the prisoners on the asphalt. "I don't know anything about Metallica except they're pretty loud," Rev. Smith said. Metallica was music to Smith's ears in the end. The Marin-based band donated $10,000 to the San Quentin Giants.

Actually, the San Quentin Giants are divided in half. There were 35 inmates on the prison's baseball team roster on Opening Day. There are 14 on the minor-league Pirates - "The guys who are learning to play the game," Smith said - who are coached by Kent Philpott. There are 21 on the big-league Giants - "The guys who think they can play the game," Smith grinned - who are coached by Smith. Together, they will play a 36-game schedule this season and, yes, all of the games are home games.

The average age of a Giants player is 42. The oldest is 52-year-old Larry "Popeye" Faison, who has played for Smith for nine seasons. The youngest is Marty Valenzuela, who celebrated his 35th birthday in prison the day after Opening Day by calling his mother. Valenzuela loves baseball so much he plays despite being legally blind in one eye.

Two-thirds of the team members are serving life sentences, according to Marvin Mutch, chairman of the San Quentin Men's Advisory Council. Most of the players are in prison for committing violent crimes, one big reason why opposing teams are generally leery of playing inside the prison. "You don't know what to expect. You go through all these checkpoints and there's a feeling of high security and danger," said Elliot Smith, the Oakland Oaks' 60-year-old player-manager from San Rafael, who first played baseball in San Quentin eight years ago. "There's a couple of hundred guys (inmates) ringing the field and they try to intimidate you with sexual innuendoes and things like that. "(But) I never once felt threatened physically. Most of it (razzing) was good-natured. They know what the situation is and they take advantage of it and try to intimidate you."

For example, in 1997, the prison baseball team's fans loitering around the rusty backstop decided to pick on the Oaks' youngest player, who had his nickname etched on the back of his uniform. It was Smith's son, Greg. "He was 18 and he looked about 13," Smith said, "and the entire group of inmates were on him to the point that the whole yard was chanting his nickname every time he came up to bat and every time he handled the ball." His nickname? Rudy.

The Oaks didn't hear any chanting on Opening Day because the inmates were kinder and, besides, the American Indian ceremony area was empty. "Swing, batter batter batter, swing!" was the most common cheer by prisoners. The prison's baseball players were in midseason form. "The players, without exception, have always been good sports," Elliot Smith said.

They were wearing black hand-me-down San Francisco Giants spring training uniforms with 'SQ' etched on the front. Their uniforms and some of their equipment has been donated by longtime Giants equipment manager Mike Murphy and Ned Colletti, the team's assistant general manager.

Even the official scorekeeper in the San Quentin Giants dugout was wearing a uniform. And she's a girl. Alison Harrington is a college intern from Oakland working for Rev. Smith at the prison chapel. "I found her at the seminary," Rev. Smith said. "I'm a student," Harrington said, smiling. "A baseball student."

Baseball at San Quentin is becoming a religion. Rev. Smith has actually studied scouting reports on the opposing teams so he can place his fielders in the best position to make a play. When the first batter stepped into the batter's box on Opening Day, Smith yelled at his 49-year-old shortstop, "Hey, David, your way." Seconds later, the batter grounded out to San Quentin shortstop David Marshall.

Later, Smith was less pleased with the base running of his ace pitcher, Tony Gonzalez, who has a fastball that Smith believes would clock at between 85-90 mph. Gonzalez was on first base and stole second on his own, though Smith did not flash the steal sign. No inmate gets the green light to run in San Quentin without someone in authority telling them first.

The Giants, however, played a sharp game overall. At least they were sharper than the umpires who, on a couple of occasions, called prison players out after sliding into bases safely. There was no home prison officiating here. "As you can see, they're not playing favorites," said San Quentin Giants pitching coach Mel Carriere.

Three years ago, Carriere was coaching the North Bay Connie Mack team that had a first baseman Carriere thought had the potential to pitch. His name was Jesse Foppert, the San Francisco Giants' rookie pitching phenom from San Rafael. A rookie also made a great first impression on Opening Day in San Quentin. You couldn't miss him - Chris Rich, nicknamed "Stretch" because he is 6-foot-8. The team's first baseman, who played baseball at St. John's University, requested and was granted a transfer from Corcoran State Priso when he found out San Quentin had a baseball team.

