Ball Four, Take Your Base!
The 2011 Baseball Season at San Quentin Prison
By Kent Philpott
Introduction
Baseball at the prison began under Chaplain Earl Smith in 1995. At that point I was doing cell-to-cell ministry out of the Protestant Chapel, and this for 13.5 years. Our chaplain was Earl Smith. He knew that I was a baseball guy, and he asked me to help with the team, the Pirates then, as he had to undergo medical treatment.
It did not take me long to agree and I reached out to Dan Jones, a long time baseball guy, part of our Miller Avenue Baptist Church in Mill Vally, CA., to join with me.
The 1997 season went well, and Dan and I looked forward to a second year as Chaplain Smith was not ready to return. Dan and I did this for four years, but Dan came down with an illness that prevented him from continuing into year five.
It was my job to contact outside teams and invite them to come in for games, these on Saturdays, and soon to expand to a second weekly game, on Thursdays. Chaplain Smith had already set things up to bring in outside teams, so it was fairly easy for me to follow along.
By 1998 there were teams contacting us, sometimes from out of state, wanting to come in. I had to have the name of the player, his birthday, social security #, and driver’s license #. Fairly easy then; things got complicated later on.
I have photos, as those of you who read the story of the 2010 season know, and here, I have forgone the photos due to necessity. There will follow, at some unknown point, the story of the 2012 season, which was truncated due to some prison chaos, but it will be presented sometime down the line.
Some years went by before I began to return to the prison. Altogether, I was engaged with the prison for 30 plus years. My life got busier and though I wanted to, my San Quentin years were behind me, mostly because in 2004 I began to coach baseball at high schools in Marin County. Strange, but I am coaching football, now at Terra Linda High, about to go into my fourth year. Maybe some more, too. We will see.