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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

33. The Killer Team’s Killer Record

The gallows trapdoor above which star player Joseph Seng stood, and through which he fell to his death by hanging less than a year after playing for the Alston All Stars. Daily Mail

Literally playing for time was a great incentive to be good, and during their brief existence, the Alston All Stars were one of the best teams in the West. The team lasted for only one season, and it was a pretty brief season at that. The convict players played only four games, but they won each and every single one.

The team’s star player, death row inmate Joseph Seng, was scheduled to be executed on August 22^nd, 1911, but he was still alive to play for the team’s fourth victory on August 23^rd. Many believed that he was being kept alive solely because of his baseball prowess. However, following the team’s fourth win, warden Alston, under pressure from the governor who hated gambling, shifted his focus from baseball to education for inmates. Seng’s stay of execution did not last forever: on May 24^th, 1912 he met his end at the gallows and execution by hanging.

Also Read: When the World Series brought America to a Standstill.

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.