On May 16, Rodney Batts, then the head baseball coach at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College, had just led the Bulldogs to an 8-0 win over Jones College in the NJCAA Region 23 Tournament in Fulton.
When Batts got back to the motel where he was staying, he found he’d missed a call from East Mississippi Community College executive director of college advancement Marcus Wood, with whom Batts went to school in Scooba. Wood left his old EMCC schoolmate a message, so Batts listened. Then he called back.
“I’m certainly grateful for that call,” Batts said.
To his surprise, Batts, a New Hope High School graduate who played baseball at EMCC from 1993-94, had just been informed he was one of eight 2019 inductees of the EMCC Sports Hall of Fame.
“It’s something I will treasure forever,” Batts said. “Very thankful to get the opportunity. Going into the hall of fame, that’s special and something you don’t ever think about.”
The honor became even more special on Oct. 8, when the school released the full list of this year’s inductees. Only then did Batts find out he’d be sharing the honor with a longtime teammate: Chris Chism, who grew up with Batts in the New Hope area, was one of EMCC’s other honorees. The two often played with and against each other at Propst Park, played high school ball together at New Hope and attended EMCC at the same time.
Chism, now the principal at Pearl High School, and Batts, the new head baseball coach at Delta State University, are in touch occasionally — typically when Chism is telling Batts about a possible addition to the Statesmen’s roster — but their bond remains deep.
“I’ve played with a lot of good baseball players in my time,” said Chism, who teamed with 2006 World Series MVP David Eckstein at the University of Florida. “Rodney is by far one of the best baseball players I’ve ever been around for my entire career. He’s a great guy. Always has been.”
‘Corn Bread’ and soap operas
During Batts’ time at EMCC, coach Bill Baldner bestowed nicknames on his players.
“If you had one, you had one,” Batts said. “If you didn’t, he would give you one.”
For no particular reason, Batts said, Baldner gave him the moniker “Corn Bread” — a nickname official enough to appear in Batts’ biography in the team’s published guides in both 1993 and 1994.
Chism had a VCR in his room, and he’d often tape shows like “Days of Our Lives,” which the team always enjoyed. “We’d have 10 baseball players or so, as soon as we got out of class, would be sitting in my room watching a soap opera, if you can believe that,” Chism said.
The Lions, simply put, were “just a good old bunch of country boys playing the sport they love,” Chism said.
EMCC fielded four players from New Hope besides Batts and Chism, which both said helped tremendously as they adjusted to an area without much around. Off campus, there weren’t any stores around — Chism recalled taking trips to De Kalb or Meridian when he needed anything — and Highway 45 was a two-lane road that ran past the town.
“There was nothing to do here in Scooba but class and your athletics,” Chism said. “I think that’s the part that prepared me for everything else. It’s work. It’s not just work on athletics. It’s work on the field, too. It’s just work in general. Junior college baseball is a very hard-nosed league.”
‘A foot in the door’
The preparation Batts and Chism experienced in Scooba soon paid off. After making the Region 23 Tournament in their sophomore seasons, the two headed elsewhere. Batts, who played catcher as well as serving as the Lions’ closer in his sophomore year, helped lead Delta State to a 93-23 record in his two years on the team.
Chism, who had offers from Auburn and UAB, went to play in a wood-bat league in New York. While staying with a host family, he got a call from someone purporting to be an assistant coach at Florida.
“I thought it was one of my teammates playing a prank on me,” Chism said. “I didn’t even think it was real.”
It took a few minutes, but Chism realized the call was serious. Dead serious, in fact: The Gators faxed Chism a letter of intent within 36 hours of the call, and he was on board.
“I thought, what better place to go than a school that’s got a brand new coaching staff coming in,” Chism said. “All I wanted was a foot in the door somewhere. That was all.”
He got more than that, starting in center field on Florida’s 1996 College World Series team during his second year with the Gators. He never planned on a pro career, so after a year in the Milwaukee Brewers’ minor-league system, Chism’s playing days were over.
What came next
Chism had a plan for what came after baseball: engineering. But it didn’t last.
“I really thought I was gonna go ahead and be an engineer,” he said. “But in the end, the only thing that I ever really enjoyed doing was working with kids.”
So Chism switched gears from engineering to education. He was an assistant coach at EMCC, an assistant at New Hope, a head coach at Hernando. After stops at New Albany and Lafayette, Chism was hired as Pearl’s principal in 2015.
Batts, meanwhile, was never done with baseball. After two years in the Philadelphia Phillies’ system, he became a graduate assistant at Delta State, then a full-time assistant.
“My two sons, they were both born here in Cleveland,” Batts said. “This is kind of our second home. Actually, I’ve spent more time in Cleveland than I have in Columbus.”
He was hired as the head coach at Gulf Coast in 2014 and led the Bulldogs to back-to-back Region 23 Tournament appearances in the past two seasons.
But in July, Delta State called, and Batts was back where he got his undergraduate degree.
“Not many people get to coach at their alma mater,” Batts said. “That is certainly special for me and my family.”
A ‘stepping-stone’
Thousands of athletes have traversed EMCC’s campus, so Chism said he was “humbled” to get the call to be part of the Lions’ hall of fame.
He got to see his old stomping grounds Monday, touring campus alongside current EMCC dean of students Tony Montgomery, who grew up across the street from Chism.
Seeing old classrooms and past professors, Chism said he realized the impact EMCC had on him goes beyond the school as a whole — rather, it was the individuals who made it all possible.
“It means the world to me to have a lot of people that cared enough about me and put a lot of time into me,” Chism said. “It’s not as much me; it’s about the people around me that have made me the person I am today, that helped me get to where I am today.”
Had he gone to a four-year college, he said, he’s not sure he would have made it. For Chism, EMCC was the perfect “stepping-stone” for life, academics and work.
“Without this place, I wouldn’t be anywhere,” Chism said.
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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