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.