Ole Miss Baseball: This Is How Revolutions Die, On Terraced Outfield Boxes

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." - President Josiah Bartlett (maybe Margaret Meade)

Substitute "functional alcoholics" for "citizens" and you've still got a useful maxim without losing much truth. And so it was, on cold, rainy February afternoons that a small band of students hauled sofas to the hillside, covered them with tarps and staked claim for a season in Right Field at Oxford University Stadium, cheering on an Ole Miss baseball team that hadn't won a conference championship since 1977. 

A few cracks in the vinyl just helps you find the groove.

Grills and coolers were brought out for what is the closest many will ever come to owning a luxury box for a sporting event. And when the sun finally arrived, those noble sooners were able to hold court around their hard-fought outfield homestead. 

Now that Ole Miss Baseball has missed out on postseason play for just the third time since Mike Bianco was hired in 2000, it's time for another brief session of fond remembrance; some reaffirmation of why we do this and how far we come. If you were lucky enough to have spent time on the Swayze hilltop between 2000 and 2006, you shouldn't have to look too far.

"Start turning the girl into the ground, roll a new love over." You think you're grown. You think you're a man. I'm 20 years old, for christsakes. I'm a Sophomore. I've seen some shit. There aren't a lot of surprises left. Got a slick fake ID and figured out the places that will take it. There's some cold Beast Light in a rolling ice chest and some meat burning on a grill. A little sun, a little baseball...holy shiiiit. 

Beer drops to the ground, splashing and hissing against the coals below. Mouth slacks and eyes come to a squint. Through the brightness of the solar flare, she walks up the hillside in a jean skirt and a skin-tight black Allman Brothers Band t-shirt, sunlight reverently breaking in front of her; leaving a heat wave wake. There were soft curves and stretched black cotton all joined together into a gentle, rhythmic sway.

With pupils fighting to process through the bright at full dilation, screaming to look away or go blind, in the moments just before permanent optical damage set in, I think I saw Jesus smiling over her left shoulder. 

It was probably on a similar March day in 1969 when two brothers and their wandering collection of major-label musical rejects decided to stay together. "We can't give up guys," I imagine Duane saying. "In 40 years, a kid in Oxford, Mississippi is going to find religion when some girl wears one of our t-shirts to a baseball game. If we break up, that might never happen." 

As with all Ole Miss athletic events...and perhaps life in general, the key is to attract the casual follower into a sport is to create something that is more cocktail than competition. That finally took hold during these formative years. It was the debters, ramblers and second sons of the Grove empire exiled to fight out their own space in the wilderness. Right Field at Swayze was the Australia to the Grove's Great Britain-- a rough penal colony imitation of the establishment.  

Once the dingos were fought off, the Indian attacks died down and some basic supply lines were established, the pioneer women arrive. Without the pretensions and pearls of settled society, frontier women are little more rough and tumble-- and lot more practical. Gone are the cocktail dresses and heels of football weekends. Mom and Dad probably aren't in town, and Sorority initiation is long over. Baseball was all flip-flops, short shorts and the occasional bikini top.

God bless them all, but especially those of the jean skirts and rock shirts. And of course, God bless Duane Allman.

God bless you, Duane.

"In the middle of the day, there's a young man rolling around in the earth and rain." What are now carefully terraced, pea-gravel flats with clearly marked edges were once little more than a slightly flat spot on a hillside. You dug the front legs of your folding chair into the dirt and rocked your weight to your heels to keep upright. 

Of course this wasn't always successful, especially into later innings. And when it rained, the whole slope turned into a rolling avalanche of bodies sliding into the trough at the base of the right field fence. 

Once you find yourself in the puddle, you might as well roll around in it for a second. 

What were earlier seen as embarrassments began to look like good fun. Given time and encouragement, people begin purposefully flinging themselves, belly first, onto the muddy slick, splashing through the catchment at the bottom and occasionally thumping into the backside of the wall. 

There's something amazing about tearing down a really good, winding dirt road. The slip, drift, dust and bare illusion of control is everything that makes fossil fuel consumption emotionally worthwhile. Today, they're being paved over and straightened. Sure, it's a more efficient, safer way to travel, but it's also a bit mindless and cold. Dirt is warm. The old right field was a dirt road paved over-- and that's probably for the best-- but it's just not the same. 

