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The Death Row Baseball Team and Other Odd Episodes in History

Khalid Elhassan May 18, 2020 34 min

Death Row All Stars: A Story of Baseball, Corruption, and Murder - State Penitentiary — Alston's All Stars. Daily Mail

36. The Killer Team’s Mascot

The Alston All stars with their team mascot, the warden’s son. Daily Mail

In the death row Alston All Stars’ first photo, the players could be seen wearing their prison inmate numbers on their shirts’ left hand pockets. It was not until 1916 that the Cleveland Indians became the first major league baseball team whose players wore numbers on their uniforms – in the Indians’ case, on their left sleeves.

In another photo, taken after the death row team’s first win, the convict players look spiffy. They had lost the ad hoc prison shirt outfits, and looked sharp, sporting matching uniforms and caps. At a time when only white players were allowed in the major and minor leagues, two of the All Stars, catcher James Powell and first baseman Eugene Rowan, were black. In the midst of the offenders – including, it should be recalled, three rapists – sits the team’s mascot, Felix Vern Alston Jr., the warden’s son.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.