The Bad Boys of Summer

SAN QUENTIN, Calif. —  They’re a ragtag baseball team that plays all home games, 20 men with criminal records and donated uniforms. They gallop around a gut-ugly dirt diamond where foul balls bounce off guard towers and umpires take the heckles of unruly fans dead seriously.

Theirs is a home-field advantage so imposing that opponents sometimes fail to show up. Their own coach can’t fill out his lineup card until game time because he never knows which starters have been sent to the hole or confined to lock-down.

Forget Ruth and Gehrig: This team lines up as a real “Murderer’s Row,” the killers, thieves and con men who make up San Quentin prison’s inmate baseball team.

This month, as the national pastime eases into full swing from neighborhood sandlots to Major League Baseball parks, the San Quentin Giants begin their ninth season competing in a walled-off league of their own. In 25 games, they will take on college teams and senior leaguers brave enough to submit to pregame equipment searches and play under the gaze of guards armed with high-powered rifles.

The KC Monarchs, an over-40 Bay Area squad, faced the Giants in the season opener last week. Before entering San Quentin’s penned-in lower yard, they were warned that authorities will cut no deals to negotiate for visiting players’ lives should they be taken hostage. Once inside, catcalls and animal noises rained down from the leering all-inmate fans.

As the visitors stretched before the game, Monarch infielder Tim Knittle said the Giants know how to play. Then he glanced toward the turreted prison towers. “But those fans. They’ll eat you alive.”

For the Giants, the games provide more than just a release of pent-up prison tension. Team coach and prison minister Kent Philpott says they’re an opportunity for his players to compete against “free men,” to show not only athletic prowess but demonstrate that they can, for a while at least, again play a game as if they were still boys.

“After so many years behind bars, these players wonder if they can even relate to people from the outside--they worry they’ll be rejected because they’re convicts,” Philpott says. “These games give them a chance to walk among free men. Even if it’s just for nine innings.”

On opening night, inmate Vernis Brown, in for second-degree burglary, blows the national anthem on a borrowed trumpet, hitting a few sour notes that nobody seems to hear.

Standing along the third-base line, their backs to the three-story cellblocks that also house California’s death row, the bad boys of summer mouth the words to “The Star-Spangled Banner.” They hold “SQ” logo caps over their chests.

Among them is big Tony Gonzales, the Giants’ ace pitcher, who can throw a 90-mph fastball and who once tried out for the minor leagues before trouble that he won’t now discuss entered his life. Larry “Popeye” Faison, at 51 the oldest Giants player, is a veteran of eight seasons while he does time for second-degree murder. And reliever Andrew Zingler, a three-strikes offender with a wild John Rocker glint, can fire heat from the mound.

Shaking Off Claims of Over-Aggressiveness

Mustachioed David Marshall, a utility infielder serving a first-degree murder sentence, shrugs his shoulders at claims of over-aggressive Giants pitching. “Hey, a brushback is a brushback, whether it’s Kevin Brown or some prison inmate throwing the ball.”

There’s shortstop Eugene Carlisle, a compact man Philpott calls “simply the best baseball player I have ever shared a field with.” This is Carlisle’s second stint with the Giants. In 1996, in his “rookie” year--he won’t say what landed him behind bars then--he set a team home run record with 13 blasts in just half a season, with a natural swing that had Giants coaches telephoning minor league scouts.

But soon after Carlisle’s parole, he returned to San Quentin on an involuntary-manslaughter conviction. Now 30, he believes he still has a major-league future, but teammates sadly shake their heads about his missed chances. “They don’t send baseball scouts to San Quentin,” one says. “Just U.S. marshals.”

Giants third baseman Jesse Reed, serving time on a murder conviction, describes the feeling of changing from his prison blues into a real-life baseball uniform.

“There’s nights in your cell when you dream about moments like this,” he says. “We’re not locked up when we’re out here. No matter if you’re a prisoner, a cop or some suburban husband, we all love this game like there’s no tomorrow.”

Adds Zingler: “Nobody will ever say they’re having fun in prison. But these games are truly something positive in a negative world.” He looks at his teammates. “I’m proud to play alongside these guys, no matter what crimes they’ve committed.”