"Keep turning the wool across the wire." Heckles. Heckles, I Say. Baseball fandom was built on the very special relationship between the outfielder and the over-served outfield attendee. But like any relationship, the discourse is helped by taking the time to really get to know the person with whom you're discoursing. And so, a plucky local weekly paper began doing some light internet research and putting together quick profiles of each weekend's visiting Right Fielder. 

Just simple things. His full name, hometown...perhaps the name of a female relative or any interesting bits that might be pulled from a hokey media guide profile-- favorite meal, favorite movie, maybe a quote of inspiration. And unlike a football game where you can only be heard as part of the deafening throng-- either as just noise within noise or part of simple chants-- the small collective of spectators directly overlooking an outfield provides the intimacy for a real, substantive conversation; To really dig deep into the individual's persona, hopes, dreams and shortcomings-- like a Festivus airing of grievances shouted from 10 yards away. 

And sometimes, the baseball gods just toss out a piece of bloody red meat to the Coliseum lions. 

It was a great day when that opposing squad took the field. You didn't need to pull up the profile from the paper. His entire being was printed cleanly across the blades of the Right Fielder's back. His last name was "Glasscock." 

I don't remember if Ole Miss won or loss. I don't even clearly remember what team young Glasscock played for. I just remember that was a good day on the hillside. 

The section was also directly overlooking the opposing team's bullpen. The outfield was the first to know when a pitching change was coming and greeted the incoming hurlers as they readied to take the field. It came to its peak on a cold, rainy afternoon in an early season game against a small school from New Jersey. One of the remaining few fans, driven mad to match the conditions, climbed the walls of the bullpen like a steel cage wrestler, screaming derisive comments to a shaken relief pitcher probably on his first (and likely only) trip to the state of Mississippi. The bullpen has since been moved.

"Get right to the heart of matters, it's the heart that matters more." For the first few years, the only way to sit in the outfield and follow a game was to break out an old-fashioned hand-written scorecard. The only visible part of the scoreboard was the back, and even after a small, rear-facing display was added, it only gave the bare minimum-- score and inning. The official announcer was barely heard and scarcely understood through the struggling lone megaphone spliced to the back of the main scoreboard.

It created discussion-- what's the count? Who's up? Who's that warming up in the bullpen? It was the original crowdsourced, shared experience sporting event. 

The regulars, the keepers of the sofas, the holders of the grill flames, became the community elders-- setting the tone for those in attendance, forming them into a functioning whole with just simple rules of basic decorum. 

When to chant "Dirt." Keep your beer in a cup. When to start a Hotty Toddy. After the between-inning outfield warm-ups, the Ole Miss outfield's warm-up ball was tossed to the right field stands for safe keeping. The elders made sure it was secured and returned when the outfielders returned to the field. Most importantly, they made sure any girls in attendance had a seat and a beer.

Concessions were non-existant. Parking was free and first-come-first-serve. Admission was free. For the first few years, there wasn't even a security guard. The closest thing to an "official" University presence was the Port-O-Johns that were placed, and even occasionally emptied, at the entrance. It was a laissez-fare, free form, student driven experience that has largely disappeared from American universities and college athletics in particular. 

Gradually, it was chipped away. You had to pay for parking. A private security guard was sent to patrol the stands. Later, it was uniformed UPD patrols, complete with cooler searches and admonishments for illicit language. It wasn't a "family environment," but it wasn't supposed to be. Anyone who wandered into Right Field with children was obviously lost and kindly directed elsewhere.

"If you're gonna walk on water, could you drop a line my way?" 2001 was when the dreams of winning more than the party really started to fester. After each victory, fans filed out to the tune of the Counting Crows' "Omaha" struggling through the aged megaphone. 

It was a hopeful thing. The logistics of a road trip to Nebraska became a common topic of conversation among the couches. The team finished 2nd in the West and was invited to an NCAA regional. It stumbled in 2002 with a baffling collapse in conference play, but rebounded for Regionals and Super Regionals from 2003-2010.

But as postseason efforts fell short, often in heartbreaking fashion against superpowers like Texas, Miami and Arizona State, the post game "Omaha" chorus turned from hopeful anthem to a crushing taunt. And in this way, Ole Miss baseball fell into the sad "not ready for primetime" malaise of the rest of the athletic structure. Perhaps it was even more bitter because the team had shown such consistent success. You couldn't ever be justifiably angry or distraught...just disappointed, and that eats at you even more than outright ineptitude.

