Play Ball !

It’s almost Spring.  In here, the seasons are controlled by the equipment on the rec yard.  You always know when summer turns to fall when the rec yard workers come out to install the soccer goals.   Soccer – at this prison anyway – is a fall and winter sport.

And Spring?  Spring arrives the day the yard workers come out on the field, take down those same goals and then drag the infield.  That’s right, just like outside, you know its Spring when you hear the sound of balls pinging off aluminum bats, you see guys playing long toss in the outfield and infield practice begins.  Spring hit last Sunday.  It’s time to play ball.

Our dorm is putting together a softball team – two teams actually.  Because our IT college students (40 guys) have night classes at least two nights a week and our day students (44 guys) have classes at least one night a week, we’ve built two teams.  I’m head coach, a role I’m excited about because I love baseball.  Baseball, you see, always reminds me that there’s hope.  No matter what happened the season before, Spring arrives and you start over.  It’s a new season, a new game, a new chance.

I thought about that the other night as I looked over our list of players:  twenty-two guys spanning the age and “bid time” brackets.  A fair number of our “players” will be heading home at the end of summer, their sentences completed.  For them, this Spring really is a new beginning.

And some of the other guys?  For “old heads” like DC and Saleem – and even Mike, down 19 years (though he’s only 34) – there will be parole hearings.  Those three are still part of the “old law”, pre-1995 when parole existed and inmates could earn “30 for 30”, meaning you only did – usually – 50% of your sentence (assuming you earned good time at the max level).  And they try not to think about the disingenuousness of the current parole board’s practices.  It’s Spring.  They each, deep down, carry hope that they will be part of the select few, 2% last year, who will be paroled.

Me?  This July 1^st I can petition the Governor for a conditional release, converting the rest of my time to supervised probation or house arrest.  And I have hope.  No matter how unlikely it appears, I have to have hope. I have to believe.  After all, it’s Spring.  It’s time to play ball.

The other morning the paper reported that Governor McDonnell was on pace to restore more voting rights to convicted felons than any of his recent predecessors.  The article also noted he granted medical releases to two inmates.  I smiled when I read the short description of the older inmate from Salem who was pardoned after being diagnosed with terminal cancer of the bile duct.  See, that was the inmate whom I helped.  I drafted his petition.  He was able to pass away at home with his family beside him and I was part of that.  It’s Spring and things that didn’t make much sense during those long, cold winter days suddenly make sense.  There’s a reason – and a season – for everything.

A few weeks ago Lent began.  In my old life, my “free” life, I never gave much thought to Lent.  I didn’t “give up” anything.  I just went on as I was.  “AC” – after confinement – I took a different look at Lent.  Renewal, I figured, could come through sacrifice and discipline.  So each Spring (for the past four seasons of Lent) I’ve fasted, meditated and given something I enjoy up.  This year it’s been coffee and chips, my two favorite commissary purchases.

And giving them up has been fairly easy, just like engaging in 36 hour fasts.  It’s because I know Spring is here and Spring brings renewal, hope and life.

Our ball teams are excited about getting the season underway.  It’ll be a nice break from the three-a-day classes the guys have, a chance to get out in the fresh air and run and playball.  And all those things matter in here.  It all matters because time is the most painful part of prison and Spring brings hope and hope eases the pain of time.

Playing Soccer

So last week the gang unit came through on their annual visit.  Every man, stripped down to boxers, standing at the end of their bed to be examined (i.e. stared at) by gang unit members for telltale “tats” indicating your affiliation status and rank.  Like so many things in prison:  the strip searches (“lift you sac, squat and cough”), the urine testing with an officer so close observing you can feel his breath, you learn to shrug off the daily indignities and violations of your person hood.  After all, you’re an inmate.  You brought it on yourself; you have no rights.

The search ended and the rec yards reopened and the building soccer team needed to get ready for a game.  Big S – the team captain – came at me with Goat and Jordan.  “We need you.  None of our subs have any wind.  You run every day.”  I hemmed and hawed a bit then figured “what the hell”.

I found myself out on the soccer field chasing around a bunch of guys young enough to be my sons.  The oldest, Big S, is only 31.  Most of the team is 24 to 28.  I ran and kicked the ball and ran some more.  It was exhausting yes, liberating and fun.  Here I am 52 years old, and I’m playing a kids games with, well with kids my older son’s age.  I was drenched with sweat.  My legs ached.  Still, two hours running on the field felt amazing.

There are many days when I wonder “does any of this really matter?”  I ask myself what use my adult years have been.  Thirty years ago I had my life in front of me.   I had prestigious graduate and law schools wanting me.  My entire life was set out in my mind’s eye.  I took a different path.  I followed my heart and it didn’t end as I expected.  Bad choices (through good intentions) and I find myself alone in prison.

I think of Marlon Brando in “On the Waterfront”.  Heartbroken, he confronts his brother who, for a few quick bucks years earlier convinced Brando’s character to “take a dive” in a fight.  “I coulda been somebody Jimmy.  I coulda been a contender.  Now I’m nuttin but a bum.”  Tragic words.  But that “bum” found his courage – the heart of the champ.  The movie ends with a powerful heart-in-throat scene as Brando, broken and beaten, crosses the union line to work the docks.

So I ran the soccer field with a bunch of 20 year old convicts:  drug dealers and other societal misfits.  And they rooted me on and I did the same for them.

That night, I had an American Lit review session.  The guys were reading one of Thomas Paine’s immortal pieces.  It began “these are the time that try men’s souls”.

Ironically, those were the first words of the only letter my older son has written me in the three years since my arrest (and in another ironic twist, they are the last words of a letter I sent him on the exact date he wrote me).  As I was explaining Paine’s meaning to the three guys gathered around, my mind drifted back to soccer practice.  It was just a bunch of guys running, playing ball, having fun.

Does any of this matter?  Apparently, it does.  They asked me to play soccer because I belong.  I’m part of these guys’ lives in here.  I am the “father” figure, the guy to bring your questions to.  And for me, at this stage, that’s enough.  I matter to these college guys.  I’m a part of the team.