The death letter

A “kite” is the usual description of a note found that bears a warning to someone in particular. I am not sure why the term “death letter” was used instead of kite. Hope I don’t find out.

I heard about it as soon as I hit the lower yard for the Giants’ practice Thursday night, April 21. The letter had been “sent” from an A’s player to a Giants player, or so it was said. Serious stuff, and if knowledge of the letter found its way into the hands of prison officials that would likely be the end of baseball at San Quentin. Imagine, an attack, whether successful or not, on a player from another player–it could easily make headlines.

            The letter was directed at a Black Giants player; it was found on the floor in PIA–prison industries where a lot of the convicts work. No one knows who sent it. Word is that the author was an A’s player. If the writer was a white player, and there are only two black players on the A’s, and neither of which would I ever suspect of doing such a thing, then we have a racial situation on top of it all, one that could spill over into the general population. Somebody could get killed.

             The player who had received the death letter approached me shortly after I reached the dugout. He was moving quickly, stuck out his hand to me, quietly told me he could not come to practice and was gone in an instant. No conversation; I merely whispered “I understand.”

It was at this point that for the third time while at the prison that I was accused of being a racist. And this directly from an A’s player. It was openly stated and prompted a meeting with the acting head of education. I guess the charge would really have to be reverse racism since at least half of the Giants are Black while the A’s are almost completely white. I may have inadvertently earned the derogatory designation when, after reviewing the A’s roster, I commented that the A’s looked like the Aryan Brotherhood Baseball Team. That was a mistake on my part.

            Not sure now where to go with this. Maybe it will go away. Maybe the players will take care of it themselves. One thing though, I will have to be paying close attention.

            Perhaps unrelated, but I had to have a player on the A’s removed from the field sometime after the death letter incident came to my attention. He is one of the poison types from last year who the coaches did not want on the Giants. Now an A’s player he cannot accept that his team is the “B” team. And I understand that too since I managed the B team twice in my tenure at the prison. It was of my own choosing, yet, being the second, not as good team, carried with it a kind of stigma. Ego-wise then, second, not as good, the B team; you wanted to be on the A team on opening day; yes I understood that it was enough to be a convicted felon locked up for pretty close to life without also being on the B team.

            To come back with, “Well, it is a privilege to ball baseball at all while you are in prison for murder” Is true enough, but pride and self-esteem are at stake and convicts will struggle mightily to find some for themselves.

            The man was escorted off the yard with a few hundred convicts watching. And everyone knew, or would know, that I had requested it. It is a rare and unusual thing to do and I have done in only one other time and that time was to prevent a fight from breaking out between two players during a practice session. The convict would either be proud or embarrassed at being lead back to his cell; I learned later he was embarrassed.

            Death letter–might I be the subject of one of these, or worse yet, no warning at all. How deep will feelings go? Some convicts with long sentences lose hope and spending their rest of their lives cut off from the general prison population is not much of a deterrent. Desperation and blind rage–these are not uncommon emotions in a prison. This particular man–something other than brotherly love has been driving him ever since I have known him. How desperate is he, how angry is he, and I would be the perfect target. Everybody has got to have someone to blame; someone to hang the dark feelings on; someone to sick the demons on. Hate and rage find outlets on inanimate and not even symbolic objects. I had better stop thinking about it.