Tomorrow, Saturday, May 26, 2018, I go back into the prison. To catch up a little, I will relate part of the history from June of 2012 until now.

            For the first four years, 1997 to 2000, Dan Jones and I managed the San Quentin Pirates/Giants. Dan had to leave due to medical issues. I continued alone for a number of years with a couple of guys I brought in to lighten the load. Then about 2009 several baseball guys came in to serve as real coaches. Chief of these is Kevin Laughlin, who I met when our two teams (the Tamalpais Hawks frosh team and Kevin’s frosh team, the San Rafael Bulldogs) played each other at Albert’s Park in San Rafael, 2005. (This is the field where the Pacifics now play.)

            Besides Kevin, there were several other coaches. One of these showed up occasionally, mostly Saturday mornings; he would arrive late and leave early. His main focus was criticizing the operation. After I left, for 2012, Kevin managed the team up until he was also forced to leave.

            Son Vernon was also kicked out a few months later. Vern had taken over the Blues Brothers, an 8-man flag football team I had begun some years earlier. Being a Philpott he had to go.

            Then one of the other coaches, a real baseball guy, solid coach, faithful, had a home invasion take place and was shot but survived. It was a message sent from the **********. He concealed all this from the prison officials and came back in the next season, I think 2014. Parcels would arrive at his house with instructions to take the baseball equipment—baseball gloves mostly—into the prison in his equipment bag. All he had to do was, whenever the A’s played or practiced, leave the bag in the A’s dugout on the first base line. Simple as that.

            Finding that you could stuff about 1000 plus meth tablets into a hollowed-out catcher’s mitt, he called son Vernon on the phone. Vern visited this man’s new residence and took photos of the contraband.  This was the last straw, and this coach never went back in, destroyed the dope, and hoped he would not be attacked again.

            Back now to the coach who loved to criticize me—in 2013 or 2014—he took over managing the team, except with a difference. He merely acted as a sponsor, bringing outside teams in but leaving the running of practices and games to the convicts. Mistake. This of course worked for the ********** as they could continue, in various ingenious ways, to get drugs and cell phones into the prison. And one particular gang did this, what we call “The White Boys.”

            Yes, there are gangs in San Quentin, but all under cover, well mostly. If someone is identified as a gang member, they are shipped out to a higher security level prison like Corcoran, High Desert, or Pelican Bay among others. SQ is a level 2 prison and due to things like the age of the structures, it does not make for the kind of security necessary.

            Nevertheless, controlling drugs is power, and the cell phones allow gangs to do all kinds of wonderful things. I could go on and describe what power means in a prison, but it does not seem like something I want to do right now.

            This baby-sitting coach (Do I sound angry?) ran the program down. Every year attempts were made to get me back in. A number of the inmates, the head of the athletic program, and one other person whom I will not name eventually succeeded in bringing me back in. Somehow this one person was able to convince the Internal Security Unit (ISU)to allow it.

            For two or more years I would get a call from the ISU and talk to a sergeant or lieutenant who would say something like, “Look Philpott, I have your file in front of me and if we were to let you back in and something happened to you, the State of California would be on the hook.” My response was always, “I understand.”

            Tomorrow I will park in the lot below the visitor’s center, I plan to get there about 8:20am, wait for a beige card holder, one of the present coaches, and get through the East Gate, make the long walk to the Count Gate, sign in, and walk into the prison past the Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, American Indian, and others now, chapels, turn right at the hospital building, head right down cardiac hill and into the lower year. On the right will be a giant wall with the gun towers situated along and the inmates will spot me. On the left is an old iron door, fenced off now, where the old morgue was. When I get down past the “ Out of bounds” sign painted on the tarmac, and the  cons spot me, who knows what might happen. But I suspect there will be some who will recognize the old coach and come up to meet me. We’ll see. For sure though I will see guys I was close to, and sometimes for years. It will be quite emotional for me.

