Doug MacKenzie

“When we go into the prison, you’ll definitely feel some anxiety.”  The prophecy came from Bob, our manager for the doubleheader against the San Quentin inmate baseball team, when I’d first contacted him two months prior to joining his squad.

I knew he was right.  But I decided to get an early start and let the anxiety build as soon as I committed to play.

Two months is a long time to let my imagination work.  Much too long.

As expected, visions of being cornered in the yard after getting separated from the group worked their way into my head.  Of somehow ticking-off the wrong guy on the opposing team.  Of ending up on the wrong end of the shiv that the first baseman snuck into the game. 

One link bound them all—I returned home maimed or worse in each one.

I’d heard the warnings.  Once we hit the yard, we’d be subjected to a wave of trash talk and thrown expletives.  I didn’t even know the proper prison protocol for a visitor.  Smack talk back?  It might get me some respect.  Or it might lead directly to one of those visions.

But another part of me longed for the experience.  The part that doesn’t miss a prison exposé on cable.  The part that wants to hear that iron gate close behind me.  To feel the starkness of the yard.  To see if the walls really do close in.   To be in the world of some guy who chopped his best friend into 107 pieces and then buried him in 107 different places.

I wanted to experience that world—live it—for just for a little while.  And I love baseball.  What better way to accomplish it than combine the two?

My M.O. isn’t hard to predict.  I knew the anxiety would peak the night before the game.  It’d be hard to sleep.  Probably wouldn’t have any appetite in the morning. 

Then I got a lucky break. 

Justin, from my amateur team back home, had signed up to play as well. 

A few years transplanted from Australia, Justin’s a natural athlete.  He picked up baseball as easy as my dog picked up begging at the table.  It’s impossible to get a low-pitch by him.  Must be from all those years of cricket.

Far more important for this adventure, he’s about as easygoing a guy as you can find.  It’s tough to get him upset.  I’ve tried.  Everyone on my team has tried.

We chatted in the hotel about what the next day might bring and it turned out he’d visited a maximum-security prison in Australia for a college thesis.  The whole thing was no big deal.  I half-expected him to fall asleep in the hotel patio as he described it.

Perfect.  I was with a vet.  My nerves could relax.

That’s when he mentioned that they’d probably make us sign a “no negotiations” waiver in case we were taken hostage.

Hostage?  It turned out there was one scenario I’d neglected to worry about.  Still, I managed to remain calm.

Then I met Kent.

Kent wasn’t one of the prisoners—he was their coach.  That’s on the inside.  On the outside, Kent’s a pastor.  We met him in a weary parking lot outside the gates at 8:30 in the morning where he gave us a quick talk about what to expect.  Kent’s another easygoing guy—especially for someone about to walk us into a maximum-security prison. 

It’s what he said that got the nerves working again.

San Quentin’s the only prison in the United States that has a baseball team for its inmates.  In fact, the program is so popular it’s now home to two teams, the Giants and the Pirates.  Usually comprised of players from adult amateur leagues, outside teams (known as “The Willing”) routinely play a doubleheader at “the Q”—one game against the Giants and one against the Pirates.

Today we’d take on the San Quentin Giants in both games. 

The Pirates weren’t too happy about this. 

Kent said he wasn’t sure what to expect.  There’d been a lot of unrest at the prison lately.  Overcrowding at Corcoran and Pelican Bay had forced the state to send much of the hard-core overflow here.  New, young guys had arrived.  Lifers who had nothing to lose. 

Things weren’t the same.

Maybe Kent noticed the widened eyes because he told us not to worry.  Nothing would ever happen to a visitor—every prison program in the state would end in a flash. 

Kent finished with an admonition:  if any of the players from the other team approached us during the game wanting personal information, don’t give it to them. 

Approached us?  From the unhappy team?  I thought these were the guys that had nothing to lose.

My carefully administered self-hypnosis—two months in the making—of why I would survive this impending experience shattered.  I’d already convinced myself we’d be hermitically sealed with at least three fences and a wall of armed guards partitioning us from anyone that wasn’t in the game.

