MANKATO — From the bleachers Sunday — where it was easy to marvel at a perfect throw from left field to nail a guy at home, or watch a guy lope around the bases after smacking one out of the park — it looked like any other game.

Chad Schreiber, 29, knows differently, however. He knows how lucky he is to be here. He knows he very well could have been sitting in a prison cell in Stillwater serving time for a felony driving while intoxicated charge.

But instead he’s here playing in a most unusual softball game. His team’s roster is filled with names that, at one time or another (or perhaps multiple times, such as his) have appeared on a jail roster, or in criminal charges for drug or alcohol crimes.

Almost all of the members of this team are graduates of Blue Earth County’s Drug Court, a sort of diversion program that pulls people out of the traditional criminal justice path and puts them into a program that is designed to help them rid their lives of the kinds of behaviors that lead them back to drug and alcohol use.

And on the other side of the field: That team is made up of police officers, some of whom arrested some of the guys on Schreiber’s team. Good Guys Vs. Bad Guys? Cops Vs. Robbers? Good Vs. Evil? The World Series of Sin?

It’s not nearly that simple.

Kevin Mettler, a county probation agent who works with individuals in the drug court program, said the coming together of these two teams says a lot about how successful the program has been.

The program is still young, but its recidivism rate is just 4 percent.

“(The officers) have bought into the fact that these guys have made major changes in their lives,” he said.

Sunday’s game was the second meeting between the two groups. A few weeks ago, the first time they played, the teams split a double header. This weekend, however, the police got the better of the drug court guys. But there wasn’t any animosity. No complaining. No accusations of horrible calls by the umpire. Just a group a men having a good time on a steamy Sunday in August.

“They’re the other team,” Schreiber philosophized. “But they’re not the enemy.”

Schreiber and his brother-in-law, Officer Steve Hoppe, came up with the idea one day while talking about softball. The officers have a team that plays in a league. Schreiber said he’d like to get a team together of drug court graduates. Eventually, the light bulb went on, and a match up was set.

“It has been refreshing to see how the participants of the program have come to view law enforcement,” Mettler said. “I continue to hear stories about how well they feel they have been treated by the law enforcement community. I have even heard them say they were glad they had been arrested, so they could get help.”

Hoppe, a nifty shortstop for the police officers’ team who let very few grounders get past him Sunday, said he hopes the collegiality of the games can send a message.

“This could be a good public image builder for both parties,” Hoppe said. “Hopefully we can keep this going.”

Play of the game: With a guy on third, an officer hits a deep fly ball to left fielder Steve Horner. Upon catching it, the runner on third tags up and makes a mad dash for home. Horner, from deep left field, fires a strike to the catcher who tags the runner out at home.