By Ben Smith:
A lot can be said about the history of Mississippi, but one thing is for certain: we have always had really good athletes and coaches. If you were to compile a list of the greatest NFL players of all time you’d be hard pressed not to include Walter Payton and Jerry Rice, both Mississippians. The MLB and NBA hall of fames are filled with guys from Mississippi. We’ve got professional fishermen, PGA tour golfers, and gold medal Olympians. Heck, believe it or not, we’ve even had a guy play in the NHL despite the only ice down here being in iced tea. We’ve got it all.
The Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame is the mecca for all of those great athletes and coaches. Those enshrined are forever etched into the long history of athletic excellence in our state. Make it into the club and you’ve done something pretty dang special. Folks from all over the United States stop by the Museum to take a look around at the greatness that is Mississippi sports. Each year, a handful of worthy new inductees get a chance to see their names go up next all of the greats that came before them. And like every year, this year’s class was special, but more special to me than any of the others before.
I entered the doors of the Clyde Muse Center in Pearl on Saturday and couldn’t believe the buzz in the building. The foyer was packed with people chatting and telling stories from years ago. That night, the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame would be inducting six new members. Amongst them were a couple of former NFL players, a gold medal Olympian, an NFL strength coach, and athletic director, and the winningest college baseball coach in Mississippi history. All had unbelievable stories of their rise to success. Some began more tragic than others, but all ended with jubilation. Each one of them embodied perseverance and hard work.
As the ceremony began, I sat on the edge of my seat as each inductee’s story played out over the video screens in the room. I’m a sucker for a good story, and all of them had one. But one story mattered more to me than the others. Not that his was any better than theirs, but I got to be a small part of it, and that meant a lot to me. Coach Bobby Halford, Mississippi’s all-time winningest college baseball coach, finally earned his rightful place amongst all of the other greats from our state. The one true difference in his story and that of the rest of the induction class is that his story is still being written. At 73 years of age, he’s still on the field changing lives and winning games.
The evening went about like you would expect most banquets to go. You have the overpriced meal, the acceptance of awards, and a ton of pictures afterward. I was proud to see so many former players and supporters there to see Coach receive his award. When that many people show up for you, you know you did a few things right in your career. Coach Halford obviously did more than a few things right, and he continues to. If any young person wanting to someday be a coach is reading this, look no further than Coach Halford for how to model your coaching career. If you follow that path, you can’t go wrong.
As proud as I was to have been in attendance, I don’t think the reality of all it hit me until the ride back home. I started thinking about my path from the first time I met Coach Halford until now. When I was barely a senior in high school, he convinced me that William Carey was where I needed to go to college, so I went. When my playing career was riddled with injuries and I wanted to completely give up on baseball, he convinced me that I needed to coach, so I coached. He was right about both. And when I thought the time had come for me to leave coaching, he was an encouragement for me to get into administration, so that’s what I did. And he was right about that, too.
Most of the drive home, I thought about all of the ways he impacted my life. The conclusion that I came to was that I owe just about every single thing that I have in this life to him. Whether directly, or indirectly, he was a driving factor behind just about every big decision I’ve made since I was eighteen years old. Always supportive, always encouraging, and always helping me keep my focus on the things that are truly important in life. He never shied away from conversations about the important things like faith, family, and friendship. Rather, he embraced those conversations and breathed life into them. As important as baseball has been for him, seeing his players be successful in life has been far more rewarding and you can see it all over his face when he talks about the guys that he coached.
Now, you don’t get inducted into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame for just being a good person. But being a good person goes hand in hand with sustaining long term success athletically in most cases. I can’t tell you how many times I heard Coach Halford say, “If we win a championship but we can’t sleep at night it wouldn’t be worth it.” That stuck with me. And it made it really easy to follow his lead knowing that we were never going to compromise our beliefs to get ahead. To me, that’s the mark of a true hall of famer. I’ll close this special column edition with a thank you: Coach Halford, thank you for being an example for all of us to follow, and thank you for letting me tag along all of those years and making me a better person than I was when you found me.
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