Washington State Penitentiary Mavericks · Baseball Team Est. 1907
Swinging for Redemption in Walla Walla
The forgotten story of the prison baseball team at the Washington State Penitentiary — the men who played, the families who waited, and the questions about justice and second chances that still haunt us a century later.
A Book by Lucy Ramsdell
New Year's Day, 2023
I was deep in research for Pioneers of the Pacific — a forthcoming baseball documentary by Kirk Findlay of Findlay Films — when I typed “Mavericks” and “Kurt Russell” into newspapers.com and stumbled into Walla Walla, Washington.
What I found wasn't the famous Portland team. It was a long-forgotten prison baseball team called the Mavericks, with a history stretching all the way back to 1907. Behind the walls of the Washington State Penitentiary, men were playing ball — and their stories were waiting in the archives.
A 1939 team photo with a list of inmates' last names lit the fuse. Mugshots. Crime ledgers. Inmate-written newspapers with their own sports columns, editorials, and poetry. And box scores that listed the players only by their inmate numbers.
Those numbers stopped me cold. I've never spent a day behind bars, and I'd never compare a paycheck in the free world to a prison sentence — but in a much smaller way, I know what it feels like to be reduced to a number. I spent 13 years in the grocery business and another 21 representing those workers through my union, and somewhere along the way the corporate mentality took over and they literally issued us employee numbers. It left me feeling insignificant. So when I saw a box score full of digits where names should have been, something in me wanted to give these men their names back — the same impulse the reform-minded warden and Washington state leadership seemed to have in the early 1900s, when they believed a man behind the walls was still a man.
None of that erases the harm these men caused. Every crime had a victim, and I carry their stories with me too — I can just as easily picture myself in their shoes. Giving an inmate his name back isn't excusing what he did; it's refusing to pretend he stopped being a person the day the cell door closed.
So I started matching numbers to names, names to family trees, family trees to living relatives. I tracked down their lives after prison — the second acts no one had bothered to write. What began as a sidebar became three years of obsession with prison and prison baseball history — and a question I still can't shake: does the way we punish actually work?
Ball 'n' Chains weaves together prison baseball, the men who played it, and the lost history of the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla — one inning at a time.
Inside the walls · circa 1920s
A Story Apart
“Eight years before Jackie Robinson broke the major-league color line, the Washington State Penitentiary had already integrated its own diamond — and one of its pitchers had Negro League fame that preceded him.”
His full story — and how it ended — only inside the book.
Inside the Book
1915 →
The Mavericks were the first prison team allowed to leave the walls and play outside opponents — charity exhibition games at Borleske Park for a fish hatchery in 1915, the Red Cross in 1939, and other special occasions when the town turned out to watch.
After the Gate
What became of these men after their numbers came off — the marriages, the jobs, the disappearances, and the descendants still carrying the story today.
Rehabilitation
The rehabilitation programs of the early 20th century — and how a baseball diamond inside the walls became one of the era's quietest experiments in what punishment was actually for.
The Roster
Real men. Real box scores. A few of the inmates whose lives are traced in Ball 'n' Chains.
A few of the faces I pulled back out of the ledgers — turning a forgotten roster into the men who once filled it.
First Base
On the Mavericks roster — and inside for a jewelry heist. A steady glove at first who became one of the team's recognizable faces.
Manager · 1st Mavericks
AKA Thos. Dolan. A character who deserves his own book — manager of the very first Mavericks team and one of the most colorful figures in the prison's early athletic history.
Pitcher
Did time in nearly every correctional institution along the West Coast — and was an awfully good pitcher anywhere they let him take the mound.
Pitcher · "Mr. Baseball"
AKA "Woody." Born 1910 in Clarksville, Arkansas. Pitched in the Negro Leagues for the Omaha Monarchs and Yakima Browns before arriving at the Washington State Penitentiary in 1939. His story after the mound is one you have to read to believe.
The Taxi-Cab Bandit
Known to the papers as "the taxi-cab bandit." His mugshot — slick hair, sharp suit, hard stare — could pass for a movie still.
Wrongfully Convicted
Sentenced to eight years for allegedly stealing a typewriter. Later established to be innocent — one of the quiet tragedies tucked into the ledgers.
More faces, more stories, in the pages ahead.
The Author
Lucy is a documentary researcher and author whose work on Pacific Northwest baseball led her unexpectedly into the archives of one of America's oldest prisons.
“The first time I saw the team photo and looked into the faces of those incarcerated men, I had to know — what happened to them? How did they get there in the first place, and what became of them after they were released? Then I learned how far back the team went, and the history pulled me in like a vacuum.”
For twenty-one years as a union representative in the Pacific Northwest, Lucy watched a pattern repeat itself: men who had done their time, proved themselves reliable on the job, and were still fired during probation when a background check surfaced an old felony. They had already shown up, worked hard, and earned their place — but company policy did not care. She lobbied and advocated alongside her union to pass “Ban the Box” legislation so employers could not ask about convictions on applications, yet the law still did not go far enough. She kept asking the same question: if someone serves their sentence, should they keep being punished after release?
That question is the through-line of Ball 'n' Chains — a labor of love built from hand-set newspaper type, dusty ledgers, prison-yard box scores, and the kindness of strangers who generously shared the stories and details that helped bring this book to life.
After three years immersed in prison records, Lucy turned to writing children's books — including the Cactus Commune series — a deliberate turn toward something joyful after years of reading about men, crimes, and punishment. She continues to balance both projects, with the majority of her time and energy devoted to bringing Ball 'n' Chains to publication.
Three Years of Research
Archivists, historians, librarians, and the descendants of the men themselves — every page owes a debt.
Closest to My Heart
Kirk Findlay
My partner, who always inspires and encourages my creativity. None of these pages would exist without you.
Coming Soon · From Page to Screen
This book began while I was researching Pioneers of the Pacific, a forthcoming documentary by Kirk Findlay of Findlay Films. Together we're now developing a companion film adaptation based on Ball 'n' Chains — bringing the Mavericks, the archives, and the walls of Walla Walla to the screen.
Saturday Afternoons ~ 1-4 PM
Behind almost every man on the Mavericks roster stood a wife, a mother, a sister, a daughter — women who rode trains and wagons across the Palouse, sometimes for two days, to spend an hour on the visitors' bench at the Washington State Penitentiary.
They brought clean shirts, peach preserves, news from home, and updates from the parents, siblings, wives, and little ones waiting for them. They wrote the letters that kept these men tethered to the world outside the wall — and, when the gates finally opened, they were the ones waiting on the other side.
History rarely recorded their names. This book tries, wherever the archives allow, to give them their rightful place in the story.
For Publishers, Agents & Rights Holders
Ball 'n' Chains — Swinging for Redemption in Walla Walla is a narrative nonfiction account of the WSP Mavericks: the prison baseball team that became a fixture of Pacific Northwest baseball from 1907 into the late 1950s, drawing thousands of paying spectators across more than five decades to the special bleachers built above the walls of a penitentiary that had stood since 1886.
The book sits at the intersection of sports history, rehabilitation and second chances, and Pacific Northwest Americana — a story the archives have kept, but the bookshelves have not. Team photos, archival portraits, original game programs, prison newspapers, and never-published letters anchor the manuscript.
I'm seeking a publishing partner to bring it to readers. Download the one-page pitch sheet below, or reach out for sample chapters and a conversation.
Print edition: 8.5 × 11 in · 0.125 in bleed · crop & registration marks · or reach out below for sample chapters
Common Questions
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