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| Baseball Gives Inmates Another Three Strikes |
| By Reuters |
| Published: 05/30/2003 |
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In a recent game of amateur men's baseball, Chris Rich hit a home run and later took the mound to pitch his team to a 10-1 victory. He then went back to his cell at San Quentin State Prison north of San Francisco, Calif., where he is serving a life sentence for first-degree murder. Rich and his prison teammates are members of the San Quentin Giants, a real-life murderers row who play men's league teams from an outside world they may never see again. 'This is absolutely the highlight of my week,' said Rich, 43, a lanky 6-foot-8-inch man who played college ball with St John's University in New York from 1978 to 1981. Asked how someone with a college education who once ran his own business ended up sharing a dugout with serious criminals, Rich looked forlorn. 'Sometimes things happen in life you just don't expect,' he said. 'I know that I belong here for a while.' Yet on the well-maintained San Quentin ball field, the sins of the past are forgotten. The imperative of the game is all that matters, and stealing -- a base -- is applauded. Among those watching the game was warden Jeanne Woodford. 'This is about teaching people how to act positively in their lives,' she said in an interview. Dressed in a black pants suit and a stars-and-stripes pin on her jacket, Woodford seemed more a friendly school principal than boss of one of the best-known prisons in the United States, home to nearly 6,000 inmates. She was unarmed despite just a few officers in the yard and hundreds of prisoners. The most dangerous moment of the morning came when two players from the visiting team collided on the field while chasing a ball. 'It is really about teaching inmates what to do with the minutes of their lives,' Woodford said on the San Quentin team's opening day last week. 'Human beings by their nature can't sit there and do nothing. That's where they get into trouble.' Baseball in San Quentin, where more than 600 people are now on death row, dates back to the early 1900s. Outside contributions, including uniforms from the San Francisco Giants, support the effort. Heavy metal band Metallica recently gave $10,000. 'I don't believe we are being coddled,' said Rich. 'I would hope that everyone in here would get out some day and this is just another way of interacting with people.' |
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