By BEN DOBBIN
Associated Press

ROCHESTER - A softball player accused of fatally punching a rival team member after a Sunday recreational-league game spent more than four years in prison for battering a man with a golf club, according to state records.

Sean Sanders, 27, ran off the field after punching Daniel Andrews, 37, in the head at the end of the game Sunday afternoon in Parma, a Rochester suburb, and was captured a mile away some six hours later, authorities said.

Andrews was rushed unconscious to a hospital. He died the next night after being placed on life support.

Sanders was initially charged with second-degree assault, a felony, and jailed without bail. But prosecutors were weighing whether to upgrade the charges pending an official investigation into the cause of death.

Sanders was imprisoned for second-degree assault in February 2003 and released from Groveland prison in Livingston County in March 2007, according to state Department of Correctional Services records. He also served eight months in prison in 1999 for third-degree burglary.

He was arrested in the Rochester suburb of Greece in November 2002 for hitting a man "numerous times about the body with a golf club," state Division of Parole spokeswoman Carole Weaver said. In pleading guilty, Sanders maintained that he was intoxicated and had come to the aid of a friend who was attacked by "numerous other individuals."

Calls to the Monroe County jail were not immediately returned, and it remained unclear whether a lawyer had been appointed for Sanders, who lives in Irondequoit.

Witnesses told police the game between men mainly in their 30s and 40s had been marred by trash talk between some players. Andrews, who lived in Hilton, was punched with a closed fist in the back of the head when the teams linked up to shake hands, said Monroe County Sheriff's spokesman Cpl. John Helfer.

More than 4,000 people play recreational softball in Rochester, thousands more in suburban leagues.

"I've seen people go after each other ... but usually it's more of a shouting match," Jim Graupman, a softball commissioner at the city's McAvoy Park, said in Tuesday's Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.

Graupman said he could remember only about a half-dozen violent clashes during his 46 years of involvement in recreational sports.

"We're not the pros," he added. "We're here for fun, enjoyment and camaraderie. And if guys are taking it to another level, they don't belong playing the game here."