Tales From Behind The Bars

It's always unfortunate when sports and prison intertwine. It's also inevitable. Like Big Poppa said, "Mo Money, Mo problems." Today there are two Minnesota sports/jail stories. Both are no surprise, but sad none the less.

Isaiah "J.R." Rider, inventor of the east bay funk dunk and 5th overall pick by the Minnesota Timberwolves in the 1993 draft is once again in jail. This time he is accused of auto theft after being arrested early Saturday morning in the skid row district of Los Angeles. He has since been released on bail to await trial.

Rider has had a history of law trouble that dates back to his college days when he was arrested for throwing a milkshake through the drive-through window of a Jack-in-the-box. During the 95-96 season Rider was convicted of 5th degree assault after kicking the manager of a sports bar. Rider had a few more brushes with the law during his playing years, none worse than possession of Marijuana and possession of an illegal cell phone, but once his career was over the real trouble started. In January of 2006 he was charged with kidnapping and domestic assault. In February of 2007 he plead guilty to felony cocaine possession and evading an officer. In January of this year Rider was charged with unlawful Firearm possession after getting into an argument with a taxi driver.

The other sports related jailing is not about an actual athlete. Souksangouane Phengsene was jailed Sunday night for suspicion of DWI. Most people don't remember that name, let alone have the skill to properly pronounce it, but Phengsene was the man who killed Malik Sealy in 2000 on his way home from Kevin Garnett's birthday party. Souk was drunk that night as well and was charged with criminal vehicular homicide. When he crashed into Sealy Phengsene was driving the wrong way down highway 100.

In 1997 he was charged with drunken driving in Des Moines and again in 2006 in Crystal. Unfortunately, since he plead guilty to vehicular homicide and not DWI in the Sealy crash the 2006 charge was not enhanced. Hopefully the judge will take a good long look at this man's driving record, throw him in jail for a while and rip up his license forever.

This Man has Balls of Steel

Wachovia, Brinks and The FBI will never live down a robbery for so much money that happened on Pennsylvania Avenue. This is D.B. Cooper type shit!

If this dude ends up in jail he will automatically be made king of the miscreants. They will bow to him and throw cigarettes at his feet. He will have the power to stop and start riots with the snap of his fingers.

He will be carried from place to place by the lesser criminals and they will ask his advice about various acts of villainy. Nasty Nate will give him his cocktail fruit, and squirrel master will gladly run security for the man.

The FBI will probably hire him to think of other innovative ways to rob a bank in order to not be shamed this way in the future.

If only I could get away with something so glorious.

One reason I hate the White Sox

I don't know if this is really early but this kid is excited for this upcoming weekend. Myself and 5 friends are heading to Milwaukee for the Twins Brewers series, and I know the Twins aren't playing the best baseball as of late (except last Sunday, whatever that was), but any baseball road trip always brings about excitement. My goal is for this trip to go better then my last baseball road trip.

This story is not the sole reason for my hatred of the White Sox, but it has really brought the hatred to a new level. This story is going to be long, but it's worth it.

Last September 25-27th a friend and I decided to meet some friends in Chicago to check out the Twins/White Sox series. We took the Mega-Bus there (first sign this trip was going to be bad), which I will never do again, and I suggest no one ever do either. The bus was swerving all over the place and when we stopped half way some guy pointed out that our rear tires were pretty much completely balled. After a Quick stop we continued the trip, at about 6:30 am, we were approaching the suburbs of Chicago, when all of a sudden a big bang and we were swerving all over the road. Fortunately he gets us across three lanes of rush hour traffic to the shoulder. We sat road side for about an hour, we were supposed to arrive at the downtown bus station at about 7am, and we ended up being about 3 hours late.

Well we were alive and now we were in Chicago. We got on the train and headed out to my buddy's brother house on the north side of Chicago.

It was a beautiful day and after dropping our stuff off at his place is was almost lunch time so we met up with a friend in Wrigleyville, where we proceeded to drink some beers. The day was going fast and after lunch we messed around a bit in Wrigleyville, and then headed to this friends place to sit out the porch a bit before heading down to "the cell."

It was a great night for outdoor baseball even if U.S. Cellular isn't a great park. We got there early enough to watch the place fill up. Everything was going along well, besides the score, the twins were down 3 after 2 innings. In about the 4th inning my friend and I decided to go grab a beer and he was going to have smoke. We got out to the concourse and saw this girl smoking, who besides the smoking, and being a White Suks fan was pretty attractive, so since smoking tends to be a social activity we went over and joined her. After my friend took a few drags, a security guard came over and asked them to put them out, apparently there are designated smoking sections in the concourse, after being asked to stop my buddy took one more drag and put it out.

Next thing we knew, this power hungry security guard was all over my buddy. Acting like he was going to kick him out, so I thought that I would try and step in, not a good idea. Before I knew it I was thrown up against the wall then pulled to the ground, handcuffed and being drug down the concourse. While being drug down the hall the guard was yelling at me to stand up as he was wrenching on the hand cuffs he had on my wrists, which was making it virtually impossible to stand up.

I was taken into a holding room in the basement of the stadium and cuffed to a wall. I was there from about what I think was the 5th inning on, it's hard to say because I had no idea what was going on in the game. Finally I was taken out of the stadium and transferred to a nearby precinct for booking. I was charged with battery, or how they described it "illegal touching." We were there for about an hour, and when I left there to be taken down to the 9th precinct for the night I was leg shackled to a kid who was busted for selling crack to an undercover cop, seems like they really work hard to match up "criminals."

The cell I spent the night in was cold, which is to be expected, but I wasn't offered any food the whole night. To top it off the cell had feces on the wall. I spent about 8 hours in their. Everyone was release at about 9am; I didn't have a phone, because I had thrown it to my buddy so he could get a hold of my friends and family. So I borrowed a phone from a sox fan who had been arrested for getting into a fight and called my friends and the came down and got me.

What an ordeal. The twins did win though, torii hit a clutch homer and somehow punto hit one too.

I went back in October for my court date and everything was dropped before I walked into the court room. All I had to do was apologize to the guard, fuck him.

rant/
As we were walking out a women the guard was with says to me, "next time you're at Cellular behave yourself." This pissed me off more then any thing in this entire deal. You don't fucking know what happened, keep you damn mouth shut and get a real job. All you are is a security guard for the 2nd class baseball team in your city. U.S. Cellular sucks, the fans are terrible, the cops in Chicago are corrupt, security guards in general and especially at the cell are power mongers.

Fuck the White Sox!!!!!

/rant

Well, that’s my story; I hope it is nothing like the trip this upcoming weekend.