            Let me state why I am going back in. First, I spent 32 years as a volunteer at San Quentin, 16 of those years as the baseball coach. I was removed because of a gang’s need to bring in drugs and cell phones. There was not a goodbye, no thanks, no nothing. I want to go out on my own terms, not due to death threats, finish with my own resignation, after some years. I am seventy-six years old and I think I still have some good years left. And frankly, coaching at the prison is a whole lot easier than doing high school baseball.

            Second reason for going back in is that I want to start a second team, The Pirates. The Pirates, the name of the original team, third generation of baseball at San Quentin, that Chaplin Earl Smith began in 1995. The Pirates became the Giants in 1999 when the San Francisco Giants donated uniforms and equipment to us. Chaplain Smith was the Giants chaplain, the first African American to be a chaplain in the state’s prison system, and he made it work. Earl is, by the way, still the chaplain for the San Francisco 49ers and the Golden State Warriors. Side note: one of his sons, Franklin I see from time to time as he is the head coach for the San Rafael Bulldogs Junior Varsity baseball team. Franklin, and his brother Earl Jr., I watched grow up while they lived on the grounds of the prison.

            One story I will tell about Earl Jr. About the year 2007 I pulled up to get gas at the Chevron Station on Miller Avenue in Mill Valley. The guy pumping gas in front of me was Earl. We shook hands and I asked him, and I am not sure why I did this, but I asked him if he knew how I get ahold of a pair of cleats for a guy with a sized 14 shoe. Earl did not say a word, but opened the trunk of his car, reached in, grabbed a pair of brand-new cleats, sized 14, and handed them to me. Typical of the Smith family.

            Okay another story. At a high school game, at home, and playing the San Rafael Bulldogs, I was standing against the rail at our third base dugout. The game was about to begin and here came the oppositions coach to take his place at the third base coach’s box. A big Black man, full beard and all, and he was looking directly, and hard, at me. In a moment he yells out, “Philpott.” It was Franklin Smith, Earl’s brother and son of Earl Smith. The baseball world in Marin County is a small one.

            Tomorrow I am going to try to let the guys know of my intention. The baby-sitting coach refused to allow a second team, too much trouble. And he would be right, but I did it for years and want to do it again.

            Either there will be another team or there will be another paragraph below saying my plan did not work.

            Can’t help it, I have to let you know how the visit went. It was a huge success. I was overwhelmed by the response from the guys, many I knew, many I did not know. As I feed this into the computer, I am still having a stunned feeling. The short of it is, they want me back and as soon as possible. The program has been a mess since I left according to several dozen inmates, and not only the baseball program but the football program as well.

            Of course, I do not believe everything that was said to me, but I had four rather long and serious conversations with former players I trust and I am convinced I heard right. My most trusted informant told me that scores of young offenders, ages 18 to 24, are coming into San Quentin, mostly on drug charges, and I was told there will be 50 plus guys wanting to play for the Pirates. Looks like the ‘Skull and Cross Bones’ will fly again.

Next to last, but far from the least, it was, and is still, the most incredible experience of them all, and this is the casting out of demons.

      The subject for my college degrees is psychology. My masters lead professor had me set up to be a high school psychologist in Sacramento, CA. However, just in the nick of time, I changed my mind and decided I wanted to go to a seminary and become a pastor. Then in February of 1967, as I have already presented, I started doing street ministry in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district. After graduating from Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary in Mill Valley and moving my family to my family home in Sunland, California, a northern suburb of Los Angeles, I travelled back and forth from the City and Sunland, two weeks up, two weeks down.

       Part of the time while doing evangelism in the Haight, I lived at the Anchor Rescue Mission, on Fillmore St., which was run by two black ladies. They let me live there and I served as cook, dish washer, and more, plus preached to the hippies who showed for the evening meettings, at which I routinely preached the sermon. One of the ladies, wish I could remember her name, warned me about a guy who was, she said, demon possessed. She pointed him out to me later on.

      Time went on, then late one night, thinking I was the only one in the building, I heard someone walking in the back of the place. Yep, it was him. I thought I would test to see if maybe this guy had a demon. Then I saw him, walking toward the front door. I called out, “Jesus.” Without looking at me, he jumped straight up in the air, maybe a foot high off the ground. A few more steps and again, “Jesus.” Again, jumped in the air. I did it one more time, and the same thing again. Then he was out the door.