I looked at the veterans of our team—none of whom I’d ever met—to reassure myself, to see the calm look on their faces.  Once I saw that “look”—the one people have when they’ve heard the whole speech before and are bored stiff—I’d be fine.

Instead apprehensive stares filled the audience.  My eyes darted to Justin, my last hope.  Even he looked slightly concerned.  With Justin, that’s the equivalent of a panic attack.

The information processing in my head began to blur.  New, hard-core guys.  Nothing to lose.  Trouble.  Waivers if I’m taken hostage. 

Maybe my friends are right.  Maybe I am a masochist.  It’s a death wish or something.  Psychologists would have a field day with me. 

One of the new guys broke in, “Just how good a shot are the guards in the tower?”  At least someone else was thinking along the same lines as me.

We showed our I.D.s at an outer gate and made the long walk to the prison walls.  To our right sat a row of quaint administration buildings.  To our left, the rippling currents of the bay reached out forever as if no prison existed.  But I took little notice on the gorgeous Saturday morning.  Instead a question revolved in my head that my brain couldn’t solve… “If the new guys in here have nothing to lose, why would they care if the programs shut down because they did something to a visitor?”

If you’ve watched any prison documentaries on TV, you know what I expected.  I expected the gate to clank behind us and then to be surrounded by my new world, a bleak world of rusted metal and chipped paint, curses shouted at me by every person in view.  Undecipherable screams would evaporate into the bay breeze from wherever they kept the people that had gone nuts… or had completely given up hope. 

That’s what I expected for a prison built in 1852. 

My first view gave me exactly the opposite.

A neatly tended courtyard greeted us when we exited the Sallyport (the controlled area between two metal gates), complete with lawn and roses.  On the far end, a massive state-of-the-art medical facility dominated the other buildings in the area.

Heading toward the 5-story building, I felt faces peering from barred windows in the archaic building to our left.  That building, the kind I’d expected to see, turned out to be the Adjustment Center, a housing unit for the most dangerous inmates on Death Row.

After crossing the courtyard, a long asphalt driveway led us between the new complex now to our left and the ancient wall that separated us from the free world on the right.

The San Quentin yard opened up.

The field wasn’t hard to spot—it was the only grass area in an expanse of asphalt, walls and fences.  Like a grammar school playground at lunchtime, a flurry of activity surrounded the diamond and filled the yard.  Men jockeyed for position as a shot went up on the basketball court.  Tennis balls volleyed.  And countless guys in dark blue sweats or shorts with light blue shirts just hung around. 

But as opposed to my elementary school, a chain link fence didn’t surround this yard.  Razor wire saturated these surroundings, everywhere, blocking anything anyone could ever think of climbing, crawling or hopping over. 

A four-foot space between two chain link fences would serve as our dugout.  Inside the partition, it took me a few minutes to realize that the long metal thing that looked like a narrow table was actually our bench.

The home team took the field.  I’d expected them to be in prison garb, but they had full uniforms (courtesy of the major league team), with an orange “Giants” emblazoned across black jerseys.  Their roster would be a few short today; anybody residing in H-block was absent.  A few prisoners in that unit had contracted a virus.  As a result, the whole block locked-down, a precaution due to the speed an epidemic can spread in a closed-off prison.

Beyond the clover outfield, the warning track contoured around the ins and outs of the fences that bordered our field.  The difference between this field and any other where I’ve played quickly struck me.  The spectators were inside the fences.  Prisoners lined the edges of the field, some in cliques, some loners, while many others walked or jogged the “warning track” that looped the yard. 

A new concern surfaced, hidden in the back of my mind by the question as to whether I’d survive the visit.  Was I even good enough to play in this game?  I’m 50 and live for baseball.  Sundays are dedicated to amateur ball in the 35 and older division of the Los Angeles Baseball League.  In that league, most have played long enough to have success because of our fundamentals.  But the arms are starting to go (if they’re not gone already).  The bat slows down.  The reflexes.  Though I do well, I no longer face 20-year old hurlers—the pitchers that can bring it.

