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.

Scheduling

The worst part of the job is filling out the game schedule for the teams. It is almost a full-time job–at least you could make into one if you were neurotic enough. (I just barely escape.)

            How it works is, after being contacted by an outside team that wants to come in, I email the schedule out along with a gate clearance form and a little piece I wrote titled, “Considerations for teams.” (It appears at the end of this chapter.)

            This is all pretty simple, but the trouble begins with the gate clearance. On the form, four pieces of information are requested for each person coming in: name as on the driver’s license; that driver’s license number; date of birth; and social security number. A person at the prison, in the warden’s office, goes into an FBI data base, which is very sensitive, and the person will either be cleared or denied. If denied I hope to be told about this to prevent the player from making the effort to come only to be turned away at the East Gate. Sometimes I am so informed; other times I am not.

            Where the trouble comes in is when team managers try to get a player or two cleared in mere days ahead of the game date. Usually, a week or more is required.[1] Not that it takes so long to do the clearances, but it is a bureaucratic thing, there are rules and policies that must be followed.

            It is a gamble whether the add-ons will be cleared or not, and in these rush deals, I mostly never know what happened. Now we are at the gate, the players are all hoping to get in. Driver’s licenses are collected then handed to the officer at the East Gate, who disappears into his little shack where he runs the names through his computer. Invariably he will emerge with two piles of licenses; one set that cleared, the other that didn’t. The denied players sometimes take it okay, and some do not. There has been many a scene at the gate when the denied person(s) only has me to blame. Though I try to explain what might have happened, the disappointment can run deep. More than once a whole team will actually refuse to come for a game when even one of their players is turned away.

            One incident I will not forget easily was when a Marine, just back from Iraq, had only his military I.D. with him, which had his photo on it. The whole team cleared but him. I resolved to get him in, so I headed into the prison to find the watch commander in the Captain’s Porch and argue the case. He was not there, but I was told he was in cafeteria located just east of the Count Gate, the main entrance into the heart of the prison.

            The captain was seated having coffee with several other officers of rank, and I excused myself and presented the Marine’s I.D. It was examined, and then the watch commander said, “Nope, has to be a driver’s license.”

            A few years ago, a team came up from Los Angeles. They flew up on the Friday before the Saturday game, stayed at a nearby hotel, and there they were, eagerly looking forward to playing a real baseball game in one of the most famous prisons in the world.

            The day before, wanting to make sure, I contacted the powers that were responsible for the gate clearances and was told that the whole team was cleared it and there were no denials. Armed with that I phoned the manager of the team and said everything was a go.

            Not one got in; not one name was on the computer. I visited the watch commander, pleaded, begged, but no, sorry. I gathered the licenses, wrote all the information down on a piece of paper, made out a statement saying I would take full responsibility. Nope, Sorry. I am still upset about it.

Below now is something I developed that I thought might make things go more smoothly for visiting teams.

  CONSIDERATIONS FOR TEAMS

1. Please leave valuables in cars, or better yet, at home.

2. Bring a picture ID. Make sure to secure it during the game.

3. No cell phones, cameras, or other electronic devices.

4. A photo of the team may be taken in front of the East Gate before entering into the prison.

5. No blue, grey, orange, or yellow jerseys—convicts wear these colors.

6. Can bring in water, clear plastic bottle, and a snack if necessary.

7. Please do not give an inmate anything at all. “Nothing in, nothing out” is the thing.

8.  We must comply with anything asked by a correctional officer.

9. We cannot make a phone call for or contact anyone for an inmate.

10. No items of clothing may be given to an inmate, batting gloves, hats, cleats, etc.

11. Conversation may be made with an inmate, but be careful not to divulge any personal

      information. Best not to ask a person what crime he committed.

12. You will not be able to visit an inmate at a later date.

13. We have never had an incident of violence; this is not a worry.

14. A number of officers will be watching, from various locations, and the whole thing

      will be video-taped—but you will not be aware of this.

16. Try to ignore inmates who may come up behind the open dugout and want to engage

      in conversation. Be polite but discreet.

17. The officiating is usually poor, and we hope close calls go for the visitors.

18. It is not uncommon for players, who were supposed to be cleared in, turn out to be

      denied anyway. There is little or no recourse then. I suggest every player bring along

      a good book to read and maybe something to eat and drink while waiting for the rest  

     of the team to finish their game. This does not happen often, but it happens and for

     reasons we do not understand.

19. The whole point is to have fun and play baseball.

Thank you for being willing to come in. For many it is an unforgettable experience.

Kent Philpott

[1] San Quentin has bureaucracies galore, and they war with each other.  Rules change at a whim, and now a list of gate clearances require to be in a month prior to the date the team is scheduled to come in.

The Soul Journry: How Shamanism, Santeria, Wicca, and Chrisma Are Connected—Yes this book, we published 11 years ago.

Tomorrow I am interviewing, for television at Marin TV, one of Marin’s major shamans. Then a week later, via Zoom, I am interviewing one of California’s leading shamans, who lives near Los Angeles.

Reading the chapter on shamanism startled me about how I have kind of let it go, but it is huge in Marin now, likely second only to Buddhism in terms of the numbers of people attracted to it.

The person in the studio tomorrow lives in Mill Valley and passes by our church building every day. I am working hard to be ready, and in the process I am re-reading the book mentioned above.

Okay-the reason for this email: We need to be aware of these demonic practices. Oh yes, less than half a mile away is a store that is a business selling crystals and other things for the practice of Santeria, here known as Curanderos.

So I am encouraging everyone to become very aware of these practices thus going to Amazon.com, typing in ‘books’ then putting in my name, and then finding The Soul Journey. Not trying to make money, just doing my job of educating us to go about out work.

