Mississippi Today
Tennessee rallies to set up winner-take-all game 3 against USM
HATTIESBURG — Southern Miss was up one game in the best-of-three Super Regional and had snatched a 4-0 lead over Tennessee in Game 2. A sun-baked, humidity-broiled overflow crowd at Pete Taylor Park of 5,882 was thundering its approval Sunday. The Golden Eagles were six innings away from a trip to the College World Series, and two-time All-American Tanner Hall was on the mound.
Then it happened.
Christian Moore doubled to left field to start the Tennessee fourth. After a fly out, Merritt Griffin singled home Moore to cut the lead to 4-1, bringing first baseman Blake Burke, a left-handed slugger, to the plate. The count reached two balls and two strikes, and Hall threw a slider, down at the knees across the plate.
“A good pitch,” USM coach Scott Berry would later say. “It wasn't like Tanner hung it. It was a good pitch down in the zone.”
Burke unleashed a violent swing, connected and there was never any doubt. Golden Eagle right fielder Carson Paetow just turned around and stared. He didn't move. No need.
Burke's blast rocketed far above the smoking barbecue grills in Southern Miss' right field roost, sailed through the tops of tall pine trees, landed in the parking lot of St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church, and then one-hopped high off the church's brown exterior.
We were told in the press box Burke's two-run home run, which cut USM's lead to 4-3, traveled 479 feet from home plate. It did more than that. It changed the game.
Tennessee coach Tony Vitello used a basketball metaphor. “It's like in basketball where two points is two points, but yet an emphatic slam dunk can kind of change the momentum of the entire game. A home run like that can be like a slam dunk. It changes the mood in the dugouts. It kind of changes everything.”
Burke's blast surely seemed to do just that. Before the fourth inning was over, the Vols would score three more runs, take a 6-4 lead and never look back for an 8-4 victory that sends this Hattiesburg Super Regional to a third and deciding game Monday. As of 7:15 p.m. Sunday, ESPN had not chosen a Monday game time.
The first two days of this Super Regional have been like a grueling, sweat-drenched marathon. Southern Miss won the first game, which began at 2 p.m. Saturday, endured two lengthy weather delays, and ended early Sunday afternoon. After leading 4-0 Saturday, Southern Miss held on for a hard-earned 5-3 victory.
Beginning at 11 a.m., Justin Storm pitched the last 4.2 innings for Southern Miss for the victory, blanking the powerful Vols on just two hits after Billy Oldham had given the Golden Eagles a quality start the day before. Shortstop Dustin Dickerson slammed a home run and a double, second baseman Nick Monistere homered and left fielder Tate Parker ripped a two-run triple.
Game 2 also started well for the home team. Hall blanked the Vols for three straight innings and then his teammates struck for four runs in the third inning off Tennessee's highly touted right hander Chase Dollander, expected to be a top 10 pick in this summer's Major League draft.
Christopher Sargent's three-run home run off the scoreboard in left field was the big blow of the four-hit, four-run inning. But who would have thought it? Southern Miss never managed another hit off Dollander, who mixed 96- and 97-mph fastballs with some nasty breaking pitches. Dollander only seemed to get stronger. Put it this way: Dollander's 107th pitch in the 9th inning was a 97-mph fastball on the inside corner.
Dollander couldn't quite finish. Vitello brought in Chase Burns for the final three outs, which must have seemed like good news for the Golden Eagles at the time. But then three of Burns' first four pitches hit 100 mph on the radar gun and he used just 10 pitches to get the last three outs.
Berry, who Monday could be coaching his last game of a remarkable 14-year run as Southern Miss coach, often likens post-season baseball games to heavyweight fights. In this Super Regional, Tennessee has gotten off the canvas and floored Southern Miss with a bevy of punches, including Burke's haymaker.
How will the Golden Eagles respond?
Hall, who might well have pitched his last game as a Golden Eagle Sunday, believes he knows. “We know what it takes to win and we'll do what it takes to win,” Hall said. “After a tough loss, we always come back.”
Said Berry, “We are a veteran team. We believe in ourselves.”
Tennessee, just one season removed from being one of the most dominant regular season teams in college baseball history, is likewise a veteran team that feels like it has some unfinished business after falling flat in its own Super Regional last year.
So here we are, one game, winner-take-all for a ticket to Omaha. Tennessee will likely pitch sophomore Drew Beam (8-4), who won the final game of the Clemson Regional. USM will likely go with either sophomore Nikko Mazza (5-1) or junior Matthew Adams (3-2).
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1896
MAY 18, 1896
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7-1 in Plessy v. Ferguson that racial segregation on railroads or similar public places was constitutional, forging the “separate but equal” doctrine that remained in place until 1954.
In his dissent that would foreshadow the ruling six decades later in Brown v. Board of Education, Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote that “separate but equal” rail cars were aimed at discriminating against Black Americans.
“In the view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens,” he wrote. “Our Constitution in color-blind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law … takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Mississippi Today
Renada Stovall, chemist and entrepreneur
Renada Stovall sat on the back deck of her rural Arkansas home one evening, contemplating life when she had a life-altering epiphany…
“I gotta get out of these woods.”
She heard it as clear as lips to her ear and as deep as the trees surrounding her property. Stovall's job as a chemist had taken her all over the country. In addition to Arkansas, there were stints in Atlanta, Dallas and Reno. But she was missing home, her parents and friends. She also knew, she needed something else to do.
“I thought, what kind of business can I start for myself,” said Stovall, as she watered herbs growing in a garden behind her south Jackson home. Some of those herbs are used in her all-natural products. “I know when I lived in Reno, Nevada, where it's very hot and very dry, there really weren't products available that worked for me, my hair, and my skin suffered. I've got a chemistry degree from Spelman College. I took the plunge and decided to create products for myself.”
In 2018, Stovall's venture led to the creation of shea butter moisturizers and natural soaps. But she didn't stop there, and in December 2022, she moved home to Mississippi and got to work, expanding her product line to include body balms and butters, and shampoos infused with avocado and palm, mango butter, coconut and olive oils.
Nadabutter, which incorporates Renada's name, came to fruition.
Stovall sells her balms and moisturizers at what she calls, “pop-up markets,” across the state during the summer. She's available via social media and also creates products depending on what of her ingredients a customer chooses. “My turmeric and honey is really popular,” Stovall added.
“The all-natural ingredients I use are great for conditioning the skin and hair. All of my products make you feel soft and luscious. The shea butter I use comes from West Africa. It's my way of networking and supporting other women. And it's my wish that other women can be inspired to be self-sufficient in starting their own businesses.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1954
MAY 17, 1954
In Brown v. Board of Education and Bolling v. Sharpe, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the “separate but equal” doctrine in Plessy v. Ferguson was unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment, which guaranteed equal treatment under the law.
The historic decision brought an end to federal tolerance of racial segregation, ruling in the case of student Linda Brown, who was denied admission to her local elementary school in Topeka, Kansas, because of the color of her skin.
In Mississippi, segregationist leaders called the day “Black Monday” and took up the charge of the just-created white Citizens' Council to preserve racial segregation at all costs.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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