Right away I saw their starter brought a hot fastball.  Just what I didn’t need.

We’d bat “through,” a common practice in adult amateur baseball where everyone on a 12 to 14 man roster bats instead of a traditional nine-man line-up.  It gives everyone a shot to participate.  Free defensive substitution is also allowed as opposed to more formal baseball rules.

We pushed across an unearned run in the first, but the Giants countered with a pair in the bottom of the inning.  Defense was sloppy; maybe I wasn’t the only one who was feeling the nerves.

The pebbles that saturated the all-dirt infield didn’t build confidence fielding the ground balls hit to me at second.  Still, the prisoners had obviously worked hard to make the field the best possible.  Not easy to do because, as Kent said, tools equal potential weapons. 

By the time I first came to the plate in the second I was sure of one thing.  Stay off the high fastball.  Their pitcher had too much heat for me—I’d never get around on it.

Our games on Sunday don’t have big crowds.  A few of the guys’ wives show up with the kids.  Maybe someone’s girlfriend.  That’s about it.  I played at a small college, and the attendance there wasn’t any bigger.

In the yard, I was in front of the biggest crowd of my life.  The quintessential captive audience.  But no catcalls or trash talk filled the air as I expected.  It didn’t matter.  I still felt the pressure.  As any athlete will admit, you want to go in and show the guys—on both squads—that you can play, that you’re not some slug that tagged along and drags the team down.  That you’re not that kid we all remember in the Pee-wee leagues—the last one picked—the one that swung after the ball was in the catcher’s glove.  I didn’t want to be that kid. 

Not here.

I take a high fastball that catches the corner.  The home plate ump, Junkyard (who has by far the coolest name of any umpire I’ve ever taken the field with) calls strike one.  Another fastball—up.  I swing.  Late.  Down oh and two.

Stay off that pitch.  Poke something somewhere.  Whatever you do, don’t “K” to start this day off.  

Not here.

Fastball, low and away.  I take it.

Junkyard rings me up.  Three pitches.  This day couldn’t have started worse.  Back to the metal table-looking thing.

A 3D puzzle of dilapidated structures sits beyond left-center.  Archaic stairs lead up and down the sides of faded yellow walls then turn to mysterious passageways before disappearing into areas unknown.  But my eyes fix past the maze of buildings to the notorious housing unit, West Block that looms above them.  A plume of steam pours out from one of the puzzle pieces to obscure the view.  It’s like a Dickens novel that’s come to life.

The prisoners responsible for hanging the numbers on the “Field of Dreams” scoreboard in right don’t dally after each half inning.  And they don’t give the benefit of the doubt on errors—even for the home club—as the miscues total almost as much as the score.

After six, we’re deadlocked at five.  But Kent has a wedding to perform between games, so it’ll be a shortened contest.  No inning will start later than 12:30. 

It’s 12:20 now.  The seventh is it.

That doesn’t bode well for us.  The SQ starter threw well, but the Giants now have Stretch on the mound to close it out.  The tall and lanky righty is likely San Quentin’s most famous player because he’s so good.

Stretch doesn’t throw as hard as their starter, but he quickly shows why he’s earned the reputation as a stellar pitcher.  It’s not his wide array of pitches; it’s his great command of them.  You’re not going to get anything good.

A hit, a stolen base and an out manages to move our go ahead runner to third. 

It’s our last chance.  And guess who’s coming up for us… 

I’m oh for two at this point.  In baseball, ohfers are long forgotten if you knock in the winning run.  All game I’ve been eyeing the short porch in right like the lifer who’s spotted a hole in the wall.  There’s some sort of caged-off material yard that shortens the field there.  Any batted-ball that makes the top of the cage is a homer.  It can’t be more than a 280-foot poke.  Probably shorter.  In my Sunday league, I’ll pop one out about once every two seasons with a metal bat.  But this I can reach, even with the wood we’re using.

Stretch makes his only mistake all day—he leaves one out over the plate.  Slightly outside.  I couldn’t ask for a better pitch to go the other way. 

