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In 1910, there was a baseball team of death-row inmates. Their executions were delayed only as long as they kept winning.

In another photo, taken after the death row team’s first win, the convict players look spiffy. They had lost the ad hoc prison shirt outfits, and looked sharp, sporting matching uniforms and caps. At a time when only white players were allowed in the major and minor leagues, two of the All Stars, catcher James Powell and first baseman Eugene Rowan, were black. In the midst of the offenders – including, it should be recalled, three rapists – sits the team’s mascot, Felix Vern Alston Jr., the warden’s son.

The team lasted for only one season, and it was a pretty brief season at that. The convict players played only four games, but they won each and every single one.

The team’s star player, death row inmate Joseph Seng, was scheduled to be executed on August 22nd, 1911, but he was still alive to play for the team’s fourth victory on August 23rd. Many believed that he was being kept alive solely because of his baseball prowess. However, following the team’s fourth win, warden Alston, under pressure from the governor who hated gambling, shifted his focus from baseball to education for inmates. Seng’s stay of execution did not last forever: on May 24th, 1912 he met his end at the gallows and execution by hanging.