Wyoming, 1911, the sun shines down on a baseball diamond as a pitcher throws a fastball that
doesn’t go in the intended direction. He stamps a foot on the ground, enraged that he’s messed up
again. What he does over the course of this game is literally a matter of life and death. He’s
not just playing to win. He’s playing to survive. As are his teammates, all convicted felons playing
for the Wyoming State Penitentiary All Stars in the city of Rawlins. Murderers, robbers,
men who’ve committed heinous crimes against the vulnerable, playing like seasoned professionals.
This rag-tag bunch of thugs and killers can play, there’s no doubt about that, but the question is,
can they win their way to a new life? Let’s go back to start.
When the Wyoming State Penitentiary was opened in 1901 it was one tough place. This was a time
when the West was still called Wild and outlaws pervaded the land. Still, not long before the
prison was opened, you could say that criminals faced a rougher kind of justice if apprehended.
Take for instance the story of the killer and robber, Big Nose George Parrott. He was arrested
in 1881 and was sent to the local jail in Rawlins. Big nose, who certainly had quite the snout,
must have thought his luck was in when he was busted out of that jail, but it turned
out that his rescuers were a local lynch mob. Those townsfolks weren’t willing to wait for
the authorities to deal with him. Around 200 of them strung Parrott up from a telegraph pole.
Physicians managed to get hold of his body, but get this, his skull ended up being someone’s
ashtray and parts of his skin were made into a death mask and a pair of shoes. The third
Governor of the State of Wyoming, Mr. John Eugene Osborne, actually wore them to his inaugural ball.
If that sounds grim, you should know that many crazy things went down in those days.
Opening a penitentiary and housing prisoners there was somewhat more progressive than mob rule.
Still, if you found yourself locked up around the time of the beginning of the 20th century,
you could be sure that you weren’t getting much sympathy from the townspeople
you had stolen from, beaten up or killed. No one blinked an eye when rustlers and murderers
were treated inhumanely by a well-respected, eminently wealthy businessman named Otto Gramm.
You could say that this man made hay while the frontier crime rate was off the scales.
He had a contract with the prison in the early days and pretty much ran the place.
For every criminal that entered the prison he received fifty-seven cents per day per prisoner
from the state, but he also ran the prison’s broom factory and took all the profits from that.
Inmates at the time complained that Gramm was a man from the Dark Ages,
saying that he made the men work ungodly hours and barely fed them. They drank out of tomato
cans and were given just enough food to prevent starvation. Rancid food at that.
So, in that first decade of the 1900s, Wyoming State Penitentiary was hell on Earth,
but for Mr. Gramm it was a goose laying a lot of golden eggs. Not surprisingly, morale in
the prison was low. Prisoners had tried to escape and were killed while doing so. They killed each
other, and on occasions, guards were murdered. In 1911, the progressive senator Joseph Carey
campaigned to get rid of Gramm and after he won the governor’s race he made Sheriff
Felix Alston the big boss in the prison. This man, who’d been a gold miner, a water
and ice man, a farmer, a national Park guide and justice of the peace before becoming a sheriff,
didn’t not believe that working the prisoners close to death was the way to fix their wicked
ways. The broom days were over, and instead of hard labor, prisoners were educated and also
entered intense physical fitness programs. When they weren’t doing those things, they
were sent out in gangs to fix the state’s roads. This was a breath of fresh air to the prisoners,
some of whom had never even been outside since the prison opened. They were no longer making
brooms and pining for a square meal but were being fed and enjoying activities in the prison yard.
What activity did they enjoy the most? Baseball of course, the USA’s favorite sport at the time.
One day warden Alston was watching the men play and he thought, “Goddamnit, some of those men
aint half bad.” In fact, he mused while watching men hit balls over the wall and throw curveballs,
that some of them would stand a chance of becoming professional.
Alston got talking to his old friend, governor Carey, and asked him if it would be ok if the
prison formed a baseball team. Carey wondered if forming a prison team could be a bit of fun
and he gave Alston the greenlight. Carey was also partial to gambling.
This will tie into the story soon. The men were bought brand new uniforms
and practiced as if they were professional players. They called themselves “The Wyoming
State Penitentiary All Stars” and while the public thought the whole thing was a farce,
the inmates would not only prove them wrong but would change the public’s perception of them.
One person that absolutely hated the fact the team had been made was Gramm,
who still held the belief that prisoners needed to be treated like animals. Not only that,
he had hopes that one day he might start his ultra-profitable broom operation again.
It was arranged that the All Stars would play their first game against a local team
called the Wyoming Supply Company Juniors. No one gave them a chance of course, because how could
prison criminal vermin organize themselves and beat a team filled with real athletes.
Imagine hearing the line-up, Leroy Cooke is at first. He bludgeoned to death a barber and stole
his money. On second, George Saban, convicted of second-degree murder. On third, Jack Carter,
who shot and killed an old hermit, cut him up and burned his remains in the fireplace. Pitcher,
William Boyer, stabbed his father to death with a letter opener.
The date was set. On July 18, 1911, a team consisting of murderers, rapists, a forger
and five thieves, would go up against the mighty Wyoming Supply Company Juniors.
Alston had high hopes, so high that he put down quite a large bet that his team would win.
The stakes were also high for the team. If you won this game, they might well get
time off their sentence. But if they made a mistake that cost the team the win, well,
no time off and not much chance of them having their sentence commuted. That meant a life or
death game for some of the death row prisoners, and by God, they took it seriously. They didn’t
want to end up having their skin made into a pair of shoes, a story that no doubt haunted them.
They didn’t just win the game, a game against one of the best teams in the area,
they absolutely trounced their opponents and they did it playing with style and as gentlemen.
The final score was 11-1 to the All Stars. They were over the moon, not only because they’d
achieved something great, but because it was looking like hard time was about to get softer.
