RP50:Ron Polk Is 'Golden' at Mississippi State
- 7 hours ago
- 5 min read
By Doug Kyle
Ron Polk has been in his “Golden Years” for some time now. The 82-year-old was just 27 when he became a Division 1 head baseball coach at Georgia Southern, 28 when he coached his first game.
Four years later, 1976, he was the first full-time head baseball coach at an SEC school, Mississippi State. Hired in Fall 1975, that debut came March 8, 1976, his first game pushed back by rain, with his Bulldogs trying to get in a quick doubleheader before the opposing Bulldogs, Louisiana Tech, had to leave town. March 8, 2026, makes 50 years, his career at MSU now catching up as Golden itself.
There was only one sad element that debut day. The late Charles Shira, athletic director at Mississippi State who twice considered Polk a top candidate for the job and didn't even trifle an interview the second time, never got to see him coach, passing away two months earlier on January 2.
The Bicentennial twin-bill was a split, losing the first one 2-1 on an unearned run in the 8th inning, and getting a 4-0 shutout in the 7-inning nightcap. According to box scores, the combined time of both games was a brisk 3:25.
The lack of offense on the chilly overcast day may have had something to do with the pace, and while records don’t reflect it, recollections of those there report that Polk’s first ejection in maroon and white also went down that day, supposedly with a new umpire behind home plate!
I was also fortunate to be there that day, a student reporter for the school paper The Reflector who jumped at the chance, and for disclosure sake, I had never written sports before, just campus news. I had to learn how to score baseball from radio man Tom Dehner on a Sunday night at a University Drive laundromat, and everything else from the amazing Assistant Sports Information Director, Bo Carter.
When I reminded Bo of the anniversary recently, I had not remembered he wasn’t there but had still gleaned amazing details from his boss at the time, long-time SID Mr. Bob Hartley.
While good weather would have permitted Bo to be there for the originally-scheduled Sunday opener, instead of seeing a historic first on that Monday, he was instead witnessing a historic last, Mississippi State taking on Kentucky in the final men’s basketball game at UK’s Memorial Coliseum before moving to Rupp Arena that fall.
So, instead of giving the starting lineups from Polk’s prepared script or playing “Sweet Georgia Brown” while State took infield, he saw the hoops team lose an 86-80 lead in the final 40 seconds and eventually fall 94-93 in overtime. No details on how the Wildcats overcame the deficit so quickly a decade before the three-pointer and the shot clock, but use your imagination there.
Ask anyone who was there at Dudy Noble Field that day, or that overachieving season, if they could foresee what Polk would go on to become, winning more games at the time than any other coach in the SEC, having his name on the centerfield wall, his statue at the right field gate, and his own custom clothing line.
I sure didn’t, and I doubt anyone else did. The signs were there, along with potential. But, as they say, potential is ability that hasn’t met opportunity or execution yet.
In a way, Ron Polk and Mississippi State were each other’s Lay’s potato chip. Neither could stop at one. Ron retired in 1997, left and went to Georgia a couple seasons, returned, retired again in 2008, and after a difference of opinion on his successor resulted in thankfully not a permanent separation, returned once more in 2020, this time for good. As inevitable goes, he is Mississippi State Baseball’s treasure, forever and ever, amen.
But don’t just take my word for it. Polk is also treasured by virtually everyone in the game of college baseball. If someone didn’t care for his blunt and focused personality when he was young, driven, and fiery, they are compelled now to at least respect him for his legacy and lifelong unselfishness and devotion to the game of college baseball.
Ask how many high school and college coaches and players he’s addressed by driving to their banquets. And the SOP he’d put together over the years, with its walkup song of Sweet Georgia Brown playing in the background, was incorporated into the “Baseball Playbook” that hasn’t sold quite as many copies as Polk fan John Grisham has, but it has to be close.
Tommy Raffo played for Polk 1987-90 and was on teams that hosted four straight regionals, won three Southeastern Conference championships, and made Polk’s fourth MSU appearance in the Men’s College World Series.
He then spent 31 years coaching in Division 1 at MSU and Arkansas State before retiring and becoming the Athletic Director at Nettleton High School in Jonesboro, where his children attended.
Raffo said this when he was selected for the Ron Polk Ring of Honor in 2023.
“I owe so much to Coach Polk. I would not be the person I am today without his influence. When you’re a young ball player and you go off to college at age 17 or 18, away from your mom and dad, he becomes not only your coach but your father figure as well.”
“Coach Polk is truly unique, no one like him, not now, not ever. He’s not just the master of teaching fundamental baseball, he instills in you the importance of details, work ethic, handshakes, the power of a hand-written note. He lives his life through the lessons of baseball: work hard, listen, be on time, play hard, be a gracious winner and learn from the mistakes you make when you lose.
“When you play college baseball,” Raffo continued, “it’s amazing talking to your teammates how much of an impact your coaches have on you at that point in your life. It’s a very valuable time in your life, you’re away from home, but you’re still making decisions, and you’re around the right people to help shape you.
“There’s not a time when you move on that you don’t look back, remember the influences and core values, and want to pass it yourself to someone else. It just multiplies, the lives that Coach Polk touched, that continues and it’s unbelievable how that influence is woven into anyone who’s been a part of his life.”
Getting a chance to return to the place you love and be around the game of college baseball is something Ron Polk can't shake, even after 50 years. And I kinda' know how he feels, on a much lesser scale, mind you.
Combine that with a new sheriff in town who's brought a new batch of Spring Fever that people caught in 1976 and still come down with every year, and you just might have another age of Mississippi State Championship Baseball on your hands.
Maroon and White, and Golden.
And that’s baseball, by the book, Ron Polk style.
Thanks to Special Collections archives at Mississippi State's Mitchell Memorial Library for story clippings from The Reflector. Photos are credited when the source is known, most of those not already identified are from Mississippi State Athletics or University Relations.