Now this is something you certainly don’t see every day.
The Frontier League’s Joliet Slammers are making waves for hosting an exhibition game at a former penitentiary in Illinois. No, really.
It’s not quite as famous as Shawshank State Prison from The Shawshank Redemption, but the Old Joliet Prison had its own turn on the silver screen years earlier, when Elwood, played by Dan Ackroyd, picked up Jake, played by John Belushi, at the gate in the 1980 classic The Blues Brothers.
The Slammers and Gateway Grizzlies took the field in front of 5,500 fans at Old Joliet Prison in Joliet on Thursday. The prison, which opened in 1858 and closed in 2022, originally hosted baseball games between inmates starting in 1914.
Among those in attendance for Thursday’s game was actor and comedian Bill Murray, who became a co-owner of the Slammers in 2024.
“I had friends from Joliet, the great Jim Downey from ‘Saturday Night Live’ and [retired Illinois State Senator] Pat McGuire,” Murray told MLB.com’s Benjamin Hill. “I like Joliet, it’s a fun town, and it’s got a lot of history.”
The event, known as The Big House Ballgame, featured a playing field with metal bleachers on either side of the dugouts. There’s an abundance of seating, but the outfield wall dimensions are less than ideal. Per Hill, it’s 230 feet to left field, and 280 feet to center and right.
“I did horrible today,” Slammers right fielder Blake Berry, who said the game felt like “backyard makeshift Wiffle Ball” in his conversation with Hill. “Every ball I hit on the ground because I was trying to hit it in the air.”
The Grizzlies were victorious, winning 14-3, but the result of the game was of little importance.
After all, it’s incredibly rare that a baseball game is played at a prison. The players and all those involved surely won’t forget the moment for the rest of their lives.
Photo: Old Joliet Prison hosted a Frontier League game between the Joliet Slammers and the Gateway Grizzlies. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