      This shattered my conviction that there were no demons much less that such indwelt people. All through my six years of seminary, I did not accept the idea that demons could possess, and indwell, people. My psych position now was challenged.

      To shorten this piece, let me say that over the years, I have been involved in what we call “deliverance ministry.” In 1973 Zondervan Publishing House put out my ThM thesis titled, A Manual of Demonology and the Occult. As a result, Christians from all over, even foreign countries, made their way to Marin County hoping the demons they were convinced they had could be cast out. Fairly quickly we developed ten teams to do this ministry. Two men, two women, a man and a woman—covered the bases. Mark Buckley and I did deliverance every Thursday night at the Christian House, The Solid Rock, on Wilson Street in Novato. Oh, I could tell you some stories. Mark and I did this for many years. The managers of our Christian bookstores usually controlled the traffic.

      Yes, I was wrong about the demons, but with the blaring realities, I changed my concepts and continue to do this now. Very simple, not complex, just confession of error, prayer for forgiveness, and we go to the work of commanding demons to come out in the name of Jesus. Could I tell you some stories!

Barred from the prison for life

Today, June 1, 2012, not to be overly dramatic but simply to document the event, I was informed I am barred from the prison for life. “Barred” not banned–it is a prison we are talking about. This good news came to me via my son who was so informed by Don. The directive had been issued by the CDW. (The CDW will go unnamed.)

            The CDW — I have referred to as the thug/bully. Three meetings this year with him, in his office, and three times I said virtually nothing all the while he threatened and lectured and bullied me, just like any other thug.

            The first meeting with him was the most interesting, the middle of the summer 2011, on an invitation from him. He had told me that if I needed to talk to him I could; I took him up on it. He started off, and there were just the two of us in his very large and nicely appointed office, and he let me know he was the tough prison administrator, swore like crazy, and boasted of how he almost made the L.A. Dodgers, back when.

            He did not know I was a Baptist pastor and when he found out, almost by accident, his language changed to that of a choir boy, and he told me about his involvement in his church. Wow, what a change, but it served as an omen as to his mercurial nature.

So much has happened so quickly it nearly fries my mind to try to put it in some semblance of order.

            I am going to start at the beginning and hit, at least, the major points.

One, back in July of 2010, due to an inmate, Noe Valdivia, we started what was to be an intramural team made up of guys who hadn’t made the Giants. I asked Len Zemarkowitz, who had been coaching with the Giants, to do this. There were some pretty good players on the team and Len did a good job in forming a team. They thought they were better than the Giants, and after a couple of practice games they proved they were as good if not better than the Giants. And so the trouble started.

Two, this team, no name team really, through Noe, a really good jail house lawyer, now out of prison, agitated the powers that be to create a second team alongside the Giants which would play outside teams. This did not set well with me because I did the scheduling and that was far and away the worst part of the whole baseball thing at the prison. But it was agreed finally, and the new arrangement would begin in 2011.

            An early obstacle was that none of the Giants coaches wanted to work with the new team. Looking back, I should have gone over and done it myself, but instead I contacted two baseball guys I knew, who had both been into the prison helping out or members of an outside team, one I will name Bill and the other Larry. (Not their real names) In they came; we got them brown cards so they could come in unescorted, and the new team started playing ball as the A’s. I had contacted the Oakland A’s and they graciously supplied us with uniforms, really nice major league uniforms. The no name team became the A’s.

            The A’s and Giants played four times in 2011, and the Giants won each game, none of which were close. And that only made matters worse.

            The first time we played, which was the week before opening day, the trouble started. (I was told by Larry that the trouble had already begun however.) Bill started an argument with me over a Giants player using a wood bat, just after he got a bloop hit with one. True, the prison had banned wood bats because an officer has witnessed the shattering of a maple bat, which will break into odd pieces, some of which a lot like shives. But, the prison had rules and we had ours, which did not always dovetail. All kinds of bats were being used but as soon as the Giants got a hit with a wood bat–well the fight started.

