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1942 Baseball Game Halted by… a Prison Break??
And no…I’m not making this up!
It’s really amazing what I find whenever I visit the National Pastime, This Day in Baseball History in search of something historic to write about. I’m rarely disappointed. Here’s a real gem I stumbled onto earlier this week.
We’ve all heard of baseball games being suspended for various reasons. Rain, snow, fog, swarms of insects, medical emergencies…even earthquakes. But there was a game played on February 8, 1942, eighty-one years ago this week, at the Folsom Correctional Facility in California that was halted because of a prison break! That has to be a first! Maybe Johnny Cash had this game in mind when he sang ”Folsom Prison Blues” at San Quentin on February 24, 1969?
Dom DiMaggio All-stars!
The occasion for the game was the annual contest between the prison’s inmate baseball team and selected major leaguers. The group was assembled by Dom DiMaggio and billed as the “Dom DiMaggio All-stars.” Their roster included position players Ernie Lombardi, Gus Suhr, Joe Marty, Eddie Lake, and Johnny Babich, with Yankee Tiny Bonham on the mound.
In the featured photo above we see Ernie Lombardi in 1941 with Gabby Hartnett, about the time this game was played. According to the National Pastime website, here’s what happened:
In the seventh inning, with the prison team down 24-5, two inmates decided they were done watching the game and made a break for it. The game was immediately suspended and a manhunt was on. The inmates, Elvia E. Mead and Philip Gardner cut a hole through a fence while the game was being played and swam down the American River.
I know baseball is a game of “stealing,” including such things as “signs” and “bases,” but this takes things to a whole different level! Maybe that’s why inmate Gardner was at the game in the first place. After all, he was serving a life sentence for grand thief robbery and burglary. Was he unfamiliar with baseball and heard the term “stealing” being bantered around – and was hoping to pick up some pointers before the escape? Of course, that doesn’t explain his “compadre in crime,” inmate Mead, who was also serving a life sentence. But he had been convicted of murder!
Apparently the excitement of the day was too much for all concerned and the game was halted immediately after the breakout and was not continued. So the game went into the books as a 24-5 victory for the good guys.
All’s well that ends well!
Fortunately for all concerned, things came to a satisfactory conclusion. The two jailbirds were apprehended just three hours later with no apparent damage being done to life and limb on the outside. The ballplayers left the scene with a lot more memories of the day’s activity than they had bargained for.
But cooler heads eventually prevailed—after all, they couldn’t put an end to the annual event that had started at least as far back as 1913 and had brought so much enjoyment to both the major leaguers and the inmates—so the game was picked up the following spring. Perhaps invigorated by the events of the failed escape, the inmates prevailed this time by the final score of 6-4. The annual game between the Folsom Correctional Facility inmate team vs. major leaguers was still being played as late as 1951.
“Anybody Know Where We Can Find a Decent Inmate Catcher??”
Apparently, with baseball being the popular game that it was in the 1940s, the inmate baseball team was a source of great pride to the Folsom prison community. In 1943, when the team was lacking a decent catcher, an ad was placed in the Sporting News asking sheriffs around the county to “keep their eyes peeled” for a decent backstop that could be added to the team! (1).
An article I found about this game summed up the importance of baseball to the facility:
In a place where hope and joy would seem hard to come by, a simple game would bring both to the men that had found themselves in prison for a variety of reasons. I’m sure a great deal of those men looked forward to those games more than anything else as a life behind bars would be a bleak thing to have in front of a person. The men who played enjoyed these games and the men who simply sat and watched enjoyed them as well. They played every weekend and on many holidays as well, on each of those days, for a few hours at least, they were simply enjoying the game that is played on the diamond. (2)
I don’t know about you, but I’m glad I can watch games in such “safe” places as the “Friendly Confides” of Wrigley Field. That’s quite a contrast with the game played at the Folsom Correctional Facility on February 8, 1942!
Gary Livacari
Information: Footnotes 1 and 2: On This Day in Sports blogspot, Feb. 8, 2014;
MLB.com article on the prison game by Michael Clair, February 7, 2023
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