Death Row All Stars Read online

  The Death Row All Stars

  The Death Row All Stars

  A Story of Baseball, Corruption, and Murder

  Howard Kazanjian and Chris Enss

  Copyright © 2014 by Howard Kazanjian and Chris Enss

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission should be addressed to Globe Pequot Press, Attn: Rights and Permissions Department, PO Box 480, Guilford, CT 06437.

  TwoDot is a registered trademark of Rowman & Littlefield.

  Project Editor: Lauren Brancato

  Layout: Joanna Beyer

  Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication data is available on file.

  ISBN 978-0-7627-8756-2

  eISBN 978-1-4930-1418-7

  Printed in the United States of America

  For all those accused of crimes they did not commit

  Contents

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Foreword

  Introduction

  Chapter One: A Fast Team

  Chapter Two: The Captain and the Critic

  Chapter Three: Outlaw in the Infield

  Chapter Four: Home at the Crossbar Hotel

  Chapter Five: Path to Righteousness

  Chapter Six: Betting on a Win

  Chapter Seven: Nothing but the Game

  Chapter Eight: Dead Man at Bat

  Chapter Nine: Seng at the Gallows

  Chapter Ten: The Last Inning

  Epilogue

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Index

  About the Authors

  Acknowledgments

  The trail used to research this book twisted and turned through countless libraries, newspaper offices, historical societies, museums, sheriffs’ offices, prisons, and churches. We would like to thank the following people and organizations for their assistance in the preparation of this book:

  Carl Hallberg, reference archivist at the Wyoming State Archives;

  Duane Shillinger, author and historian in Rawlins, Wyoming;

  Carol Reed at the Carbon County Museum Collections;

  James E. Schmidt, investigator at the Uinta County Sheriff’s Office;

  Christopher Blue, outreach assistant at the Union Pacific Railroad Museum;

  Lana Wilcox, county clerk and recorder in Evanston, Wyoming;

  Lewis L. Gould, author and historian;

  Dr. Marie Collins, historian for the Moroni Ewer family;

  Rev. John Grabish, Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish in Allentown, Pennsylvania;

  the staff at the Davenport Public Library in Davenport, Iowa; and

  the South Dakota Archives Department.

  A special note of appreciation is offered to Charles F. Seng for the background information he provided on Joseph Seng and to Olive Phelps for providing information about Alta Lloyd.

  We are grateful to Barry Williams for his fact-­checking expertise and to the editorial staff at Globe Pequot Press for their hard work and dedication.

  Finally, we are sincerely indebted to our editor, Erin Turner, for giving us the opportunity to write about this historic happening.

  Foreword

  According to an article in the April 17, 1912, edition of the Wyoming Tribune, “No thrill equals that which comes when a home player sends the ball ringing off his bat safely to the outfield. As the number of bases gained by such a hit increases, so does the excitement mount. When one of those drives wins a game, its maker is a hero.”

  The American West of the early 1900s was the scene of great change. The transcontinental railroad cut a swath through the country, pulling the population away from the East, bringing progress to and signs of the coming industrial age. Boomtowns were turning into cities; the ways of the West were disappearing and giving way to the inevitable intrusion of change.

  But as life became more sophisticated and industrial, a simple and pure game captured the attention of a nation. It would become a national pastime, but in Wyoming in 1910 baseball was an obsession.

  Every town, every camp had leagues or teams of its own. Every team had stars who could easily play alongside Honus Wagner or Ty Cobb. But there were no baseball stars as unique as the Wyoming State Penitentiary Death Row All Stars of Rawlins, Wyoming.

  And the star of the All Stars, Joseph Seng.

  From the moment he arrived at the penitentiary, Seng was known more for his baseball prowess than his murder conviction. Within moments of his incarceration, prison officials got around to the task of creating a team and building a place to play.

  The concept of prison reform and prisoner welfare was nonexistent in 1910. Time on the field was a precious escape from day-­to-­day life that could be both extremely hellish and (for some) lavishly privileged. Corruption and graft ran rampant. Prisoners were forced to work for little or no wages in the prison broom factory, denied basic necessities, fed rancid food, and forced to work road crews. Others were allowed to openly wander the streets of Rawlins, hunt rabbits outside the prison walls, and reap the monetary windfall of betting on the All Stars.

  For the players, baseball was their life, their saving grace. Inside their cell, they were rapists, robbers, burglars, and thieves. But on the playing field, they were fast, hard, and possessed an inside fast ball no one could hit.

  Primarily off the strength of Seng’s arm (and his bat), the Death Row All Stars quickly became the talk of barrooms, brothels, and even political circles. Fortunes were being made by wagering in exchange for promises of time taken off their sentences and, for Seng, the possibility of a death penalty commutation.

  For one cloudless Wyoming summer, residents of Rawlins boasted one of the finest baseball teams in the country. Scores of baseball fans came from all over the state, creating an abstract grandstand fan base. Socialites, merchants, and politicos sat alongside prospectors, ranchers, and drifters cheering for the men in the dark uniforms with “W-­S-P” sewn on their chests.