"Think you better turn your ticket in, get your money back at the door." One day, the hard scrabble homesteader wakes up to the sound of sirens and horns. He looks out his door and the scrap of land nobody wanted is now full of conveniences and costs. The neighboring families that were there at the beginning are long gone, replaced by a thousand strangers with security fences, car alarms and children tethered to leashes. There's no place for old couches and open flames and the "security" for your own good would never allow you to roll down a hill into the mud. It's been whitewashed and institutionalized.

Not that it's not still good. At its core, it's still college kids sitting in the sun and watching baseball, and that's pretty hard to frown on. From 2000 to 2009, overall attendance at Ole Miss baseball went from a season total of 40,130 fans to 273,111, and the resources granted to the previously neglected baseball team have ballooned to set a national standard for facilities, atmosphere and revenue-- no small feat for a school like Ole Miss. Of course, a lot of that has to do with the success of the team itself-- the talent of the players and the work of Bianco. It also had to do with fundraising and leadership from the boosters and administration of the university. 

But somewhere, lost in the shuffle, is the impact of those dedicated few who showed up, game after game, with cheap beer on tattered sofas and pioneered something unique and organic. Institutions pay untold millions to far away consultants in an effort to officially cultivate atmosphere and tradition that ultimately feels like lunch at the Madison Applebees. The Swayze Right Field was something honest and uncontrived. And in college sports, certainly more than pro, talented players are attracted to fan enthusiasm and today's beer swilling outfield bums become tomorrow's high-dollar luxury box donors. 

Modern Ole Miss baseball, a nationally-relevant program that generates revenue for the school, could not have happened if it were not for those who braved the cold February days on the hillside. And for those of us who saw it happen, it'll be hard to ever completely cut yourself off from the school, the sport and the program that were at the heart of it.

Post-Puberty Defeat And The Valor of Polish Calvary

The light of Monday morning broke through the windows of the Tuscaloosa Chuck E. Cheese to find a lone figure asleep in the ball pit. Mouth open, a half-eaten piece of rock candy stuck to his auburn hair hanging over a freckled face, he clutches a wad of ski ball prize tickets to his chest. Jefferson Davis Bryant (J-Bear to his friends), owner of the establishment, found him while closing up shop the night before.

Coming to grips with defeat through balloons.

"You want wake him?" asked the Ecuadorian cleaning staff.

"No, Consevella. Let him be. Just clean around him. The little guy's had a rough day."

Loss was unfamiliar to Greg McElroy. Undefeated since puberty, he coped in the only way he knew how-- the same way he had the last time a Greg McElroy quarterbacked team came up short. He binged on rock candy, ski ball and then cried himself to sleep in a corner of the ball pit while animatronic bears serenaded him with happy songs from a better time. 

Like Greg, the Alabama Crimson Tide are not a group that really knows a lot about losing, and that includes how to get the taste out of your mouth and move on. More likely than not, they're going to take the same route of frustrated English soccer fans and just take out their frustration by mercilessly beating the sense out of someone who can't really defend themselves. That's obviously the thinking of whoever set the kickoff for 8:00 pm CST. Some things aren't fit for the light of day, and Mark Ingram against the Ole Miss linebacking corps is likely going to be one of those.

But maybe...just maybe, they won't know how to bounce back. Like Drago in Rocky IV, the rest of the world has seen them bleed. With the unfamiliar taste of blood in their mouth, Alabama might come to the revelation for the first time that they are, in fact, mortal. With that lesson learned, they lose the edge, the swagger that previously drove their team. Sometimes loss metastasizes in more loss.

Ole Miss knows loss to the point where coping has become part of our unofficial motto of never losing the party. When you wake up on Sunday morning with that taste in your mouth, the best Listerine is the melted ice in last night's rocks glass. Gargle, swish, spit and get ready for the week to come. 

One of the great overlooked quirks of the invasion of Poland is that when the Nazi tanks rolled across the border, the Poles sent horseback calvary to meet them. These poor bastards straightened their uniforms, took a strong swig of vodka and actually charged tanks with horses. Not because they wanted to or even thought they had a chance of success; they charged because when it comes time for a fight, you're pride-bound to do the best with what you have. It's a Hell of a mentality, and it's one that you're going to need if you're going to be on the Ole Miss side of things tonight...along with a little good vodka and maybe a lance. Jerrell Powe didn't drive his moped all this way just to lay down. He's going to a club a fucker or two, and I'm riding with him. 