            The first time I said okay, the batter is out. The Giants were already on the board and the A’s were being stopped cold. Larry and I talked it out and finally agreed that wood or metal–any bat was good. Then, toward, the end of the game and another single with a wood bat, and it was another argument.

            Two A’s players and one inmate coach emerged as the primary antagonists. Chris, Jeff, and YaYa. It turned into a kind of war, and I was the enemy, only me, since, I guess, I was in charge of the program. Don DeNevi had so appointed me, but that would change from time to time based on how much I did for him and the program.

            Then I figured something out. The A’s would play or practice on Wednesday nights and the Giants on Thursdays. (Both teams played outside teams on Saturdays.) Bill would either call me or email me on a Friday morning about something that had happened on the previous Thursday night. It took a few of these to make me wonder how he knew on Friday morning what had happened on Thursday evening, especially since neither he nor Larry had been there.

            “Bill,” I asked, “how do you know about what happened last night?” Now I have been around some and I knew by merely talking to him that he was stoned. It had not occurred to him that I might realize there had to have been some communication going on with the cons. Hmmm. Well, that was the last time Bill made that mistake. Fuel had been poured on the flames, and it was not long after that I was accused of reverse racism, since the Giants were mostly black and the A’s mostly white.

            That was not enough but the death threat made in late July of 2011 was enough to have me removed from the prison for the rest of the season. I had no recourse, and a death threat was a typical means for a convict to manipulate things. Happens all the time.

            So, I was out, and before the 2012 season even began, at least four new threats with my name on them were placed in the mail drop box in North Block. The investigative Unit went to work and eventually found out about the cell phones being brought in. It was Bill and Larry told me, Bill would have to find another way to make some money. If anything else was brought in–I am not sure–but I found out about $1500 worth of pills, meth of course, could be fit into a hollowed-out baseball and about $5000 worth of marijuana could be stuffed into a first baseman’s or catcher’s mitt if a lot of the stuffing were taken out. Only the Investigative Unit knows for sure.

            Simple: as the watchdog over the program I became an enemy, a threat to the whole operation. I had to go.

            There were meetings with the CDW, in his office, and I have to say it, he bullied me, played the thug, and I had not one chance to speak to anything.

            The process is quite familiar: the whole prison system, however necessary it is, and it is, but the experience nevertheless turns otherwise normal people into thugs and bullies, on both sides of the bars. I have seen it for thirty years. It is the rare con, and the rare guard, who does not fall into the pit.

            Idealistic notions I left behind shortly after I got into the military, and I know the world is not fair, but I always thought I ought to have a chance to speak to the issues. If I screwed up, I would like a chance to apologize, make amends if possible, and make changes if I could do so. The chance never came. I was working on the season, from behind the proverbial scene, all the while I was getting madder and madder. Finally, I vented to Don, on the phone, and in frustration I said, “I am going to write a letter to Cate.”[1] The very next day, I was informed through my son Vernon, whom Don had called, that the CDW got really pissed that I should go to Cate–so “barred from the prison for life.”

            I resigned then, actually sent a formal letter to Don and it is that which you see at the end of this final chapter for the 2012 season. Indeed, going with a whimper, but out I am. I do not want to go sour grapes, sling accusations, of find ways of retaliating. My time is up; perhaps it should have happened a couple of years ago. Things end, and my time as coach of the San Quentin Giants is over.

[1] Matthew Cate is the secretary for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

While living on Greenfield Ave. in San Rafael, the Methodist Church down the way let us have a Bible study in their fellowship hall across the street from the main church. This during the Jesus People Movement though no one called it that or even knew there was something incredible going on, and this all across the country.

      The year would have been 1970 when something I will never forget occurred. After the Tuesday evening Bible study, anyone wishing prayer would come to me while I was seated on a chair. A young person, about 18 or so, was in line and she asked to be healed from a problem with one of her eyes. I laid hands on her head, my usual way, and prayed that she be healed. 

