"Baseball on the Rock" (National Park Service, Alcatraz Island)

National Park Service page on inmate recreation at Alcatraz: two hours of yard time each Saturday and Sunday, softball rather than baseball, eight teams in 1938, and cell radio jacks installed on 4 October 1955. It names Volney Davis as a pitcher.

Date: 2019-08-30
Kind: agency-history
Source: National Park Service, Alcatraz Island (Golden Gate National Recreation Area)
Retrieved: 2026-10-12
Rights: Text published by the National Park Service on nps.gov, dated "Last updated: August 30, 2019." A United States government work, public domain under 17 U.S.C. § 105. The page's softball photograph is credited to the National Archives and Records Administration; the underlying archival item was not located, so it is not reproduced here.

The page says inmates were allowed two hours of yard time each Saturday and Sunday and played softball on a small patch of lawn, with gloves, bats and balls provided and no uniforms. In 1938 there were four amateur and four league teams. It says some inmates, “like bank robber and kidnapper Volney Davis, actually played for both amateur and league teams,” and that in 1938 Davis was the Oilers’ pitching ace, appearing in 18 games with an 11-7 record. The page also says that on October 4, 1955, radio jacks were installed in the cells so that nearly 300 inmates could hear Game 7 of the World Series.

This entry takes only the recreation facts and the reference to Davis. The page’s other passages on fights and tensions in the yard are not used. Davis’s own record is his warden’s notebook page.

itemAlcatraz warden's notebook page for Volney Davis, No. 271Bureau of Prisons notebook page with the identification photograph of Volney Davis, No. 271, received at Alcatraz from Leavenworth on 26 October 1935 under a life sentence for conspiracy to transport a kidnapped person (Minnesota, St. Paul); stamped transferred to Leavenworth on 30 March 1947. A copy is stored here.item"U.S. Penitentiary Alcatraz: Federal Prison 1934-1963" (National Park Service, Alcatraz Island)National Park Service summary of the penitentiary years: the product of Attorney General Homer Cummings and Bureau Director Sanford Bates, with James A. Johnston as warden for fourteen years and a "concentration model" that later served as a blueprint for the high-security prison at Marion, Illinois.itemAlcatraz (Federal Bureau of Prisons history page)The Bureau of Prisons' history page on Alcatraz names Al Capone among the well-known criminals who did time there, and says most of its prisoners were not well-known gangsters.