John Kruk Told The Craziest Story About Playing In A Prison Exhibition Game

Former Major League Baseball player John Kruk is one of the most colorful people to ever step between the white lines. Which is what makes him a fantastic color man for Philadelphia Phillies broadcasts.

Case in point: Saturday night during the Phillies game against the Padres, seeing left-handed pitcher Adrian Morejon throw against the Phils somehow reminded John Kruk of a time he was playing in an exhibition game against a prison team in Mexico.

The story he proceeded to tell has to be one of the craziest baseball stories that’s ever been shared.

“Did I ever tell you about playing the prison team when I was playing winter ball?” Kruk began.

“In Mexico?” Kruk’s broadcast partner Tom McCarthy asked.

“We had an exhibition game every year against a prison team at the prison,” Kruk continued.

“Well, they let me lead off just to get me out of the way. You know, Spring Training they’ll let a guy lead off just so he can get another at-bat or whatever. There’s a strikeout for Kyle [Schwarber].

“So I go up there to bat, the catcher doesn’t have any catcher’s gear on.

“And I said, you know, he spoke English too, I said, ‘You don’t have no gear?’ He goes, ‘No.’ No mask, no nothing.

“I’m like well I’m not going to hit with a dude that ain’t got no catcher’s gear on. Right?

“So we get him an extra pair of, our catcher had an extra set of gear, so he let him use it.

“I asked him, I said, lefty pitcher threw like hard, that’s what reminded me of him, kid threw hard like this pitcher.

“So I asked the catcher, I said, ‘What did he do?’

“He said, ‘Oh, he found his girlfriend cheating and burned up her car and her boyfriend in it.”

Of course, just one pitch later McCarthy interrupted with “There’s a line drive by Turner.”

“Very uncomfortable at-bat,” Kruk continued, not missing a beat.

“There were probably a lot of things running through your head,” McCarthy replied.

“Yeah, like get me the heck outta here,” Kruk replied. “But then we went in there and ate with them afterwards in the prison.”

Kruk then explained how the prisoners tried ripping the hat off his head, grabbing a little hair along the way, and after that he told the manager, “We can’t do this anymore. I love a good competitive game, but this is like survival, man.”

Somehow, despite playing for the Phillies in this game, Nick Castellanos did not come up and hit a home run at any point during John Kruk’s crazy prison story.