The outstanding player on the team was Joseph Seng. He hit two home runs,
with one being a grand slam. If you’re not a baseball fan that means hitting a homerun when
there are men on bases one, two and three, thereby scoring four runs. It’s about as good as it gets.
The newspapers the next day were busy publishing stories about a bunch of convicts
that had somehow turned into formidable baseball players. Referring to Seng,
The Washington Post wrote, “Slayer Scores Home Runs.” The first paragraph read, “Joseph Seng,
right fielder is under sentence to be hanged. Seng made two home runs hit over the penitentiary
wall. One of his hits cleared the bases, bringing in three others and scoring himself.”
Seng was on death row for killing his supervisor in the street, well,
the victim wasn’t only his supervisor. He was also the husband of the woman that Seng loved.
This is what another newspaper wrote about him: “Joseph Seng, who was convicted of murder in the
first degree and sentenced to death, played a classy game all the way through. He will
petition the governor to commute his sentence to life imprisonment sometime this month.”
In fact, when people read about Seng’s brilliance a lot of them sympathized with him.
Ok, he had killed a man, but some people said, hey, he isn’t exactly public enemy number one,
he killed out of love, and man, he’s a great athlete, surely the state could commute his death
penalty. Rumors started to catch fire. Word on the street was that if Seng could keep on playing
like a star then he might just get what he wants. But there were others on the team that hoped for
some mercy for their efforts. One of them was captain George Saban. The tale thickens here.
You see, Saban was arrested after he’d killed three sheep herders. He’d snuck up on them one
night and shot them all dead, which really were cold-blooded killings. The thing was, though,
those slayings were part of a long dispute between herders and cattle ranchers that had taken other
lives. These conflicts were known as the “Sheep Wars”. There were actually local politicians that
thought Saban was in the right for doing what he’d done. Let’s not forget, this was the wild west.
Another thing was the fact that Saban was actually a friend of the prison warden, Alston. It had
been Alston that had arrested him, and while he didn’t want to put a close friend behind bars,
he didn’t really have much choice. He got 25 years for his crime but was made the captain of the team
and was also allowed to leave the prison at times. What did he do when he was on the outside,
you might wonder? Well, much of his free
time was spent going around to the local saloons and brothels and talking to men who liked to make
bets. He told them all about his crack team of players and just how good Seng was. Saban
would take twenty percent of their winnings if they bet. He was also in cahoots with Alston,
whose money he used to place bets of his own. Well, when Mr. Gramm the broom-man got wind of
this he was at first appalled and then later he wondered if he couldn’t report the matter.
He got in touch with Senator Francis Warren, a man who was hoping to oust Carey as governor.
While Gramm had no proof that Carey was in on the betting, he believed it to be true.
Meanwhile, the guys on the team were having the time of their lives. They were eating
better food than the rest of the prisoners and they moved more freely around the prison. They
played the same team again, and they won easily. Superstar Seng was man of the hour another time,
hitting balls left, right and center. The score was the same as the first time, 11-1.
But as prisons go – even today – one man’s good luck is another man’s torment.
Seng was to be executed soon even though he still had the public on his side; even though he was
winning games. Then one day an envious prisoner thought that he’d move forward that execution
date all by himself. He saw Seng sitting on a landing at the bottom of some stairs, and with
an iron ball fastened to his legs, he climbed to the level above Seng and pushed over a heavy box
of sand. It would have hit and killed Seng had he not at the right moment moved to the side.
They won their next game, 11-4, and again Seng was the standout player, hitting home runs with
as much ease as a Major League player playing against a junior high school team. Three games
to zero, and Seng was the hero every time. Surely, they’d not hang him by a rope.
As the team were basking in their glory, inmates had been trying to escape. Having a baseball team
practising in the prison and going out for games wasn’t making life easy for the guards. It created
more chaos. Seng also now needed to be protected, which took up even more of the guards’ time.
It wasn’t really his fault, but it bugged some of the inmates that he was getting special
treatment. His execution date arrived and lo and behold, he wasn’t sent to the gallows.
Some inmates gossiped that the only reason that happened was because he was due to play
and was making a lot of money for... someone. They won their fourth game against the same team,
but not with as much ease as they’d won their other games, with the final score being 15-10.
Over the course of 15-months they won time and again, racking up a record of 39 wins to 6
losses, with each game being played in front of raucous supporters. In total,
$136,000 had been bet on them, which is almost four million in today’s money. It’s thought a lot
of the winnings went into the pockets of local politicians and their election campaign funds.
The heat was on Governor Corey, a man whose reputation was at risk after Gramm had started
those rumors about him placing bets. It’s likely because of that, that Corey announced
that he was cracking down on gambling. Soon after, the All Stars were a thing of
the past. Alston said that baseball would be replaced with educational programs,
which seems to have suited a lot of the other prisoners not on the team.
As for superstar Seng, well, he at least got to live a little longer than he would have if he
hadn’t hit balls out of the park. It wasn’t good enough, though, and he was hanged on May 24, 1912.
350 locals had petitioned the governor to commute his sentence, but it didn’t work.
The man that once hit a ball through a third-story window in the guards’ quarters of the prison
wasn’t going to escape the dreaded noose. Before his death he Seng said, “I never
received a square deal until I was brought to the penitentiary.” He was grateful for having
been able to play the game he loved, at least for a short while. At 2.45 am, the moonlight shining
on the gallows, he took his final breath. The local newspaper wrote the next day,
“His steps were steady, and he went to his death in a manner which stamped him as a brave man.”
Now you need to watch this, “You DON'T Want To Be Sent To This Prison (Worst Prison In The
World In 2019)”. Or have a look at this, “Why Nobody Can Escape From Guantanamo Bay Prison.”