COLUMN: Welcome back, Ole Miss baseball. We’ve missed you. A lot.
Story by Jeff Roberson, special to the Ole Miss Spirit | Those were 11 remarkable days we spent in Nebraska in June, 2022.
Other things besides baseball also made the trip forever memorable. The games were why we were there, but there are always non-game moments on extended stays like that.
Ben Garrett showed up at the Omaha airport. Chase Parham and I were there to pick him up. Ole Miss was already 2-0 in the College World Series.
Chase, Ben, and I have a bond that goes back almost 20 years, three northeast Mississippi guys who went to Ole Miss, me a generation older, and we’ve all stuck around.
Chase came to work with Chuck Rounsaville and me at the Ole Miss Spirit in early 2007. When Chase left about a year and a half later, Ben stepped in. Chase was mostly calm and measured; Ben more boisterous and high-spirited. Both were excellent in this line of work, and still are.
Last June, as things got started in the Midwest, I sat by Chuck for the first two Ole Miss games and we watched wins against Auburn and Arkansas. It was good to share Omaha time with Chuck, just like it had been eight years earlier.
At the airport that day, Chase and I saw Ben standing outside the terminal. He opened the car door and jumped in. I’m not sure what he was expecting from us, but the following is what we got. (We were fairly subdued and reserved. It was, after all, our fifth day there.)
“What’s wrong with y’all? I thought you’d be glad to see me. I thought y’all would be pumped up.”
Ben repeated all that, with some additional words.
Not sure what we told him as we headed into the city, but I think we just said, “We’re pacing ourselves, Ben. We might be here for another week, you know.”
And we were.
Chase and I had stayed in two locations before Ben arrived. Now we were headed for a third, this time in downtown Omaha in the cool Old Market section. Our three-story relatively-new condo for the next three nights was called The Jungle. Ben had booked it.
The Jungle. Had a green neon sign on the wall in script that read just that. “The Jungle.”
By the time we settled in, Ben had settled down and realized we were glad to see him but were indeed pacing ourselves. Or at least relaxing before another game or practice.
The Rebels lost a close one to Arkansas Ben’s first game. We thought about sending him home. But he stayed, and after the masterpiece performance against the Razorbacks by Dylan DeLucia moved the Rebels into the finals, we moved too, this time into a house built in 1905.
A huge old house with a squeaky stairway that again Ben found for us.
A very nice place. Four floors, one of them a full finished basement, another an unfinished top floor. The owner, Luther, met us there and showed us around. He and his wife were staying at their daughter’s house. They rent their own house out during the College World Series every year.
Ben’s wife Emily flew up for the weekend. It was their anniversary. We had room for even more folks to stay at Luther’s. (Now we tell you, right?)
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The street, as referenced in a pamphlet I found in the house, is called historic North 40th. It’s an area called the Joslyn Castle neighborhood. Apparently THE place for Omahans to live a hundred years ago and even before that, the pamphlet told me.
Ever had a Swanson’s frozen dinner – a TV dinner, if you want to call it that? The Swanson family lived on North 40th a hundred years ago and until 1938.
“This is a lucky house,” Luther told us before he left us. “A Mississippi State family stayed here last year and their son was a star player.”
“Oh, OK, that’s good to know,” or something like that, we collectively said. “Maybe it will be lucky again this year.”
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Finding a way. That’s what fans – and all of us – were doing.
Finding a way to be there, places to stay and to move to, a way to make it all work for what turned out to be this magnificent run for Ole Miss.
We didn’t know how it would all turn out, but we loved being along for the ride – chronicling it, podcasting it, broadcasting it to those paying attention. And as the week continued, more and more people in a lot of places paid attention, and not just in states like Mississippi and Oklahoma.
I’d jumped on board to cover the events after Miami and made my way down to Hattiesburg. I’d never witnessed back to back Ole Miss baseball games like those against Southern. Shutting the Golden Eagles out twice on their home field in a Super Regional in our state was quite the accomplishment. Another trip to Omaha was the reward.
After beating the Oklahoma Sooners two days in a row for the national championship, we were wrapping up this remarkable journey.
When we got back to the lucky house on Sunday night after Ole Miss had won it all, we wrote more stories and got some rest before heading back to Mississippi victorious. Monday morning, after we loaded up, I wrote Luther a note and left it on his kitchen counter.
“We enjoyed our stay. Beautiful place. And you were right. This is a lucky house.”
Then we headed home.
Looking forward to another trip to Omaha, whenever the Rebs again get hot.
Welcome back, college baseball. We’ve missed you. A lot.