  The All Stars’ exemplary play wasn’t only the talk of the Wyoming territory but was lauded by sportswriters and fans as far away as New York and Boston. Like the western heroes of dime novels, these felon players were indeed all stars.

  But Seng’s on-­field performance failed to afford him great luxuries within the prison walls. For as many that respected and admired his abilities, there were those who resented his perceived celebrity status, making it their life’s work to kill the prison right fielder.

  Yet all of this seemingly left Seng unaffected. He was always a quiet gentleman. He spent his time off the field working alongside the prison doctor, writing letters to family and his spiritual advisor, and dreaming of the woman he loved—the woman whose husband’s life he took, putting him behind bars, condemned to death.

  On the field, he was alive and would continue to live. Joseph Seng was well aware that as long as the All Stars were on the field and generating money and fame for the prison and the state, he would be guaranteed to live another day. The conspiracy to keep the slugger alive reached from the guards and the warden to local officials and the governor himself.

  Sadly, like everything around him, progress would greatly alter Seng’s reality. Under the pressure of the growing morality (or guilt) of society, it was decided that the prisons needed to change. In order to save his own political hide, the go
vernor vowed to end the wagering. Reading and writing were deemed more important to reforming prisoners than pitching and batting.

  Before they were allowed to finish their inaugural season, the All Stars knew it was over.

  Each player went back to his cell, back into his darkness. Some were paroled, some escaped, some died. But each one carried with him the memory of his time on the diamond, in the sunshine. They kept with them the absolute joy of the time in hell when they were allowed to play. They weren’t playing for the glory, and certainly not for the money. They were playing for the love of the game; they were playing for the freedom.

  They were playing for time.

  —Skip Mahaffey, award-­winning sports broadcaster, talk show host, and author

  Introduction

  Walt Whitman once said, “I see great things in baseball.” Convicted murderer Joseph Seng and other inmates on the Wyoming State Penitentiary baseball team saw great things in the game as well. Though they played only four games during the summer of 1911, the Death Row All Stars, as they were sometimes called, were one of the best and most respected ball clubs in the West. They had great incentive to do well at the game; these desperate men were led to believe that if they won they would receive lighter sentences or stays of execution.

  From 1910 to 1919, one of the most eventful decades in baseball, many players associated with the professional clubs had reputations as hooligans and ruffians or worse. They were, according to baseball historian Bill James, a bunch of “shysters, con men, carpet baggers, drunks and outright thieves.” These hard-­bitten men might have fit right in with the convicts taking their turns at bat not for a salary or for the honor of their team but for survival. Culminating with the infamous Black Sox scandal of the 1919 World Series, it was a decade characterized by battles between players and owners, illegal gambling, and corruption in the national pastime.

  Still, it was the national pastime, and nationwide the sport counted approximately fifty-­six million fans. In rural states like Wyoming, the stands of small town stadiums in places like Rawlins were packed for games between the local teams. Across the United States men picked up bats and balls and spent their weekend afternoons and long summer weeknights on the diamond. The game got its start out west when Alexander Joy Cartwright, a bank clerk turned prospector, taught fellow forty-­niners the game.1 He organized a baseball club in San Francisco, and on February 22, 1860, the first game between Cartwright’s club and a rival team in the area was played. Cartwright helped develop the game into the highly competitive sport in which the All Stars participated. He established the distance between bases at ninety feet, nine-­person teams for nine innings, and three outs per team per inning. In addition to adding the position of shortstop, he eliminated the rule that allowed the defense to get a runner out by throwing the ball at him. He also divided the field into fair and foul territories.2

  Praised for its logic and beauty, the sport of baseball was held in wide esteem nationwide. The December 12, 1906, edition of the Atlantic Evening News included this praise: “Baseball is the most logical form of athletic pastime evolved by man and the logical way to reform the despondent, down-­trodden or devious. The game is the only one played which is founded upon exact and scientific lines. The playing field is laid out with such geometrical exactness, and with such close study of natural speed of foot and power of arm of the human animal as to give the defensive team an exactly equal chance with the attackers, and to compel both attacker and defender to approach the extreme limit of human speed and agility in every close play.”

  By the time the Wyoming prison baseball team took to the field in July 1911, more than sixty thousand clubs bringing together approximately seven hundred and fifty thousand men and boys over the age of twelve had been organized all over the United States. It seemed that practically everyone else in the country was a spectator.3 And in many places throughout the country, spectators gathered to watch inmates take their turn in the batter’s box or on the baseball field.