In his second official at-bat with the team, he hit a home run on Opening Day, the first one he can recall hitting in an organized game since his senior year in high school, when he was 17. "It's like having a second chance to do it," Rich said. "I'm 43. When's the next time I'm going to play baseball?"

Rich is in for first-degree murder. He will be 57 in 2016, when he will be eligible for parole. But Rich was smiling and he wasn't alone. The players feel lucky to have so much fun in such a sobering environment. Where else can one find a gift shop with this sign: "No loitering. Firearms. Ammo. Etc." That sign was posted in the San Quentin Handicraft Shop just outside the prison's gates where, on this particular day, one could see another sobering sight offshore: boats on San Francisco Bay dredging for the remains of Laci Peterson.

Yet the San Quentin players are too absorbed in the game to realize all the turmoil that surrounds them and engulfs them. Baseball is their out. "It helps you stay focused and put things back in perspective that there's life after prison and there's a life in prison," Neal said. "The game is never confining, so you feel free."

Being free is the ultimate goal. Not as free as the four geese - "The Brown Angels," one player called them - that landed in the outfield during the game. They can come and go as they please. The prisoners can't. "They're not bad guys. They did something bad," Rev. Smith said. "Maybe when they leave here they'll be better than when they came." They'll be better prepared for the outside world. Some of the prison baseball players come from gangs that are racially motivated.

In the bottom of the fifth inning on Opening Day, the Giants had the bases loaded. The moment was ripe with symbolism. There was a Hispanic man (Gonzalez) on first base, a white man (Rich) on second and a black man (Neal) on third base. Marshall, who's in for first-degree murder, was standing at the plate trying with all his might to drive them home. "These guys have so many backgrounds," said Rev. Smith, leaning up against the dugout. "Look around the yard. See how everyone is separated (by race)? The only thing that's not separated is this thing right here."

Smith nods toward the field. The prison's field represents more than baseball. It represents hope. Rich finished the first game of the season with two scoreless innings of relief with a right shoulder that for 18 years didn't allow him to throw a baseball. "Then, two years ago, I could suddenly throw," Rich said. "I'm going to ride it."

Thus, everything seems to be coming together for the San Quentin Giants, even Rich's rotator cuff. Rev. Smith this week recruited two more left-handed pitchers in the yard to try out for the team, one who was good enough last year to almost beat the Novato Knicks, who went on to play the semipro version of the World Series.

The Giants might get even better if the rumor is true that star shortstop Eugene Carlisle is on his way back in. As a rookie, Carlisle hit a team-record 13 home runs, but he's broken parole (for involuntary manslaughter) before and there's word circulating that he might have done it again. With or without Carlisle, San Quentin always seemed to field a strong team. The Giants have never had a losing season, though they lost one game by the score of 25-4 because several starters failed to show up. Their cell block was in lockdown.

A few years ago, the San Francisco Seals, a collegiate summer team that used to play an annual game against the Giants, were in San Quentin and being no-hit. The Seals couldn't touch the Giants' starting pitcher, but they had good fortune. The pitcher had to leave the game because his wife had arrived for a conjugal visit. The Seals wound up winning 18-1. The only visit that interfered with Opening Day this year was Vinnie Marchesano's. The center fielder couldn't suit up because his family was coming from New York for a visit. He tried to talk his family out of it so he could play baseball.

When the game ended on Opening Day, Neal was wincing as he applied a bag of ice to his aching right shoulder. But he suggested that the whole team, including the prison's warden, pose in front of the scoreboard that was built, painted and operated by a teammate, Tone Jackson. It was a classic group shot. "That," Neal said, smiling, "may be my last one." It could be his last one because he's 46 with graying hair and fraying muscles. Or, perhaps, it is because Neal is eligible for parole in 2005.

Dave Albee. San Quentin Sports: A Diamond In The Rough. © 2003-2005, SQ Baseball.com. May 17, 2003

top of page

back a page