      Two days later I got a telephone call from her father, who I found out later was a higher up with the city of San Rafael. He was upset with me, but for a strange reason. The morning after his daughter asked for prayer for healing, she was scheduled to have her right eye operated on. When the surgeon was set to begin, he stopped as he could see the problem with the eye was no more. After she awoke from the medication, she recounted how I had prayed for her to be healed.

      The young woman’s family were Jewish but were not involved with a local synagogue. Later on, the healed girl began working with Jews for Jesus and her sister, who had some sort of disability, actually moved in with my family when we lived at 671 Knocknabul Way in Terra Linda.

Suspended

Here we sit, no tryouts, unable to schedule games, waiting for the prison officials to finish up their investigation into the death threats, and figure out what to do with the troublemakers. Seems like it is simple: to the hole with you, or to Pelican Bay with you. The question comes to me: Why now are certain convicts being coddled?

            No answers, week after week. Teams are contacting me and I am filling out the schedule but maybe there will be no baseball. Then I get the following email:

“Please be advised that effective immediately, the San Quentin Recreational Baseball, Softball, and Football programs[1], and all associated volunteers for those programs, are suspended pending investigation. 

“The existing volunteer ID cards and gate clearances have been pulled from the E. Gate. Any pending IDs are being withheld from final processing, until this investigation is complete and the matter resolved.”

            The new professional baseball team in town, the San Rafael Pacifics are on the verge of having to forget coming in to play our team. What about the Military Baseball Team? It is probably too late to contact various media now about coming in. The pitchers cannot possibly be ready even if the suspension be lifted today. It takes a couple, better several months, for a pitcher to build up arm strength and be ready to throw for even a few innings.

            The CDW has every right to suspend the whole thing. His job is to maintain the integrity of the prison and seeing to recreational opportunities does not figure high on his priority list. Okay, that is a given. What rights do I have? None, really, and there would not be a blip on the screen should I drop dead this very day.

            Just how important is the prison baseball program to me? Have I lost my balance here? Could I take walking away after so many years of struggle? Not to get overly philosophical about this but, life is not fair. Cons, those who do not get very far along the rehabilitation schematic, think life should be fair and they have seen nothing of fairness, and they are mad as hell, or madder than hell, and no reasonable argument, if one could be made, will suffice.

This whole thing is unfair, and it will likely never be corrected. 

[1] Only the sports programs I am responsible for are suspended.

Back in the early years of the Jesus People Movement, one of our key leaders was Mark Buckley. He and his 3 brothers and 4 sisters lived in Terra Linda, and Mark and two of his brothers, John and Robert, played football at Terra Linda High and at College of Marin. Mark was pastor of one of our churches in Novato, and he moved to Phoenix years ago and is still active in ministry.

      I am guessing that it was in the late 1970’s when I got a call from Mark saying that his brother Robert had broken his neck when he dove into the Colorado River, while on a trip with some of his friends. He was being flown into Marin, at a small airport in Novato and Mark wanted me to be there when the aircraft landed.

      Robert was carried off on a striker frame, which devise I was familiar with as a medic in the Air Force, and it was designed to prevent a person from moving. He was taken to Kaiser hospital in Terra Linda. A day or so later I got a call from Mark who wanted me to come over to the hospital right away. I found the room where Robert was, still in the striker frame, and Mark was there. He told me he prayed for healing for his brother, and he had been healed, but the hospital folks would not release him from the frame.

      As a pastor I had some clout, and I asked the nurse if I could talk to the head doctor on duty at that time. He came into the room, examined Robert, but would not remove him from the frame. I asked that an x-ray be made to see if Robert had been healed. Robert was wheeled away, the x-ray taken, and he was brought back into the hospital room.

      Some short time later, the doctor came back with two x-rays. He attached them side by side on the wall. There it was, the one on the left showed the broken neck, the one on the right, well, no broken neck. Robert was removed from the frame and off we went, Robert, Mark, and myself.

      I run into Robert now and again, and we both smile at each other in remembrance of his incredible healing.

