Death Row All Stars baseball team was full of convicts who played for their lives
dailystar.co.uksport is almost a matter of life or death. But for one unique baseball team, it was more important than that.The Wyoming State Penitentiary All Stars was a team that featured only the hardest of hardened criminals.For the team’s first game on July 18, 1911, the 12-man roster included three rapists, a forger, five thieves and three killers.One of those convicted murderers was star player Joseph Seng, sentenced to death for killing his lover’s husband.The Carbon County Journal’s write-up of the game read: “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, Seng’s ability on the baseball field seems to have earned him an extra year of life.The team was started after a new warden took over at Wyoming State Penitentiary.
The previous boss, Otto Gramm, had “mercilessly” used the inmates as slave labour for his broom factory, and many of them hadn't seen daylight for several years.When Big Horn County Sheriff Felix Alston took over, he promoted plenty of outdoor activities and team sports – and soon noticed that he had the makings of a decent baseball team.In the early 20th century, a kind of frontier justice was still in force in Wyoming.
Read more on dailystar.co.uk
