Mississippi State Review/Preview: Bulldogs Finish Strong, Head to Hoover For Yet Another Nightcap Contest, With Aggies

There's A New Home Run King at Mississippi State, and His Name Is Hunter Hines (SEC photo)

It's hard to decide this week's lead paragraph: is it Hunter Hines breaking Rafael Palmeiro's 40-year-old career home runs record, or is it Mississippi State coming back from a 1-8 start to finish 15-15 in the Southeastern Conference and head to Hoover, not to just get an NCAA bid, but to improve it as well. It's hard to see a .500 team in the SEC being placed as low as a 3 seed, although envy of the dominating league is thinly veiled sometimes in the selection committee with so many votes from rival conferences.

Well, I guess we'd better talk about Hunter Hines, then. There will be fans of Rafael Palmeiro who contend he set the record of 67 in three years instead of the four Hunter had, just like those in 1974 pointed out how many thousands more at-bats Hank Aaron had than Babe Ruth. You know what? I never saw Ruth play, I did see Aaron play, and as a long-time baseball fan, I have to give them both credit for being the best at what they did, at the time they did it.

Same for Hines and Palmeiro. I got to see both of them play, saw Rafael single in his last collegiate at-bat, in Omaha, to raise his average from .299 to .300. I also saw him hit three home runs in a game, and so many more quietly marvelous moments from those 1983-85 years that like the 6-3 Alabama game in 1980, or the 1996 men's basketball postseason, you just had to be there to know what it was like.

And, I've seen Hines excel as well since he was a freshman, felt a lot of pride that State got the son of the Mississippi College slugger who whipped Palmeiro and company at Smith Wills in Jackson one 1985 night (much to my chagrin back then). I suppose my point is that we can celebrate both of them for their excellence, remember one of our greatest sons for those memories, and another great son whose exploits will be equal legend sooner than you think.

Oh, one other thing. Hunter is not done yet, so the race for 70, heck, make it 80, is on.

As for the sweep at Missouri, for all the anguish Bulldog fans have suffered in that strange series, from the marathon late night win in Hoover over a 10-20 Tiger team that took 17 innings, to the home series loss that was soothed only by a Natty, the collapse the next year up there, and even the bizarre one last year when a player not on the roster was announced as a pinch hitter but was withdrawn. It apparently didn't have the makings of a forfeit, which turning out as a win instead of a 4-3 loss just might have been the factor between hosting and a two seed at Virginia.

Was it true they held back top line pitching to maximize a last gasp ploy for Hoover? I don't know, and frankly, I don't care. When the record books are printed, and the two homers in an inning Hines hit to tie Palmeiro are recorded, it won't matter who threw them. It won't matter who played or didn't play in a game with a record number of team home runs, or who sat the bench in two straight road run-rule wins. Detractors should remember Mizzou played nine other SEC series, one of them a stunning sweep over Texas A&M, the Bulldog opponent at "approximately" 8:00 pm on Tuesday night (start time likely subject to change and/or delay).

What people will remember is the stretch run, and it doesn't matter who was or was not around, the accomplishment need not be qualified with "only after" or "without ______________ it wouldn't have happened" as explanations. Give the credit, as the saying goes, to those in the arena, those who did the work and rose to the occasion and the challenge. And, they are not done.

I wrote a few weeks ago that the pace needed to be picked up. And it was. The most remarkable part about this regular season wasn't that Mississippi State fired a baseball coach for the first time in history due to performance on the job. It was that not the first time, or the second or third or so on, the team responded and personified why we're all so stubbornly proud of this program's history, accomplishments, and just plain ole southern indefatigability.

For the record, the Bulldogs scored 50 runs over the weekend, gave up just 11, winning 25-7 (10 runs in the 9th, so not a run-rule game), 13-3 (run rule) and 12-1 (run rule). And some other quirks happened. Stone Simmons pitched 1 1/3 innings, gave up four runs, and was still the winning pitcher. That's morally deserved, but it's also Polkily explained as that's baseball.

Now, it's on to Hoover, an NCAA bid unquestionably all but official (Memorial Day), and let's just see what this team has left in the tank. Momentum can be fickle in college baseball, as we've seen this season, but there's an edge and air of self-accomplishment in this team that many have seen before, and we always look back later and smile in remembrance. How 'bout them Dawgs?

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