As for little Greg in the ball pit, play him home, boys.

Bombs and Screens (Nobody's Darlings)

The shine is off and now we find ourselves back where we're most comfortable-- lost in the middle of the SEC pack somewhere behind more established powers, playing the early morning lo-fi undercard and our off-field eccentricities getting the bulk of the media play. Nobody really knows where we fit into the fray, but it's clear we're neither leading the back or bringing up the rear.

It's been said by more than a few of my fellow Ole Miss fans that this game is where we'll find out what we are. The same was said for South Carolina. And Alabama. A win, and we're back on track to a 10 or 9 win campaign, another step forward from last January's high and respectable postseason bid. Lose, and we're back in Shreveport playing $5 blackjack with stretch-marked cocktail waitresses wondering if this is all there is for us and cursing our foolish delusions of grandeur.

The biggest problem anybody has is when you start to believe the things other people say about you, good or bad. An outside voice that lends validity to your own wild fantasy/paranoia can be more an incredibly dangerous thing. We've had both. In a vacuum, all Ole Miss fans always harbor wild hopes of a return to glory and prominence, shedding the weight of the past and rising back to national relevance. In the same soaked corner of your brain is the idea that we're the fuck-up sons in a prominent family, and we should be grateful that our more accomplished relations allow us to sit at their table and share their affiliation. What gets expressed will generally trend toward whatever side of the thought process the outside world lends the most credence to. I feel like that's where the Ole Miss and Arkansas fanbases come together, and it's what makes our shotgun rivalry of Houston Nutt-dom so interesting.

What we both need to realize is that, in the end, we'll be judged on our results and any success we have will be on our own backs. It needs to be a trench warfare mentality. Nobody's got our backs. Nobody really believes in us. Somebody's got to be built up so that they can be torn down, and we're useful for that purpose on occasion. But we're nobody's darlings, and what success we have is our own. Fuck everything else.


Everybody wants to see you fall. That's why they always love to get you high.


The Arkansas defense seems to have taken steps forward and the Ole Miss offense seems to have taken steps back. But what has Arkansas done? They've been steamrolled by Alabama like everybody else. They put up a decent fight against an Auburn offense that has since been shown to be lacking and kicked the bones of the elephant graveyard in the Big 12 against Texas A&M. Even the Florida offense has looked uninspired thus far (though it needs to be noted that the same could be said about Florida at this time last year). Their safeties still suck. Their linebackers are athletic and aggressive but don't possess a great deal of sense or discipline. They live off of blind pressure and a prayer of deep inaccuracy.

Florida lived off the screens for what success they had on offense. Georgia lived off of blindly heaving the ball down the field in hopes that the safeties were out of position. Nobody has combined both approaches, but we've got the tools to do it. Let Grandy, Pat Patterson, Lionel Breaux loose down the damn field and tell Opie to chuck the fucking ball. When you run, run hard, quick and between the tackles. When you throw, throw deep. When Jerry Franklin has a boner through his football pants, screen.

Our defense is nothing short of greasy, swaggering violence second only to Alabama in the SEC. Mallett does not handle pressure, and as Kentrell Lockett has astutely pointed out, he'll generally be right where you think he is. "When you get there, he'll be there." Arkansas has put up numbers against crappy defenses and folded spectacularly when somebody has gotten in their face.

The only outside voice I believe is the blind voice of money. People in Vegas know things. I've learned this the hard way during darker times. And the business community, who has no interest in our hype or deflation outside of cold calculus, still believe we're a decent team playing another decent team on our home field and have apportioned a healthy 6.5 point margin in our favor. This gives me more hope than anything else. Vegas cares not for storylines or student section chants or Heisman fluffer missions. It's a weigh and measure in the true sense of the word.

Tomorrow comes early. See you kids out there.

#4

What is number 4? Just a taller ledge to fall from.

A small town coverboy quarterback with a modest approach to his newfound fame. A veteran coach with a history of steady success, but still searching for a defining achievement to fill out his legacy. A promising would-be king assistant coach with an alumni pedigree. Odd, home-grown musical tributes with a cult following. A lazy national press stroking high expectations on little more than what can be found in the first 10 pages of a media guide-- returning starters, an home-heavy schedule without any big names and a pleasant pre-packaged narrative around a coach and quarterback. Around the forbidden pleasures of contraband beer in the Grove, there are even casual whispers of a young basketball phenom who might open a second front in an all-out Rebel assault on the national sports scene. It’s 1970 and the Rebels are finally going to rise again. Of course they are. Look, even the slick Yankee media types think so.