  Concord Reformatory in Concord, Massachusetts, was the first institution to develop an organized sports program for inmates. In 1886 prison authorities at Concord organized several club and various sports teams as part of a movement they thought would offer practice in self-­government. On Saturday afternoons the prisoner games included baseball, wrestling, and football. Neighboring towns frequently sent teams to play against the reformatory, and crowds gathered to watch.4

  The introduction of prison athletics ushered in a new era in prison discipline. Organized sports made prison more tolerable for the inmates, offering an outlet for the dangers posed by the considerable downtime for prisoners. Prison authorities also regarded athletics as an opportunity to control the prisoners “in masses,” and as a form of prison therapy, part of the “attempt to re-­create the man in prison.” The twin dynamics of control and rehabilitation, then, were built into the origins of prison recreational sports.5

  While recreational sports were widespread in the US penitentiary system in the first half of the twentieth century, what made the baseball games the Death Row All Stars participated in different was that these men thought they were playing for their lives. The story of how the team came to be and how the community, the prison administration, and the prisoners themselves contributed to its demise is a tale of corruption, gambling, legal drama, and a fight for survival that resonates more than a hundred years later.

  Even though their existence as a team was short, documentation about the Death Row All Stars, also known as Alston’s All Stars, abounds. The Washington Post reported on the team’s first game. Local newspapers reported on the team’s efforts on the field—and told the stories of the men and their crimes. Still, finding information about the team and the players was difficult at times because names were often misspelled or spelled in a variety of ways. For example, George Saban’s name was spelled three different ways in newspaper and historical accounts—Saban, Sabon, and Sabin. (His name is spelled Saban on the prison intake forms, and that is the spelling used throughout this book.)

  The picture that emerges, however, after digging through archives and revisiting the scenes of the team’s success, is that of a team that was fiercely proud of its skills and—for whatever reason—deeply devoted to winning. Regardless of the drama and controversy swirling around them in the prison, and regardless of their crimes, they were professionals on the field. And they were gentlemen. These men, criminals of all stripes, always tipped their hats to the loyal spectators, and for a brief time they rose above their offenses and dedicated themselves solely to the art of baseball.

  Chapter One

  A Fast Team

  A blinding hot sun pushed its way out from behind a few clouds and stretched its rays across a baseball diamond above Overland Park in Rawlins, Wyoming, in the summer of 1911.1 A crowd of people in the stands of the shade-­free arena carved into the center of town waved cardboard fans in front of their faces in a futile attempt to push the merciless heat away from them. All eyes were trained on Thomas Cameron, the cherub-­faced, overly tired pitcher who had the mound. He backhanded beads of sweat off his forehead as he stepped away from his position and looked over the fielders behind him.

  Some of his teammates slapped their fists into their rough, well-­worn gloves, and all shouted words of encouragement. Cameron adjusted his cap and pulled it down far over his forehead. He kicked the dirt under his feet, and a haze of powdery dry dust rose in the air around his ankles and settled on his grimy uniform. He stepped back onto the mound and readied himself to pitch. His arms rose high over his head as he started his windup. Rearing back on his left leg he fired a wild, high fastball. The alert batter turned away from the plate while fading backward to avoid the out-­of-­control pitch, but the ball ricocheted off his left shoulder and bounded into the stands.

  A fat, unkempt umpire shouted for the batter to take his base as the spectators hissed at the rattled Cameron.
The team captain, George Saban, stood near the dugout with a grim expression on his face. It was an unfortunate error. Cameron’s shoulders sagged under the weight of what he knew could happen because of the mistake.

  The team was warned that substantial bets had been placed on them to win the game. Influential leaders both in and out of the prison, including the warden, stood to benefit from a victory. That information came from the team captain and a prison guard. Individual errors that cost the team the win would result in death.

  At the conclusion of the game, Cameron joined the other players on his team as they lined up single file along the third baseline. There wasn’t a trace of satisfaction in the win or for a game well played on any of their faces. A half dozen burly, heavily armed guards carrying a long link of handcuffs and shackles approached the team. As the guards leveled their guns at the team, each player slipped the braces on and locked them in place.2

  The Wyoming Supply Company Juniors, the team the convicts had just defeated, was known as one of the best teams in the state. They applauded and cheered the Wyoming State Penitentiary All Stars as they shuffled toward the exit of the stadium. The crowd followed suit, and the mesmerized onlookers watched the prisoners as they loaded onto the bus.3 The players took their seats and peered back at the crowd through the barred windows.

  Although the All Stars played the game of baseball with civility and respect, outside the sport their behavior was judged unruly and barbaric. Imprisoned for a variety of brutal crimes, some of which were worthy of the death penalty, these inmates had a gift for America’s favorite pastime.4

  Thousands of men had transported heavy metal track into the Wyoming Territory in 1867, every spike driven into the earth that held the rails in place solidifying the Union Pacific Railroad’s position in the region and bringing civilization to that part of the frontier. According to author and historian Francis B. Beard, “The Wyoming Territory was the child of the Union Pacific.”5 The railroad had plotted a course to the Pacific Ocean. The stops created along the way were based on accessibility to water or other important resources, such as coal, that were needed to keep the railroad engines moving along. Another objective the railroad had was to secure a share of cattle traffic. Towns the Union Pacific Railroad helped create had great economic promise.6