Chapter One
More death threats
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Plan B is no more. Now there will only be two teams and mostly due to a few guys who played for the A’s in 2011. They did not want a draft, because, as I have heard, they were afraid they would not be chosen in the draft.
These disgruntled ones were in regular contact, by means of smuggled cell phones, with two of their coaches who got way too close to the convicts, something called over-familiarity. (This charge is based on bits of evidence that have come to me since May of 2011, but it is not completely determined that the cons did indeed have access to a cell phone.) [1]Together they conspired to keep things as they were last season with the draft only filling in if and when needed.
Bottom line however is that I am responsible for the problem since I was the one who brought these guys in to coach the A’s in the first place. These two did not function as head coach but were assistants. The head coach, another guy I was responsible for bringing in, did not run the team at all but left that work to a convict. It was a strange mix; two assistant coaches who put themselves into the game, and a convict made out the line ups and the calls at the third base coaching box.
The baseball program became more and more popular and the need for a second team was obvious, and for that to happen, more coaches were needed. I had no idea they would get caught up in the game cons love to play, that is, making “ducks” out of free people whether volunteers or state employees. You make a duck so you can, well you know what, and that is what happened to the new coaches. The central dynamic is an exploitation of a desire to be liked by the convicts.
Prison is boring to the extreme and to create some excitement, or to find a way to manipulate things, con games are run, and continuously. The fun part for the prisoners is to spend huge amounts of time plotting the strategy. It is like a chess game played on a large scale. I don’t judge it one way or another as I might well do the same given the same circumstances. But it can be dangerous for those who are being manipulated.
Rumors are key to the cons fun. An inmate might start a rumor in the morning and then check on its progress at the end of the day, just to see how it had morphed. Rumors that get a lot of traction have to do with who is coming in and who is going out. The rumor that impacted me most was the one wherein I was going to be kicked out of the prison.
The plot only partially succeeded. Things were swinging in my favor when all of a sudden, I got a call from a sergeant at the prison’s Investigative Unit who read to me three death threats that had been deposited in the box the prisoners place their outgoing mail into. Actually, only two were real threats, one read, in part, “There is a hit contract out on our dear coach and we want him protected.” There followed the usual questioning of the usual suspects, who were read the riot act, and that was it. Of course, I get only the briefest of details, but more will probably be forth coming once I make it back down on the lower yard.
That was last Wednesday, the 7th of March, and already things have cleared up and I am once again allowed to go back in.
The threats do not much comfort the other coaches. Surprisingly however, I have been able to add three new coaches to our staff this year, one being my son Vernon, who as a Desert Storm war vet, a military policeman, and is not easily frightened.
There will be a draft, which is set for next week, March the 24th, and it will then become apparent who will prevail.
I have a suspicion, hope I am not going paranoid here, but I have a rather strong sense of things that the “white boys” have somehow gotten the ear of the powers that be, really one person whom I cannot identify, but if I am right, what is left of Plan B will be trashed and the same old set-up as last year, that miserable, stressful year, will be in place once again. At this point, I am not clear how I will proceed if my worst fears are realized, but I will not quit no matter what. I refuse to let my enemies get the better of the situation.
I am determined not to get angry and start saying stupid things like I have in the past. Seems like every careless word I have spoken was remembered, twisted, and used against me. Sometimes I lose it on the yard; I know better but can’t seem to stem the flow of scandalous words. I will talk way too harshly to convicts. Maybe I try too hard to live up to what has long been said of me by those who know me best: “Philpott takes no shit.”
[1] In 2011 the prison conducted a sweep of North Block aimed at finding cell phones. Three hundred phones were found, 200 outside the block scattered around the upper yard and another 100 in cells. That means that one third of the convicts in North Block had a cell phone. Cell phones fetch as much as $500 so there is a steady supply. How do they get in? A phone call, a letter, all coded per plan, says how much money for what contraband item is to taken to the person who will bring the item(s) in. Once done, the outside outlaws have a power hold on the person who broke the law, thus insuring compliance.