On October 12, 1970, William F. Reed sang the refrain of the first verse of the Manning legend for Sports Illustrated. In it, he retells a story about a guy in Tupelo who was about to jump off a bridge.

“Wait,” said a friend. “Think about your family and your religion.”

“Don’t have any family,” the jumper said. “And I don’t believe in religion.”

“Well,” said his friend desperately. “Then think about Archie.”

“Archie who?”

“Jump, you S.O.B. Jump.”

Even if he doesn’t jump, the story ends well before a four-count. If the intervention on the bridge is success, the missionary friend no doubt will go on to indoctrinate our jumper into the legend of Archie and the glory of Ole Miss. The convert, now fully stocked with both Archie and religion all in one neat, focused package marked “reasons to live,” will go onto witness what is, by now, four decades of heartburn no sweaty hangover can produce. Archie breaks his arm on the Astro-Turf of Hemmingway stadium. Johnny Vaught suffers a heart attack. And after but a short 4 month reprieve, our jumper finds himself back on the bridge in Tupelo. Only this time, he’s got to fight for space on the guardrail with his missionary and the other converts.

Ole Miss is destined to lose. We’re a fanbase living through a cruel curse of false idol, looking only for comfort inside a red cup. The sports gods will crush the bones and squeeze the hearts of our saviors to punish us for daring to consider success. Abandon hope and spare yourself the pain of the letdown.

Of course, this is all little more than Mormon archeology; backing up your preconceived beliefs with a shotgun marriage of past and present. Even so, I’ve been confusing the Mayans with the Israelites since the final whistle blew in Dallas in January. It’s a self-defense mechanism to temper against the off-season’s extrapolation of hype. It’s a shitty way to live, it’s a backwards-ass way to tell a story and the time for temperance is over.

A flipped coin lands on heads 100 times in a row. On the 101th flip, the chances of heads versus tails is exactly the same as on the first, because what happened before has absolutely no bearing on what happens now. And as Ole Miss football spins in the air for the 116th time, how it comes down has nothing to with what came before, despite the desperate need for context of those of us looking-on. The outcome of the 1970 Rebels has as much to do with our season this year as the 1987 Kent State Schockers or the 1956 Austrailian National Cricket Team.

Houston Nutt and Johnny Vaught have about as much in common as half-crazed weasels and the burlap sack they came in. Jevan Snead ain’t Archie Manning any more than the other current 100 players bear similarities to their positional counterparts. If only there was another part-time stationary designer defensive end with the power of flight (and the power to move you) that has somehow gone overlooked in Ole Miss lore. And what this contrived history leaves out is that before either the heart attack or the broken golden arm, Ole Miss lost to Southern Miss due to a twist of fate no more sinister than they simply didn’t play well that day, which leaves open the heretical possibility that even with Manning and Vaught at full capacity, the team might not have been all that good to begin with.

That’s certainly not to say that we can’t learn anything from the past. When the freshman from Carrolton, Texas with the Neilson’s tags still dangling from his Nantucket red dress pants pulls over his Tahoe to tell me to come off the bridge and grab a Nutt Rag because The South Will Rise Again, I’ll still step back from the edge. It won’t be to follow young Kingsley to the Right Reverand's Revival tent, but to find a taller launching point.

Because I know what Kingsley hasn’t figured out yet in his 11 months of Rebel religion—Butch Cassidy was wrong. It isn’t the fall that kills you. It’s the impact. The fall is actually the fun part, especially when you've waited this long to climb this high. Know that it’s coming, then instantly forget it and enjoy the ride as long as it goes with no expectations otherwise. Face to the sky, spread wide and eyes wide open, enjoying the view. So far, Memphis and Southeastern Louisiana have blown past like ugly couples having sex in an 82nd floor apartment. Not much to look at, but in the end, little more than benign mileage markers on what is sure to be a long, strange journey that will last as long as there’s still wind rushing by. Oh look, somebody lost a visor...

"Jump back down to the rooftops, look out over the town. Think about all those strange things circling round."