35. The Killer Team Killed Its Opponents – This Time, Figuratively
As a baseball team, the death row Alston’s All Stars were not bad. In their first game, played on July 18th, 1911, they thumped their opponents, the Wyoming Supply Company Juniors ball club, 11-1. The Washington Post reported under the headline SLAYER SCORES HOMES RUNS: “Joseph Seng, right fielder for the Alstons, is under sentence to be hanged. Seng made two home runs hit over the penitentiary wall. One of his hits cleared the bases, bringing in three others and scoring himself“.
The Carbon County Journal, which described the team as The Cons, wrote of the star right fielder: “Joseph Seng, who was convicted of murder in the first degree and sentenced to death, played a classy game all the way through. He will petition the governor to commute his sentence to life imprisonment sometime this month“. Seng’s play impressed journalists and watchers, but it failed to move Wyoming’s governor.