The Mississippi State Department of Health first issued the notice Thursday morning after reporting E.coli was in two samples submitted from JXN Water, Jackson’s third-party water manager. The notice was concurrent with a boil water notice MSDH issued for Flowood, which, the agency said, also had E.coli in its water samples.
Just hours later, JXN Water’s Ted Henifin held a press conference disputing the results, arguing that it was highly unlikely for both Jackson and Flowood to have traces of E.coli in the same testing period, and that the results were likely false positives. Henifin also criticized the Health Department for not validating the results before issuing the boil water notice, something allowed under federal guidelines through the Environmental Protection Agency.
MSDH pushed back, saying in a press release that the agency reviewed its protocol and was “confident in (the test results’) validity.”
The agency’s quick lifting of the boil water notice for Jackson — Flowood’s remains active as of this publishing — is a shift from its usual procedure. MSDH usually requires two consecutive days of clean samples, as well as roughly a day to analyze the results, before it lifts a boil water notice.
In a news release announcing the lifting of the boil water notice, state health officialsdid said they were doing so “in accordance with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Revised Total Coliform Rule.”
But they went on to say that they continue to stand behind the initial test results: “Upon review, all evidence supports that these test results were true positives. Since 2003, there have been 29 instances of E. coli detected in the City of Jackson’s water system. During the same time period, the City of Flowood has had three instances of E. coli in their water system.”
While the citywide notice was lifted, two separate notices due to loss of pressure are still active in Jackson, affecting 351 customers. Visit MSDH’s boil water notice listing to see which areas are affected.
JXN Water preps for cold weather
Throughout the last year, JXN Water has upgraded the city’s largely exposed and vulnerable water treatment facilities to better sustain cold weather. Temperatures in Jackson could reach as low as 15 degrees on Monday, according to the National Weather Service, with a chance of snow, sleet and freezing rain.
The main upgrades, Henifin explained Friday, were covering and insulating the city’s water treatment facilities, hoping to prevent a repeat of the 2021 water shutdown in Jackson when equipment left exposed to the cold prevented the city from putting out enough pressure into the system.
Ted Henifin, interim water manager, for JXN Water, the water system for the city of Jackson, Miss., used his agency’s sink to demonstrate how to run faucet water like a “thin line of spaghetti with intermittent breaks” in order to deal with expected below freezing weather, at a news conference in Jackson, Miss., Friday, Jan. 12, 2024. During the news conference, Henifin also questioned the Mississippi Department of Health’s recent results regarding the quality of the city’s water. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)
Henifin also said the city is more well equipped now to handle water line ruptures. In the past, such as on Christmas in 2022, the cold weather has frequently led to line breaks and subsequent boil water notices. JXN Water, Henifin said, now has 14 crews that will work around the clock to repair any breaks, versus the two crews that the city had a year ago.
Jackson officials are asking residents to let their faucets drip during freezing weather to prevent pipes from freezing, as well as to open their cabinets under the sink to allow heat inside.
Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba’s office cautioned residents to stay home in the event of snow, sleet, or freezing rain, because of possibly dangerous driving conditions and the city’s limited capacity to clear snow and ice from the roads.
The city will also open a temporary shelter on Monday at 11 A.M. with food and cots, at 1355 Hattiesburg Street in Jackson.
UPDATE 1/12/23: This story has been updated to include the state Health Department’s position.
Speaker Jason White on Friday appointed new people to lead the two House committees with jurisdiction over health policy, signaling a desire to shift the focus of health care debate in a state plagued by dire health outcomes.
“The selections for chairs and vice chairs directly reflect our desire and drive to elevate Mississippi,” White said in a statement. “I am enthusiastic to work with these Republican, Democrat, and independent chairs and vice chairs as we address our state’s challenges and opportunities through a conservative lens to build a better, brighter Mississippi.”
The new speaker appointed Sam Creekmore IV, a Republican from New Albany, to chair the Public Health and Human Services Committee and Missy McGee, a Republican of Hattiesburg, to chair the Medicaid Committee, a notable shift from more conservative respective chairs of the previous four-year term.
Both Creekmore and McGee come from the more moderate wing of the state GOP and have been involved in previous efforts to reform aspects of health care. Both have told Mississippi Today they support Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act.
Creekmore, only a second-term lawmaker, successfully passed legislation last year to provide more mental health services while McGee, a third-term legislator, has been a vocal advocate for increasing postpartum Medicaid benefits for new mothers.
