BOONVILLE, Missouri — The softball field at Boonville Correctional Center has two fences. The first is a standard outfield fence, 275 feet from home plate, stretching from foul line to foul line. The second, about 50 feet farther, is made of taut barbed-wire strands ringed by circles of razor wire, separating the state penitentiary from the world. It’s a stark reminder that the field is, quite literally, a diamond in the rough.
That didn’t keep Lucas Erceg from admiring it. Erceg, who over the past two seasons has established himself as one of the most reliable relief pitchers in baseball for the Kansas City Royals, had arrived at Boonville, a minimum security facility that houses more than 800 inmates, about an hour earlier. He walked through a door that listed the rules to enter — no tight, transparent or otherwise revealing clothing; no holes in jeans or pants; no skirts, dresses or shorts above the top of the kneecap — and, as he toured the grounds, stopped at the field to appreciate its beauty amid the endless array of brick buildings that surround it.
Erceg had found purpose and meaning on the baseball field, and it brought him here, about 90 minutes east of Kansas City, Missouri, on an off day. Soon after Erceg was traded to the Royals last year, Tristram “Sean” McCormack, the chaplain at the facility, sent Erceg a letter asking if he would consider speaking to a group of inmates. Willie Mays Aikens, the former Royals first baseman who had served 14 years in federal prison for selling crack to an undercover police officer, had spoken at Boonville. So had Darryl Strawberry, the former New York Mets and New York Yankees star whose issues with drugs derailed his career. Even if Erceg were comparatively anonymous, McCormack believed his story would resonate with those incarcerated…