Ball Four, Take Your Base!

What do you do when death threats circulate against you in a prison, and the inmate baseball teams you coach as a volunteer push ordinary competition into the danger zone? Strike Three, You're Out! described Kent Philpott's experiences coaching baseball at San Quentin Prison during the 2010 season during rising turmoil among the team inmates. Ball Four, Take Your Base! continues the story into 2011 and 2012 of how a perfectly wonderful game can be both a joy and ruined by friendly and unfriendly competition and undercover activities. Stories from other visiting teams and photos from several seasons are included.Philpott's previous book, Strike Three, You're Out! took the reader through the making of a baseball team and the 2010 season inside San Quentin, one of the most infamous state prisons in the country. See further inside the thinking, emotions, and stresses that accompany the inmates' involvement in what is often the most important part of their entire incarceration. Understand why inmates will say and do almost anything to get a chance to play ball and how frustration and disappointment derails them. Find out what "payback" is, how power and authority work, why the sports teams are the only integrated groups, and how "reverse racism" plays a role. The payback part is foremost in Ball Four, Take Your Base! expressed through multiple death threats and manipulations and ending with Philpott being banned from the prison.