Excitement raced through my veins as I ran to first.  I didn’t think I’d hit it well enough to make the top of the cage, but it certainly would be off the fence.  I’d return home to tell everyone about my game winning shot at San Quentin.

That’s when I learned a new aspect of playing in the yard.  Baseballs don’t carry as well above the wall as they do below it. 

My liner had taken off like a rocket, but once it got above the level of the wall, it died in the bay breeze like it’d been shot by a guard while trying to escape.  Not only didn’t it make the fence, it didn’t even make the track with the walking prisoners.  I watched it die, futilely dropping to the right fielder who was playing shallow by necessity of the short field.  My “blast” succumbed so quickly I wasn’t even sure it’d score the guy on third.

But in his eagerness to nail our guy at home, the right fielder misplayed the ball.  The go-ahead scored.  As far as I was concerned—as far as the legend would go—I’d crushed the game-winning RBI sac fly off San Quentin’s star pitcher.  No official scorekeeper would contradict me later.

The Giants launched a furious rally in the bottom of the inning, but couldn’t score.  We’d taken Game One.  From ohfer to hero at San Quentin.

Wait…

The Giants wanted to continue.  They weren’t going to lose this game.  Not by one run.  Coach Kent could go marry the couple.  They’d go on without him.

Despite the fact that my game-hero status was likely doomed, I had a begrudging admiration for the Giants’ insistence to go on.  It was like when you were a kid and stalled when it was time to go in for dinner because you wanted to keep playing outside.

We couldn’t touch Stretch after that.  But we still thought we had it until we gave up one (almost two) in the bottom of the ninth.  A tie.  And my game-winning “shot” turned into kiss your sister.

We did the congratulation line, with hugs.  I wasn’t worried about shivs anymore.  Stretch led both teams in prayer.  They thanked us for coming to play.  I couldn’t remember receiving more genuine gratitude.

Despite the whispered rumors in the dugout during the game, “three quarters of them are in for murder,” I never bothered to find out what each guy was in for.  I didn’t really care.  On this day, they weren’t any different from us.  They were just guys out playing ball.

Our team packed up our gear and started back toward the driveway.  Lunch would be outside the prison.  I lagged a bit at the bench to undo my knee-brace.  The anxiety was long gone.

That’s when the prison alarm went off. 

Instantly every inmate dropped to a squat.   Except for the loud drone of the buzzer, there wasn’t a movement or sound in the yard.

I’d almost forgotten where I was.

I didn’t know what to do.  The team huddled 100 feet away.  I heard a voice from somewhere say not to worry about it.  I think it was directed to us, but I didn’t know what that meant.  Should I make a move to get back with my group?  If I bolted for them I’d be the only moving person in the yard.  Now wasn’t the time to find out how good a shot the guards in the towers really were.

After a few minutes, the buzzer stopped and I hustled to the group.  I would hear it three more times in the second game. 

We’d win that one going away—our pitcher brought his good stuff on a late Saturday afternoon.  It was already well past seven when we said our goodbyes in the parking lot.  I drove off, wondering what I’d ever been so anxious about.

As I hopped on the freeway, a small insignificant sign I’d seen posted on the fence behind first base reappeared in my head. “FEEDING PIGEONS WILL RESULT IN CDC #115 BEING ISSUED.”

I didn’t have a clue what a CDC #115 meant other than the prisoners obviously would want to avoid getting it.  In our outside world, that sign would have no meaning.  Instead it would read something like, “$100 fine for feeding pigeons.” 

Theirs was a world where they knew what that CDC code meant.  And what every other CDC code meant, complete with its potential consequences. 

A world where they knew what to do when the buzzer went off in the yard. 

I’d come to try to live their world for a few brief hours and then be able to run back home where I’d be safe.  But there really was only so much I could experience as a visitor.  I could feel the flavor, but not know what it was to live the life. 

Instead I was rewarded with an experience that I’d taken for granted the entire adventure.  I’d joined a bunch of guys, from both sides of the wall, and for a day shared the same game we both loved.

And I drove off, looking forward to playing them again next year.