Lamont

“Echols called Clarke ‘a real baseball man’ and credited him with building the confidence in his team.” (Clay Harden, Jackson Daily News, March, 1977).

That’s a nice compliment from a great coach who a few weeks later threatened to whip my &!@ in front of my own dugout on my own home field, because one of my players, whose name I won’t mention (Billy Williams) and maybe a couple of others under his leadership, were directing some remarks towards “the coach” in our 8-7 win to force a best-of-three playoff series in the South Central AA Conference.

Lamont (Echols) was not very happy, to say the least. His nose was right in my face and he was jabbing his index finger into my chest like a dagger. He said, and I remember it well, “I don’t know who in the hell is saying that, but I’m going to tell you one #!%* thing, if it doesn’t stop, I’m not going to whip his &!@, I’m gonna whip your &!@ !!!” (Direct quote; I kid you not. I still have nightmares about it.)

I believed him. It stopped. Nothing else did, but “it” did.

When he finally walked to the third base coaching box, the insanity in me made me follow him out there and we continued our heated discussion. I think he respected the fact that I was not just going to take it. I think we both actually had fun going at it. That alone was worth the price of admission. Old school baseball stuff.

I must admit, the racket in the dugout was borderline “unsportsman-like conduct,” but nothing unusual for the great American pastime. I’m sure a lot of junk was coming from the other dugout as well. There were no choirboys playing on this spring night.

I usually wouldn’t let my players do stuff like that. We didn’t have to. We were pretty good against everybody else.

But on this occasion, it was one of the ways we could muster up the courage to pull off a big win against a team that had so much more talent than we had. We had met in the football bleachers behind left field before the game for a “private” conversation about just that.

They were better than us and intimidated us and you just don’t play very well when you’re intimidated. I don’t care who you are. Of the 9 games we lost that season, 6 of them were to Brandon. Some were close. Some were not.

I covered for Spud (Billy) though and Coach didn’t whip my &@! as he had promised, but his Brandon Academy Rebels got to whip all of our &!@es in two straight tie-breaker games. Those kind of whippings are the worst. The Rebels advanced to the South Mississippi and State Championship series, which they also won handily.

If there had been no Lamont Echols and Brandon Academy Rebels… Rodney Bounds, Ron Baker, Glenn Harris, Tim Schutz, Mike Giordano, Danny Fulton, Rusty Lowery, Wally White, Gird Warren, Steve Gardner, etc. in 1977, we would have won it all.

Ironically, Spud came off the bench as a pinch hitter in the bottom of the seventh and instead of getting crop-dusted by the Brandon pitcher Rodney Bounds, he dropped a picture-perfect drag bunt to score Barry Jones with the winning run. Nobody saw that coming.

The Raiders had loaded the bases in the seventh with walks to Ricky Chisolm and Rod Hudson and a double by Jones. Richard Kelly blasted a shot off Brandon first baseman Tim Schutz’ glove to tie the game at six, setting up Spud’s surprise.

Stan Prewitt and Rob Harrell had two hits each and Chisolm singled and walked three times.

“It was mental fisticuffs, a physical marathon full of taunts and catcalls. In short, it had all the proper ingredients of a high school battle royale.” (Clay Harden, Jackson Daily News)

It was a classic 1970’s high school baseball royale, indeed!

Lamont was a great baseball coach and a fierce competitor and I always enjoyed competing against him and his teams and win one every now and then.

The great Lamont Echols (1938-2014)

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