The Royals had a recent off day in the Bay Area (ever notice that for everybody else in the world an off day is a bad day?  But in baseball an off day means a day off…meaning a good day?…In the rest of the world an off day is a bad day…and a day off is a good day…but I digress….as usual…..)
 
So after many trips to San Francisco, I finally made it to…and escaped from….ALCATRAZ!!

 

 

The boat ride over from Fisherman’s Wharf is a nice little excursion…although it was a bit chilly.  The official place to make reservations fyi is alcatrazcruises.com.
 

 

 

Alcatraz was a lighthouse..then a longtime military base, before it became a maximum security penitentiary in 1933.  Al Capone was among the infamous who did time here.  This is the “block house” at “The Rock” as Alcatraz was known.
 

 

 

Pretty spartan accomodations.  The famous “escape” from alcatraz happened when prisoners apparently used spoons stolen from the dining hall to methodically chip away at the concrete heating duct under the sink.  No one is known to have successfully escaped from “The Rock.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OK…I escaped…but I had a lot of help! 
 
 

 

I doubt the games were broadcast on the radio…but this was the recreation yard…and that area farthest away in this photograph served as the infield for the prison baseball league.  Inmate/spectators would sit on those steps and cheer…or boo.  Talk about a tough crowd!!
 

 

This is the dining hall at Alcatraz.  The knives in the kitchen were all different shapes that hung in specific “slots” which allowed guards in the kitchen to know that all cutlery was accounted for each day.  Even using this logical system, knives did occasionally “walk away” from the kitchen.
 
Just a mile or so away from this formerly dark, depressing prison is beautiful San Francisco.  Beauty so close and yet so far.  One other note about Alcatraz…many of the prison employees and their families…and yes, their children, lived there.  Kids would ride a boat to their school on the mainland each day and return home in the evening.  Sounds strange, but those who lived there said it was like living in a small, friendly town….