We all need to be very aware of these demonic religions, this is our work and so let us go to it.

Kent

Now jumping ahead to late 1968 or early 1969, at 128 Greenfield Ave. in San Rafael. Zion’s Inn for Girls, we called it, David Hoyt and I headed it up, and this event occurred after David and wife Victoria moved out. I was painting houses, etc., and we had turned the garage into bedrooms, usually six girls living there, besides my wife Bobbie and our two daughters Dory and Grace–we lived upstairs. One morning we all sat around the breakfast table. However, we had no food, I mean nothing at all. We did have a few tea bags but that was it. We just sat there, bewildered, when there was a knock at the door. I got up, went to the door, opened it and there stood two people, a man and a woman, about the same age as myself, and they held white paper bags in their hands. I opened the screen door, and they handed them to me. Just then, the man rushed down the stairs, out to a white van parked there, and came back up with a large white bag.

      I thanked them, heartedly, they turned, back down the stairs they went, into their van, and drove off. Never saw them again.

      Back inside, at the table, the bunch of us ate a most wonderful breakfast, the works, including orange juice and coffee. Afterwards I went off to a paint job, and later in the afternoon, a strange thought came to me. Who were these people? What was going on?

      When I returned home at the end of the workday, I searched for the bags the food had come in. I pulled about six bags out of the garbage basket, and examined them closely, and there were no indications at all, no words as there usually were, nothing. Suddenly it came to me; this had to be a miracle from our Lord. How the family and the other girls made it through the day, they/we had no food when I left, and there was no food left in the pantry. I think I got paid for the painting that day and brough home a hundred bucks or so.

First day of tryouts

 March 24 or maybe March 31

After a week’s worth of rain, which knocked out what was to be the first day of tryouts, it looked like we were finally going to conduct our first tryout on March 24. But then a seagull flew into a power line.

            The prison went dark, that early March night. And it was a dark and stormy winter’s night already. No lights at a prison! Worst case scenario indeed. Just after I had contacted all the coaches, the call came in from Don about how a huge generator was going to be installed at the prison, on the 24th, and all programs were to be cancelled. Right away, worry-wart me, began to fear that opening day would arrive and we would not be ready.

            March 31 did roll around. Saturday morning on the lower yard then with a full contingent of coaches, including two I wish were no longer with the baseball program, and a bunch of eager, excited convicts, all of whom wanted to impress the coaches with how good they were at baseball.

            I figured there would be a move made, by a couple of coaches, to sabotage the draft process and for some weeks I pulled as many strings as I could to prevent that from happening. It should never have come to this, but it did, and now the only thing to do is go on. For the first time, in a serious way, I wanted to walk away from it all. Now at age seventy I find it difficult to fight the battles, but this one I was going to deal with. I knew another threat, or an incident of almost any kind, could end the baseball program. One powerful person at the prison told me he was looking for any excuse to shut us down.

            My good friend Don DeNevi, the state employee who has overseen the baseball program for the past twelve years, and I have done what we could to ensure that Plan B would move forward even though there would be two teams and instead of four. We talk on the phone often and do what is within our power to have a recreational program that works for the inmates. Without Don being of the same mind as I am, I would have walked away long ago. But consistently, we have supported each other.

            Don cannot take the same stand as I do against those who would bend the baseball program to suit their own agenda. By ” those” I mean the several inmates that started the trouble as players for the A’s last year and those two A’s coaches who became their ducks.

Don and I agree that the inmates are acting out of the fear that they will be left out, not drafted, since there are the new guys on the Block, and much younger, and apparently quite talented as athletes. Now, we can empathize with that, but we are not giving in to it either. The program demands an equal and fair chance for a convict to make one of the teams and the draft is our solution. And that is the whole deal–a process of selecting players based on their baseball skills and not on a good old boys’ agreement.

Sometime in late 1968, my wife Bobbie and I with our three kids were living at 10724 Whitegate Ave. in Sunland, CA, in the northeastern part of the city of Los Angeles where I lived from 1955 to 1982. I had graduated from seminary, Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary in Mill Valley and was doing what one might call ‘street evangelism’ in the Haight-Ashbury. The JPM was at full strength, and I would go back and forth from San Francisco to Los Angeles every other week, sometimes on a bus, sometimes hitch-hiking, and a couple of times on my motorcycle.

      Thanks to Dr. Francis DuBose, professor at the seminary in Mill Valley, I was invited to join with a new church in the city, on Balboa St. between 41^st and 42^nd Ave. A store front, but it had been converted into a church. Today it is a Egyptian restaurant. I was invited to stay there when in I was in S.F. At some point I asked the church to let me turn the place into a kind of motel where homeless hippies could come and stay. (No money involved.)_ Graciously I was given permission, and with the help of the Salvation Army, I managed to find sleeping space for a dozen or more people.

      With everything ready, I stopped by a group known as the Haight Defense Committee, who set up a card table on Haight and Ashbury Streets and help direct hippies to those things they needed and told them of what we called “The Soul Inn” at the church on Balboa Street. The very next evening, three of us were at the church, The Soul Inn, about nine o’clock, just finished our dinner which consisted of a quart can of something or other when there was a knock at the door and 15 hippies, males and females, were invited in.

      First thing was food, which we had none of except for an inch or so of the quarter can. One of the guys with us, cannot remember his name right now, but we went in the back room, which we had converted into a kitchen, and started to dish up bowls of the stuff we had almost finished off.

      And here is where something incredible happened. I was dishing up and beyond belief, we feed all of the hippies and had an inch left over in the can. Somewhere in this process we knew a miracle was taking place, yet we did not announce it but only spoke of it among ourselves later on that night.