STARKVILLE — Jim McKell stood in one corner of the Oktibbeha County Heritage Museum Thursday and surveyed remnants of the days when tee ball became king.
On display were a bat, two balls, a worn red, white and blue Goodman Engineers jersey, a page from a 1978 edition of the Starkville Daily News featuring the year”s tee ball teams, and, of course, tees.
McKell crossed his arms and found himself remembering how he”d gotten involved.
In the summer of 1970, McKell said, he went out to Moncrief Park whenever his son, Tut, played. McKell was talked into becoming a coach in the fledgling Starkville Junior Baseball Association.
“It”s just like baseball, you know, (but) the umpire puts the ball on the tube there and backs up and lets a kid swing at it,” McKell, of Starkville, said. “Sometimes they hit, and sometimes they don”t. These were young kids — 9, 8 years old. They were sorta pre-little league. This sort of gave them a chance to learn before then.
“… To give all the kids a chance, you would have maybe 12 on a team, and they would all play in the field. It wasn”t real serious. There wasn”t too much emphasis on winning.”
He coached in the sport”s early heyday in Starkville. “It was tee ball — this was what little kids do,” recalled Dean Thorne, 39, of Brandon, who played in the ”70s.
It had been a decade since W.W. Littlejohn, a Mississippi State University accounting professor, said to the baseball association”s director, Clyde Muse, in 1960, “You know, Clyde, we”ve got a good program for 10-year-olds and up, and we need something for 8- and 9-year-olds.”
Muse went to Western Auto and bought a piece of stiff black radiator hose. He clamped it onto a 2-inch galvanized plumber”s pipe, which he screwed into a 12-square-inch, 2-inch-thick piece of wood he bought from VanLandingham Lumber Co. The contraption could be adjusted to fit the height of the young batter.
A few weeks before schools let out for the summer in 1961, a flyer promoting the new sport was circulated to students in Starkville public schools, Dora Herring, chairman of Starkville”s Planning and Zoning Commission, said. Parents had to pay $5 for a child to play tee ball in the association, and if they wanted their children to practice on their own with the tee, they could buy build-it-yourself kits from the lumber store, the sheet stated, according to Herring.
Once the summer came around, tee ball games began.
Several people around Starkville, especially those who belong to its Rotary Club, like to boast the game originated in the city, but other cities, including Dothan, Ala., and Albion, Mich., make the same claim.
Regardless of who was first to develop it, Herring, Muse and others stick to the story of its local creation in 1960. They are proud to have contributed to city history, if not sports history.
The game has changed in some ways. It is played around the world. And now both boys and girls play. And the not-for-profit T-Ball USA Association recommends the game for children as young as 4.
For the children
Muse, who now lives in Raymond and is in his 32nd year as president of Hinds Community College, said he considers his role in tee ball”s inception in Starkville as a badge of honor.
“It”s gotten some articles in papers and stuff, and people talk with me about it, and, you know, they”ll say to their son, ”Do you know this is the fellow that invented tee ball?” I get a lot of that,” Muse said Friday.
People often ask him why he didn”t patent the idea. He”d be a rich man now, some have said.
“Well, it never occurred to me to do that — just do it for the children,” he said.
And the children enjoyed it, Thorne said. He looked forward to putting on his jersey for every game. He played on the team sponsored by McDonald”s.
“If we won, we got to go eat at McDonald”s; and if we didn”t, I don”t think we went and ate at McDonald”s,” he recalled.
Regardless of who won, he said, “Every time there was a game, somebody”s parents had to be responsible for, like, the cooler, and get Cokes.”
Spectators
Herring enjoyed sitting in the stands at Moncrief Park and watching the children play. Two of her sons played. “They don”t have good team-play things in their minds at that point — they”re all scrambling all over the field,” she recalled. “It”s the most amusing thing. … But they”re having fun.
“The children are so serious, and some of the parents, they just get real serious. … It”s amusing because you can see children learning so much.”
But not every parent was fond of all the action on the field.
Once while Jim Craig served as a tee ball umpire, a parent objected to his calls. Craig “just stopped the game, took off his umpire helmet, went into the stands and invited the parent to umpire,” according to a brochure the Starkville Rotary Club published in 1997. “I could have done that,” said, Craig, 71, before confirming the anecdote Saturday with a laugh.
Aside from the incident, Starkville”s connection with tee ball history has been reported and remembered with fondness. It is a subject those connected with its past talk of with little hesitation — usually after cautioning against relying on memories of 30-, 40- or 50-year-old events.
As a coach, Muse saw countless tee ball games, and he remains a believer in the sport. “If you want to get your spirits lifted,” he said, “just go see a tee ball game, and I guarantee you”ll come away feeling better.”
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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