The Monarchs, a veteran group of Bay Area professionals, wonder how many bad San Quentin bounces are in store for them tonight. Inmate umps call the action, and at San Quentin, there are no lights or scoreboard, and orange cones serve as a virtual outfield wall, which leaves room for interpretation.

“If we’re winning and the sun starts to set, we have to play until the very last ray,” says Monarch pitcher Rick Maida. “But if the inmates are up, that game gets called faster than a three-card monte game.”

As the game gets underway, the home crowd goes right to work on 46-year-old Monarch starter Johnny Ball, who quickly loads the bases. One inmate implores Brown to blow taps on his trumpet “because this pitcher’s a goner.”

Then, as it often does at San Quentin, controversy strikes.

The Giants’ Carlisle hits a towering drive, which is caught by the Monarchs center fielder. But as Carlisle trots toward the bench, an ump signals a home run, declaring that the drive cleared one of the outfield cones.

Monarchs third baseman Nick Knowles kicks the dirt in disgust, evoking jeers from the crowd.

Over the years, many of California’s 33 prisons have also fielded inmate teams, but San Quentin is one of only two that play outside opponents. The team’s present incarnation began in 1994 when Earl Smith, another San Quentin prison chaplain, noticed an inmate carrying a catcher’s mitt and asked him if he knew how to use it.

That meeting eventually produced a team nicknamed the Pirates. But when Smith, who also works as a chaplain with the San Francisco Giants, convinced the professional team to donate its practice uniforms to the prison, the new San Quentin Giants were born.

Composed of both “lifers” and short-timers, the team’s 2002 version was winnowed from 60 hopefuls, some of whom lost interest when they learned that making the squad meant having to keep up the baseball diamond.

Philpott is proud of his team: “Most of these guys did something stupid to rob themselves of their early manhood. But when they step onto that field, they’re baseball players, not prisoners.”

While the Giants have never had a losing season, their worst loss was a 25-4 shellacking that came when several starters could not make the game because their cellblock was locked down.

At times, Philpott has rallied his team by appealing to their baser natures. “We’ll be losing to some young team and I’ll tell them to start playing like convicts and intimidate their opponents.”

Most visitors are already menaced. “It’s sobering when that iron gate closes behind you,” says Jim Meehan, an Oakland attorney whose team, the Oaks, plays annual games at the prison. “When the game is over, we cherish our visitor status.”

Meehan recalls the time an alarm sounded during a game and everyone immediately hit the turf. “People started yelling at us to get down. We didn’t know that the alarm meant the guards in the towers could use their guns to quell some disturbance.”

Once, two visiting players got into a fistfight with each other until they were warned off by a gun-toting guard.

But it is the fans, not the guards, who command the most attention.

Inmates wearing blue denim uniforms and knit skull caps peer through the chain-link fence within a few feet of visiting players. And they make their presence felt.

“One of our guys who carries a few extra pounds was greeted by a chorus of farm animal noises,” Meehan says. “It got to him.”

The prison doesn’t allow huge crowds, just the 100 or so men scheduled to use the adjacent exercise yard on game nights.

In pregame warmups, Zingler says fan wrath cuts both ways: “It’s a no-mercy crowd. But they get on us, too. If we mess up, they know where to find us after the game.”

As the evening wears on, the lack of a scoreboard becomes a factor. Few observers, umpires included, seem sure of the inning, or the score. Some fans shout that the Giants lead by six runs.

The Monarchs believe that they score a run, but an umpire waves it off, saying the base runner crossed home on the third out.

Eventually, the Monarchs pull to within a run. As the sun dips below the west wall, a few Giants players scurry to pack up equipment.

They must soon return to their cell blocks. More hard time awaits.

One Monarch cruelly goads a silent Giants bench: “Man, I can’t wait to go out and party tonight!”

When the game is finally called with the Giants leading 5-4, both teams meet at home plate for the traditional handshakes.

Giants supporter Wolf Stipe, a convicted first-degree murderer who co-founded the team, basks in the victory.

“We showed these other players our human side,” he says. “Now we can go back inside our cages and feel good about ourselves.

“Wow, a sense of pride inside San Quentin. Go figure.”