RetroSimba

Redbirds ventured into the place where the Birdman of Alcatraz once was cooped.

In 1960 and 1961, Cardinals players and coaches visited inmates in the federal penitentiary at Alcatraz.

The first group to make the goodwill tour on June 3, 1960, consisted of Cardinals players Ken Boyer, Alex Grammas, Curt Simmons and Hal Smith.

A year later, on April 21, 1961, the visitors were Cardinals players Stan Musial and Red Schoendienst, and coaches Johnny Keane, Howie Pollet and Harry Walker.

The groups went there while the Cardinals were in San Francisco to play the Giants.

Known as The Rock, Alcatraz was where some of the most notorious criminals served their sentences, though when the Cardinals visited, convicted murderer Robert Stroud, known as the Birdman of Alcatraz, no longer was there. He was moved to the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Mo., in 1959.

Lawless legend

Alcatraz got its name when Spanish explorer Juan Manuel de Ayala sailed into San Francisco Bay in 1775 and called the rocky island “La Isla de los Alcatraces,” the island of seabirds.

The U.S. Army built a fort on Alcatraz Island in the 1850s and the facility later was made into a military prison.

From 1934-63, the island was the site of a federal penitentiary. Prisoners included gangsters Al Capone and George “Machine Gun” Kelly.

Robert Stroud was at Alcatraz for 17 years (1942-59) but didn’t have birds there. He became a bird expert during his 30 years of incarceration (1912-42) at the Leavenworth federal penitentiary in Kansas.

Burt Lancaster got an Academy Award nomination for best actor for his portrayal of Stroud in the 1962 movie “Birdman of Alcatraz.” Also nominated for Oscars from the film were Thelma Ritter for best supporting actress and Telly Savalas for best supporting actor. Film clip

According to the FBI, 36 convicts tried to escape from Alcatraz in the 29 years it was a federal prison. Nearly all were caught or died trying. A handful were declared missing and never found, most notably Frank Morris and brothers John Anglin and Clarence Anglin. In June 1962, the trio escaped through loosened air vents in their cells and left the island on a rubber raft. They never were found and the FBI, which closed the case in December 1979, concluded the three men probably died in the frigid water and dangerous currents of the bay.

Play ball!

Among the activities available to Alcatraz inmates were handball, table games and softball.

According to the National Park Service, inmates were allowed two hours of yard time each Saturday and Sunday. Softball was played on a patch of lawn, and balls, bats and gloves were provided.

Balls hit over the wall were considered outs, not home runs.

The softball games were well-organized. Individual and team statistics were kept and two leagues were formed. The leagues were based on talent level. The most talented players belonged to a league with four teams: Cardinals, Cubs, Giants and Tigers. The other league had four teams named for minor-league baseball clubs: Bees, Oaks, Oilers and Seals.

In 1938, one of the best softball players at Alcatraz was Lorenzo Murrieth, who was serving 40 years for assault and theft. He batted .402 for the 1938 Alcatraz Cardinals. Murrieth and another top player, William Lucas, led the Alcatraz Cardinals to a .778 winning percentage, best in the league in 1938, according to the National Park Service.

Unlike professional baseball at that time, the Alcatraz softball teams were integrated.

Many Alcatraz prisoners were avid baseball fans. According to the National Park Service, radio jacks were installed in cells on Oct. 4, 1955, and inmates listened on headphones to the broadcast of Game 7 of the World Series between the Dodgers and Yankees.

“Baseball allowed inmates to mentally escape their confinement and experience a brief moment of freedom,” the National Park Service noted.

Fan club

On Thursday, June 2, 1960, Ken Boyer hit a home run, helping the Cardinals to a 4-3 victory over the Giants at San Francisco. The next day, Boyer joined teammates Alex Grammas, Curt Simmons and Hal Smith on the visit to Alcatraz.

The players were familiar names to the Alcatraz audience. Twenty-eight inmates were subscribers to The Sporting News, the magazine reported.

“Most of the prisoners are either violently for the Giants or violently against them,” Simmons said.

One inmate complained to Boyer that Giants owner Horace Stoneham “must have had rocks in his head” when he traded Daryl Spencer and Leon Wagner to the Cardinals for Don Blasingame.

Some prisoners told Smith they lost their allotments of three packs of cigarettes a week by betting on the Cardinals, The Sporting News reported.

When an inmate spoke to Grammas in Greek and Grammas responded in kind, a guard ordered them to talk in English and wanted to know what they had said to one another in the foreign language.

The players told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the question they were asked most often by the prisoners was, “Where’s Stan the Man?”

Stepping up

A year later, Musial gave the inmates their wish, joining Red Schoendienst, Johnny Keane, Howie Pollet and Harry Walker for the April 1961 visit the day after the Cardinals arrived in San Francisco for a weekend series.

“One of the inmates comes from East St. Louis and he told me he ate in my restaurant once,” Musial said to the Post-Dispatch.

Keane said, “A lot of them like the Cardinals and they know all about the players, too. They get to hear the Dodgers’ games as well as the Giants through earphones in their cells. No television of any kind.”

In an editorial, The Sporting News saluted the Cardinals for meeting with the prisoners: “This was a simple act of charity and the men involved are to be congratulated for taking the time.”