Full blast-the rivalry
What started it all? How did it get to this place?
I can only guess at what happened, but I think it goes back to 2004 when all the media attention began.[1]
There were rumors that I was in danger. I would need to step back, as I heard it. I did not since I did not see or feel any real problem.
Prior to the start of the 2005 season a big meeting was planned. Word was that I was bumped from managing the Giants and the powers that be intended to reshape the program. To counter I suggested the formation of a second team, a resurrection of the old Pirates, which I would manage thus leaving an un-named person to manage the Giants.
Coming into the prison for the big meeting, I was stunned to find that my brown card was not in its normal place at the East Gate. The officer at the gate, a person I had known for many years, explained that an un-named person had pulled it out of the box only moments before. I asked to make a call from the phone in the east gate shack and try to contact the person who was putting the meeting together. That move got me into the prison, into the meeting, and manager of the Pirates.[2]
It was not long before I found out the reason for the trouble: media attention and all the cons knew it. It was intolerable to the un-named person that I should be getting the attention, which there really was not much of. However, unbeknownst to me a documentary was to be done on the baseball team, and though I had managed the team alone for years, a change had to be made.
Put a camera in front of someone’s face and magic happens. Nearly everyone succumbs. I am not immune either. During the late 1960s and early 1970s I had my share. A leader in the Jesus People Movement, I had made Time magazine and even had some television interviews. For years I had travelled with a band called Joyful Noise and flew around the country like a big deal. After awhile it all passed and I never realized anything out of it except grief and disillusionment. Sure, I was a little resentful at being brushed aside, but that did not last too long. Most ball players wish the press would just go away anyway, unless of course you are a convict.
That was then, and for a number of years, things returned to normal, one had one team, the Giants, much of the media attention went away, and things were good. Then it started up all over again, and the rush to mug in front of a lens changed things–at least, this is part of what happened as it seems to me.
Red Sox versus the Yankees, Dodgers versus the Giants–historic rivalries, and we love them. San Quentin Giants versus the San Quentin A’s, some love it, I would like to love it, but there is no real history to it, no naturalness to it, no fun to it either. But it rages and it is getting to me. I can see myself deteriorating, see myself losing my balance. Stress is a killer and I am stressed out, to the point of becoming combative. Something has to be done.
[1] I wish I could be more concrete but I cannot. People and places could be named certainly, and things said, yet it is necessary to be vague. We are talking about prisons and convicts, and convicts often get paroled.
[2] The original San Quentin team was the Pirates. The Pirates became the Giants when the San Francisco Giants gave us their winter uniforms.