Bennie Brown, 71 years young, grew up in poverty in Jonestown, 15 miles from Clarksdale in Coahoma County, one of the poorest counties in the poorest state in the nation.
Brown’s earliest memories are of sitting on the front porch with his father, listening on the family radio to St. Louis Cardinals games on KMOX out of St. Louis.
“My dad was a baseball man, loved it,” Brown says. “He’d build a little fire out of leaves and twigs to keep the mosquitoes away and he’d listen to Harry Caray and Jack Buck just about every evening.”
Those St. Louis Cardinals included such remarkable Black ballplayers such as Bob Gibson, Bill White, and Curt Flood. Back then more than 15% of Major League Baseball players were African American, including many of the sport’s brightest stars. Today, only 6.7% of Major Leaguers are Black. The percentage has trended downward for decades.
The No. 1 reason is primarily one of economics. Youth baseball costs money, not only for the equipment. Young Bennie Brown loved the sport almost as much as his dad. When he and his buddies out in the country played ball, they used their caps for gloves, tree limbs for bats and a cheap rubber ball for a baseball. There was no money for gloves or bats. There were no little leagues. There were certainly no travel leagues.
It has remained that way out in Coahoma County in communities such as Jonestown, Lyon, Lula and Friars Point. But that’s about to change. In Jonestown, But God Ministries (BGM) has partnered with Major League Baseball Players Youth Development Foundation and Brasfield & Gorrie General Contractors to fund a $3 million state-of-the-art baseball/softball complex that will be known as Hope Field.
Coahoma County High School, which has never had a baseball field or softball field, will play their games there. So will organized youth leagues from T-ball on up. The land has been cleared and leveled. Baseball and softball diamonds have been carved. Bleachers, concession stands are under construction. Light poles are about to go up. Construction should be complete by December and ready for play next spring.
“I just can’t begin to tell you how much this is going to mean to our young people,” Brown said. “This has exceeded by wildest dreams.”
“Our boys and girls are going to have a place to play,” says Bennie Brown, who serves as associate community manager of But God Ministries.
The Hope Field baseball and softball facility will soon be a reality, and now But God Ministries is raising money to help fund the recreation leagues that will play games there. To that end, BGM has gathered several of Mississippi baseball’s most successful coaches to take part in a fund-raising dinner event on Thursday night (6 p.m.) at Broadmoor Baptist Church in Madison. Longtime Mississippi State broadcaster Jim Ellis will moderate a baseball discussion with coaching legends Ron Polk, Scott Berry, Mike Bianco and Bob Braddy. Ballpark fare will be served. Admission is $30.
The baseball/softball project is the latest in a long line of BGM projects to improve the lives of poor folks in Coahoma County. BGM already has also spearheaded a medical clinic, a dental clinic, a law clinic, a community center, an economic development center and a Montessori school.
Said BGM executive director Stan Buckley, “One thing I love about this baseball project is that it is something that will affect thousands of children and their families for many years to come. I think of the baseball fields on which I played as a child in Natchez. Those fields are still there and are being used over 40 years after I played on them. There is no telling how many children have played on those fields over the decades. The same will be true of our fields in Jonestown. Many children over a significant period of time will be touched through this project.”
Hope Field really is a dream come true for Coahoma County High School baseball and softball coach Wesley Davis, whose teams have played its home games at dilapidated fields in Clarksdale.
“The field we have played on had bad lighting, a flat pitcher’s mound, holes all over it and flooded every time it rained,” Davis said. “Plus it was a long way from where most of our players live. Many of these families don’t have transportation. This new facility is going to mean the world to us. I can’t wait.”
Buckley gives much credit for the Hope Field project to Jim Gorrie, CEO of Brasfield and Gorrie, which built the Atlanta Braves’ Trust Park. This will make a long story really short: Gorrie and Buckley met while working on mission trips in Haiti. Buckley asked Gorrie to come see what BGM was working on in the Jonestown area. Gorrie came and was intrigued. When he asked what he could do to help, Bennie Brown mentioned a baseball field. So Gorrie contacted his friends in Major League Baseball, MLB became involved, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Hope Field will have artificial turf in the infield and a Bermuda grass outfield. It will be a regulation-sized field, but will be convertible to smaller T-ball and youth league fields.
It’s the T-Ball and youth leagues that most excite Davis, who believes those leagues will help develop players for his high school teams.
“We’ve got plenty of athletic talent,” Davis says. “They’ve just never had a place to play baseball.”
If Luke Easter were alive, he would surely be smiling. Luke Easter, you say? Easter was a Black baseball pioneer, born in Jonestown in 1915, whose family moved to St. Louis after his mother died when he was 7 years old. Easter grew up to become one of the great power hitters of the old Negro Baseball Leagues, playing for the Homestead Grays in Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C. Easter called his home runs “Easter Eggs” and he hit many for both the Grays and later the Cleveland Indians after Jackie Robinson broke the color line in Major League Baseball.
Had Easter’s mother not died and his family not moved away from Jonestown, Luke Easter most likely never would have played baseball. There was no place to play.
There will be now.
For tickets to Thursday night’s 6 p.m. program at Broadmoor Baptist Church www.butgodministries.com or call the BGM office at 601–983–1179.
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