MERIDIAN — As the mid-summer Mississippi sun christens a new bead of sweat on Ron Polk’s grayed brow, the 54-year coaching veteran yearns for his jacket.
In a normal year, Polk would be enjoying strolls through the windy coastal roads of Cape Cod as a volunteer assistant for the Cape Cod League’s Hyannis Harbor Hawks. But rather than enjoying the cool summer temperatures of Massachusetts beach towns and the elite baseball talent it brings to its shores year after year, the aging but sharp coach instead finds himself seated under an overhang at the Q.V. Sykes Park in Meridian.
“It’s 72 degrees on the Cape,” Polk exclaims toward grinning Mississippi State freshman Logan Tanner.
“It’s feels like 132 (degrees) out here,” Tanner retorts.
While the welcoming breezes of Cape Cod have been replaced with the scorching Mississippi heat, the Honor the Game Wood Bat League in Meridian has offered a baseball escape for Polk, Tanner and a slew of MSU and Southeastern Conference talent this summer.
Despite rising coronavirus cases nationwide, there’s a regal serenity to the league being played on fields nestled in the rolling hills of central Mississippi and within eyesight of a strip of power lines and the railroad tracks that run beneath them.
Here, there’s a sandlot feel to the games. Players arrive early and leave late, bearing the dirt stains and scratches a full afternoon on the diamond delivers. Here, baseball has continued to thrive under the unlikeliest of circumstances.
“We’re all anxious, so we’re all out here as much as we can,” MSU junior Tanner Leggett told The Dispatch. “It’s a lot better than being on our high school fields or our hometowns for sure.”
***
Seated beneath the overhang a few feet from where Polk holds court with a handful of players awaiting their afternoon games, East Coast Sox President Greg Sykes nestles into a picnic table and removes the gray Mississippi College bucket hat that covers his head.
His skin tinged red from the sun-soaked days he’s spent coordinating the league’s start coupled with the hours he endured aiding in the nearly $50,000 overhaul of the facility’s infields, Sykes, his elite travel team program and its leadership are among the key cogs in the fledgling startup’s booming success.
Teaming with his East Coast Sox consiglieres Joe Caruso and former MSU standout Eric DuBose, the trio conceived the idea of an elite summer collegiate baseball league in centrally located Meridian after catching wind the Cape Cod League might be canceled. As coaches from around college baseball and players who previously spent time in their elite high school travel programs reached out to the organization regarding potential summer opportunities, Sykes, Caruso and DuBose kicked the tires on bringing college summer baseball to Mississippi.
First, a three-year summer lease on the fields at Q.V. Sykes Park was secured through local city government. The fields would house East Coast Sox’s high school teams Friday through Sunday, while Mondays and Thursdays would be reserved for doubleheaders amongst the collegiate talent.
Bucking the usual summer league tradition of host families, Sykes, DuBose and Caruso instead audibled to a system in which players drive into town twice per week from their respective homes in Starkville, Tuscaloosa, Hattiesburg, Birmingham and other local baseball hotbeds to play against high-profile competition in their own backyards.
“I’d love to send my guys that are on campus,” Alabama head coach Brad Bohannon told Sykes earlier this offseason. “They can train (in Tuscaloosa), workout here and then come over here and play.”
Comprised of four teams — the Lugnuts, Blue Rocks, Grasshoppers and Rockhounds — players labor through hellishly hot afternoons before turning to their respective cars, sweaty and soaked. Even former MSU pitcher and current Seattle Mariner Kendall Graveman joined the league to throw three innings in recent weeks in preparation for the upcoming MLB season.
Toiling on fields that were renovated as part of the league’s agreement with the city, players’ feet drag along the roughly 220 tons of clay that was assembled, measured and promptly distributed amongst the complexes three fields to mimic the speed of the infields scattered across the Southeastern Conference. Sykes concedes it’s not quite the playing surface of Dudy Noble Field, but it’s damn close.
“We treat it like a real college game,” he said. “You prepare like it’s a college game.”
***
Behind home plate on Field One at Q.V. Sykes Park, a litany of MLB scouts peer through their varying masks and sunglasses as an army of radar guns and bucket hats spatter the stands.
On this given Monday in mid-July, an estimated 25 representatives from varying major league organizations are on hand for the day’s double-headers. Four other scouts from the Rangers, Marlins, Red Sox and Mets coach the respective teams.
Pens scratch against notepads with each ensuing pitch. Video cameras click on and off. Cell phone calls are taken in between games in the complex’s concourse located at the center of the park. If not for the handful of fans who don masks or the red signs that read, “Stay safe, thank you for practicing social distancing,” the event almost feels normal. Almost.
The league is currently allowed 100 people per field on-site — including the roughly 100 participating players. Each patron’s temperature is taken before entering the confines. Players arrive at the complex through a separate gate specified for those who will brave the summer heat. Their temperatures are taken here, too.
Sykes ensures the league has done its part in providing a safe environment for its participants. Dugouts are disinfected before and after each game. Hand sanitizer pumps have been installed on the benches. Players are also asked to leave space between one another when seated in the dugout, though it’s more a suggestion than a reality.
The process isn’t entirely foolproof. Players were not required to be tested before joining the league — though only two coronavirus cases have occurred through its first six weeks of competition and both necessitated a negative test before returning.
A three-doctor health board also advises the league on best practices and offers advice on when players can return to competition.
And while the virus has been taken seriously by organizers in practice, there’s a sense of insouciance toward the ongoing pandemic in this remote baseball outpost. Here, there’s a hope that players can live out their collegiate baseball dreams away from the worries of our current climate. Here, put simply, the only thing that matters is connecting wood to leather.
“I don’t think the virus can live out here,” DuBose quipped through his deep southern drawl. “I think it died right out over there in the parking lot before it came in. It may have made it to the gate but it didn’t make it through it.”
***
As the day’s games come to a close, Sykes meanders behind the dugout and down the first base line on Field One before hopping onto an industrial mower. Heading out to the diamond to sweep the infield dirt and prepare the field for the next set of games, there’s a certain aura to the scene.
Fans pack up their varying coolers, chairs and tents that helped them survive temperatures that climbed into the mid-90s. Scouts close up camcorders and notepads and head off for the next stop on their wayward road trips across the United States in search of the next generation of major league stars.
Dripping with sweat, Leggett piles into his car and heads back toward Starkville and a college town in its peak midsummer form of quiet and calm. Other players make off to their respective homes across Mississippi, into Alabama, over to Louisiana and on down the line.
Racing around the infield, Sykes pads the dirt into a smooth surface.
“You come here, hit BP, get ready to play, play for a couple hours, that’s about it,” Tanner said through a wide-eyed grin. “Gotta love it.”
Normalcy? Almost.
Ben Portnoy reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @bportnoy15.
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