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Death Row All​-​Stars

from The Baseball Ballads 2 by Chuck Brodsky

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about

The Wyoming state penitentiary had a baseball team in 1911 and 1912, and the players were death row inmates who literally were playing for their lives. As lomg as they kept winning...

lyrics

Where the Rockies meet the Plains
Towns rose up to meet the trains
Frontier justice handed down
Rawlins was that kind of town
They’d hang somebody now & then
Make some shoes out of their skin
Put them up there on display
Reminding folks crime didn’t pay

Wyoming built a state pen here
For the worst of men to spend their years
Tom Horn had been the last to hang
Before the shortstop Joseph Seng
Now all my teammates, one by one
And each of us a mother’s son
Will follow to the gallows pole
Lord have mercy on my soul

The day that Warden Allston came
He hung a picture he had framed
Of Connie Mack, his eyes ablaze
Sitting with his World Champ A’s
He ordered balls & bats & gloves
To form a prison baseball club
Teams from all across the west
Would testify we were the best

Practice in the prison yard
Concrete diamond, pocked and scarred
I only lived to crush that ball
Somewhere far beyond the walls
To places I won’t ever see
Go on ball, you go for me
Give those lawmen all the drop
Keep on rolling, never stop

On game days homemade banners hung
The streets were full, the bells were rung
The Carbon County Volunteer Band
Played for people in the stands
Dark blue flannels trimmed with white
They fit just fine, baggy or tight
Compared to wearing prison blues
They kept us off the working crews

1911, 1912
Trophies on the warden’s shelf
We went 39 & 6
Against a clock that always ticks
The warden bet on us to win
So did the judge, the two were friends
Our executions would be stayed
Depending on how well we played

Yesterday I struck out twice
Lay all night on a bed of ice
The warden called me in this morn
Asked me for my uniform
Offered me a cigarette
Told me that my date’s been set
Tomorrow, should the sun still rise
I would be the most surprised

This here 5 x 7 cell
At the old Crossbar Hotel
I’ll leave things just the way they are
The photographs, the baseball cards
Whoever has to take them down
There’s one of me out on the mound
Send it to my Mama, please
And say I died from some disease

credits

from The Baseball Ballads 2, released May 20, 2013

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Chuck Brodsky Asheville, North Carolina

See bio at www.chuckbrodsky.com/bio. If you'd like to support me further, you can do so through my paypal address - chuck@chuckbrodsky.com. Thanks.

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