The Hunger Games, The Most Dangerous Game, Squid Game… there are lots of movies and stories about games and competitions where people have to win if they want to keep on breathing.
A group of inmates in Wyoming faced something like that in real life, or at least thought they did when they went onto the field.
They’ve been nicknamed the “Death Row All-Stars.”
The team’s actual name was the Wyoming State Penitentiary All Stars.
They were made up of some very hardened criminals, some of whom really were waiting to head to the gallows.
But playing on a baseball team, even one where supposedly a mistake on the field could send you to your ultimate demise, was a step up from life under the previous warden.
That guy turned the prison into a broom factory and made a fortune off the inmates’ work, while going to great lengths to feed them only the bare minimum above starvation.
The state shut his operation down and chose a new warden, Felix Alston, traded out broom-making supplies for baseball gear.
The prison team started playing against a squad from the outside, the Wyoming Supply Company Juniors.
And their games started drawing quite a few fans from the area in and around Rawling, Wyoming.
But there was a catch.
The prison team’s captain, George Saban, had started taking bets over the games; soon a lot of people were gambling a lot of money on whether the All Stars could win another one.
Saban decided to motivate his teammates by telling them that their games were as high stakes as games could possibly be: inmates who helped the team win might get time taken off their sentences.
Players who cost the team a win might end up on death row.
Sufficiently inspired, the All Stars won every game they ever played… which turned out to be just four.
The gambling on games had raised enough ruckus that the warden decided to do away with the team and launch an education initiative.
This proved that the team wasn’t playing to avoid the noose, though you might be forgiven for thinking otherwise.
Star outfielder Joseph Seng was supposed to be executed during the All Stars’ short season, but he wasn’t; people in town whispered that he was being spared as long as the team was winning.
Actually his lawyers had gotten him a stay in court, but less than a year after the newspapers wrote about his skill on the field, they wrote about how he was brave and steady as walked to the gallows.
Not everyone loves the roar of the crowd at a baseball game.
Frank Goldsmith grew up in Detroit, right near the stadium where the Tigers played so many famous games.
But the young man never once went to a game, because Frank Goldsmith had lived through the sinking of the Titanic.
He said the crowd noise reminded him of the dreadful screams and moans of those who hadn’t made it onto the lifeboats.
So don’t buy that guy season tickets, please.
The death-row inmates forced to play baseball for their lives (New York Post)
A Titanic survivor: The boy who was terrified by Navin Field in Detroit (Vintage Detroit)
Keep our show alive and healthy as a backer on Patreon
Photo by Mark Frederick Jukes via Wikicommons