Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 205, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 August 1916 — E. P. Honan Witnesses Ball Game Among Convicts at Michigan City. [ARTICLE]

E. P. Honan Witnesses Ball Game Among Convicts at Michigan City.

E. P. Honan, who has been attending the Indiana Democratic Editors' meeting at Michigan City, states that he saw a ball game among the convicts at Michigan City Friday, as the guest of Warden Edward Fogarety. Mr. Honan stated that the convicts had a league, and that it was surely amazing the interest that the men took in the game, and that baseball was doing more than anything possibly could toward keeping the men satisfied and making better men out of them.

A state prison is hardly complete any more without a baseball league composed of the men within the prison walls, and practically every prison in the United States has a baseball league, and only last month the baseball magazine had a long article on on of these teams telling of the rapid strides that were being made since the innovation. Occasionally the teams are permitted to leave the prisons for a game with outside teams, and are placed on their honor to return and there has not been a single instance in which a member has violated the trust placed in him. Some cases are reported of the men becoming so adept at the game, that when they have served their time they are offered positions with big league clubs and given a chance to earn a livelihood through their ball playing and become useful citizens. Baseball is probably the greatest leveler in the United States to day, and the poor factory hand is not out of place when he mingles with the biggest men of the day at a ball game.