On a chilly, dry Tuesday October night, the MSU club baseball team met for one of their bi-weekly practices. There were no scholarship athletes on the field, no five-star recruits, no cameras or crowds of thousands, just guys playing the game they love.
These guys weren’t out here because they wanted to work on their slider, or to put in work in the cage and earn their next NIL deal. They were here because they love baseball, and aren’t ready to give it up just yet. This was what the sport is supposed to be— America’s pastime in its purest form.
They wear the Mississippi State University colors proudly and compete at the highest level they can against other schools across the country, sometimes even in hopes of catching some eyes, like former MSU club baseball player Matthew Reed. He can now be found taking the mound for the University of Alabama-Birmingham Blazers on game days, still playing the game he loves, all because he was noticed during his time on the club team here in Starkville.
These players meet at the Starkville Sportsplex fields on Tuesdays and Thursdays to practice, but for the entirety of this semester, they have been met with uncertainty.
This is a team— one with a full roster and a travel budget. There is one thing they’re lacking, though: a place to call home. During the pandemic year, the team played at a local high school. Now, however, due to new regulations, they have to find a new place to play.
Several of the team members spoke about what exactly the club is and what it would mean to be able to have somewhere permanent to call home.
“It would mean everything,” said Trace Adams, a junior mechanical engineering major. “That’d be incredible. Right now we’re having to, you know, find a place out here. We don’t always get lights, so some days we just can’t practice. So finding a for-sure home that we know we could always use would be incredible.”
Club president C.J. Fisher, a junior finance major, provided insight into the history of the team’s field usage.
“This is my third year with the team, and for my freshman year we used to have to drive a half hour to West Lowndes High School for every practice and every game … and last year they kind of terminated our agreement. We played one game at (Starkville Academy) and they charged us a single game fee, but honestly we’re kind of homeless,” Fisher said.
They may be homeless, but this is a team that still loves the game.
“We just want to play ball,” Adams said. “That’s what this is all about.”
In terms of what joining the team is all about, new member and sophomore business administration major Luke Wyman was able to offer some insight.
“Realistically, just joining the club team, you really just come out and do a tryout. We’re not very strict on it, you know, as long as you’ve got the fundamentals down and you can make the easy plays and play the game for what it is, you should be good to go,” Wyman said.
With every athletic club, there of course comes dues, and this one is no different. Dues are broken up into two payments of $150 a semester, so the financial burden is minimized as much as possible. As for tryouts, those will take place as soon as students come back to school next semester in January. In order to schedule one, you can message the team on Instagram or Twitter @hailstateclubbaseball.
