STARKVILLE — If there’s one detail former Mississippi State University Head Baseball Coach Ron Polk wants to make sure nobody misses on a soon-to-be-unveiled statute, it’s not what you expect.

It’s not his face, not his cap, not his uniform.

It’s his Rolex, Monticello-based sculptor Rusty Reid told the Starkville Rotary Club on Monday afternoon.

“One sentimental thing was his Rolex, and that was his most important request on the entire statue,” Reid said. “It was given to him by the university, and he was really attached to it. … I dreaded it. It was the very last thing I did because I knew it was going to be hard.”

Polk was MSU’s head baseball coach from 1976-97, where he had one of the most successful records in school history.

Reid, who previously created the sculptures of Will Clark and Rafael Palmeiro that stand outside Dudy Noble Field, has now finished one of Polk. The eight-foot-tall sculpture will stand outside the Ron Polk Ring of Honor at the field and will be unveiled April 14 as part of Super Bulldog Weekend.

Clark and Palmeiro — known then as “Thunder and Lightning” — played at MSU under Polk in the 1980s and went on to play professionally. Clark played for the San Francisco Giants, Texas Rangers, Baltimore Orioles and St. Louis Cardinals. Palmeiro played for the Chicago Cubs, the Rangers and the Orioles.

Polk’s statute presented different challenges than did Clark’s and Palmeiro’s, Reid said.

“The challenge with the first two was it was impossible to do two 19-year-old baseball players when they’re 57 and make it look just like them,” he said. “Our goal then was when someone walks across the parking lot, we want them to look at them and identify them by their swings, not their faces.

“(Polk) surprised all of us by sending us a picture where he was about 60-something,” he added. “I said to myself that it may be easier than (Clark and Palmeiro) but in the end, it wasn’t. It was too symmetrical. Any big mistakes I make would be glaring.”

Reid said construction took about a year and involved much poring over photographs to get details correct.

“I used a lot of archive shots of Coach Polk, from as far back as the 1970s up until the 1990s,” he said. “I just pieced them together. One picture may be waist up, the next waist down, and I might just have to take different pieces and put the puzzle together.”

Reid also met with Polk on several different occasions to exhaustively photograph and measure him — and the Rolex, of course.

“It was a very long process; it takes 30 minutes, 45 minutes,” he said. “(Polk) kept asking me, ‘How much longer?’ I got finished, and you forget stuff so I had to call him back up and ask him for 10 more minutes. I did that three different times.”

Reid said Polk understood once he saw the completed piece.

“Most people think with a sculpture, you take the clay and then just put it in bronze,” he said. “It’s a four- to five-month process to go from a clay sculpture to bronze. There’s so many different pieces that have to be put together. (Polk) got more and more patient along the way.”

Polk was delighted with the end result, Reid said.

“I sent him a picture early on, and he said he loved it,” he said. “That told me I was in the right direction. It was a blast to do, and I’m so lucky to be involved.”

One of Polk’s requests did get shot down, though, Reid said.

“At the beginning, he looked at (then-Athletic Director John Cohen) and asked if he could have a cigar in his hand,” Reid said. “(Cohen) said no, the university was a no-smoking zone and you can’t do that. I also learned real quick when I was working with him not to talk about the NCAA. I did that one time, and I figured out I shouldn’t do that.”

Brian Jones is the local government reporter for Columbus and Lowndes County.

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