Thin Ice

The CDW gathered up the members of the A’s and Giants as best he could on the Lower Yard, wherein is The Field of Dreams, and told them I was on “thin ice.” This was just after I had received three new death threats. From what I heard the two cons behind the threats had convinced the CDW that I was largely to blame for the troubles between the two baseball teams. “One more time that Philpott acts in an arrogant, rude, or disrespectful way, and he is gone.”

            Now how will I proceed? There certainly will be a time when doing nothing more than acting the part of a leader that I will unwittingly provide my enemies with something to tattle to Rodriquez about. A simple decision as a baseball coach during a baseball game, and that could be it.

            I figure the CDW got bought by the convicts, persuaded by them, and without talking to me about it at all. All the Giants players, and some A’s players as well, who stood by me, apparently did not matter much.

            It is now May, and opening day is two weeks away. There have been no tryouts since the CDW wants to “punish” the cons. One instigator has gone to the hole and is still there,[1] which is a step in the right direction, and rumor has it that he will be transferred to another prison. Rumors are just that though and are often spread just to see how well they do, a kind of perverse entertainment.

            Thin ice — I will certainly break through that, and I am at the point I don’t care that much about it. More than a decade and a half and the powers that be could care less. The usual refrain is: “This is a prison you know.” My reply is: “Sure I know I am in a prison, but volunteers should not be treated like convicts.” This is not to say that convicts are to be mistreated, they are abused to be sure, and I guess the thugs who run prisons don’t know the difference between a prisoner and a volunteer or don’t care that there is.

            Thugs! Not a complementary label, but I think an accurate one, at least for many who work in prisons. A correctional officer, a new hire — may have the best of intentions and genuinely want to make a difference. I have talked to these, some who were college grads with degrees in psych, sociology, criminal justice, and so on, who saw the job as a way to give back or make a difference.

            Things change though, maybe in a few months, maybe it takes a few years. The code of conduct among CO’s does not allow for a touchy-feely approach. There is a certain demeanor that is nearly enforced. Then there is the impact of the cons behavior on the COs. When I talk about this issue with outsiders they are often surprised at this and disbelieving. Prisoners can seem like such wonderful people; they have learned the art of presenting themselves in the best of lights. Without realizing it, people are “turned” and develop an antagonism toward the criminal justice system, which of course is flawed and corrupt like most other human institutions and see the convicts as protagonists. It happens every day. The CO then who comes in with a clean slate is radicalized and without seeing what is happening to him or her and may then become a thug.

            Thug behavior is rewarded by the jailers and confirmed by those in jail; it is an example of the proverbial vicious cycle. Abuse begets abuse, and round and round it goes. What matters to the caring young correctional officer is nothing much more than a paycheck with benefits. The ideal for way too many of those who operate our jails and prisons is – lock em up and throw away the key.             It is no real wonder that I am on thin ice. If my volunteer card is pulled and I am forced to walk away from a program I have struggled to build over the years, what price will I pay? How long will it take me to get over it? Will I let my heart get

[1] This convict was transferred out of San Quentin during the third week of May, and where, no one seems to know.

#5

Again at 128 Greenfield Ave., for sure now 1969, still painting houses, inside and out, and just prior to my leaving for a job in Ross, painting interior rooms, there was a knock at the door. I opened it and there stood a teen aged girl. She just stood there, face down. I asked her to come in but she just stood there. I asked my wife to come to the door and asked her to invite the girl in as I had to leave, but she refused, no blame here, but she would not do it. I had no choice but to take the girl with me.

      Later in the late morning I was cutting in a ceiling, standing on a stepladder, and the girl was across the room sitting on a chair with her head down in a sorrowful kind of way. With paint brush in hand, all of a sudden it came to me what had happened to her. She had been being initiated into a satanic cult, and part of it was licking the ejaculation of the men there into a female sheep.

      While on the ladder, I told her what had come to my mind, and she began to cry. Well, that was the end of the painting that day, we went back to the house on Greenfield, I told my wife about all that had happened. The girl was able to talk now, and she gave us the phone number of her home. (I do not recall where she was from.)

      The next day, her parents showed up and took her away home. Oddly, there was no other communication from the girl or her parents.