“I was very much surprised,” Creekmore told Mississippi Today of the committee chair assignment. “I was thinking that if I got a chair it would not be Public Health, though that would have been my first choice. I have been passionate about it. I did not ask for it. I wasn’t expecting anything major like Public Health.”
When asked about possible priorities as chair of Public Health, Creekmore said he wanted to put Medicaid expansion “on the table.”
“Let’s have a conversation,” he said. “I know that is what the speaker wants to do, too. We have not discussed it other than just in passing. But whatever we do has to be what is best for the hospitals, the people and the state.”
Similarly, McGee also said she plans to examine ways to help the number of uninsured working people because “Medicaid can be a tool in helping people and families.”
“With regard to the direction of the committee, I think the sheer number of uninsured working poor is a real concern,” McGee said. “Addressing this issue is a stated priority for the Speaker, and it will be a priority for the Medicaid Committee.”
White had said earlier he wanted to conduct a serious study of expanding Medicaid to provide health care for primarily to working poor as 40 other states have done. In the past, the Republican leadership of the Legislature has refused to even consider Medicaid expansion, which is still opposed by Gov. Tate Reeves.
White also appointed four Democrats to chair less visible committees. During the past term, then-Speaker Philip Gunn, who chose not to run for reelection, did not appoint any Democrats as committee chairs. The four Democratic chairs are Carl Mickens over Housing; Cedric Burnett over Interstate Cooperation; Karl Gibbs on State Library and Otis Anthony over Youth and Family Affairs.
Even though there were four Democrats selected as chairs and 21 as vice chairs, Robert Johnson III of Natchez, the House Democratic leader, said there were few Democrats placed in positions to have major impacts.
“I was hoping for more given the statements the speaker had made,” Johnson said. He added he is still hopeful of cooperation given the conversations he has had with White and new House Pro-Tem Manly Barton.
Johnson also praised White’s appointments of Creekmore as Public Health chair and McGee as Medicaid chair.
While Johnson said he would liked to have seen a Democrat in one of those posts, both Creekmore and McGee have “shown the willingness to work across the aisle to do what is best for the state. I am encouraged by their appointments.”
White opted to keep Republican John Read of Gautier as Appropriations Committee chair and Republican Trey Lamar of Senatobia as Ways and Means chair, the two committees responsible for tax policy and crafting the state budget.
The speaker appointed only four Democrats to lead committees, but those committees, in reality, are not powerful and a majority of Republicans will still make up the majority of the members on those committees.
The speaker will soon begin referring bills to committees for consideration. The deadline for leaders to pass bills out of their committees is March 5.
Gov. Tate Reeves’ office says Mississippi won’t participate in a federal summer food program for children because of his desire to reject “attempts to expand the welfare state.”
But officials at the state’s welfare agency that Reeves oversees, which participated in a similar federal program earlier in the pandemic, offered a different reason for opting out of the program: a lack of state resources to administer it.
The Summer EBT program would provide the families of students who receive free or reduced lunch during the school year with electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards that can be used to purchase groceries in the summer. For each eligible child, families would receive $40 per month for a total of $120.
Thirty-five states, all five U.S. territories, and four Tribes will be participating in the program for its first year, which the U.S. Department of Agriculture said it expects will benefit nearly 21 million children. The other states that have opted out include Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Louisiana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont and Wyoming.
Mississippi previously administered the pandemic EBT program, which gave a similar summer benefit and provided assistance during the school year if school was conducted primarily virtually or hybrid for at least one month. The cost of running the pandemic-era program was covered fully by the federal government but the new summer version would require states to cover half of the administrative expenses, something other states have pointed to as a reason not to participate.
“Both (the Mississippi Department of Education) and (the Mississippi Department of Human Services) lack the resources, including workforce capacity and funding, to support a Summer EBT Program,” said Mark Jones, a DHS spokesperson.
Republican governors in some other states have also said they chose not to participate in the program because of their opposition to expanding federal benefits, according to Chalkbeat.
Democratic Congressman Bennie Thompson directly blamed Reeves for the state opting out of the program in a statement his office released Thursday.
“Shame on Tate Reeves for refusing essential food assistance for eligible children during the summer,” he said. “These federal funds would have provided crucial support for parents and guardians to ensure their child or children are adequately fed throughout the summer. Unfortunately, the repercussions of the governor opting Mississippi out of this new program casts a significant burden on multiple families.”
Reeves’ spokesperson Shelby Wilcher, asked for comment about whether Reeves made the decision to opt out of the federal program, countered by pointing to the existing programs that help feed children in the summer.
“It’s disingenuous for Representative Thompson to insinuate that children won’t get the support they need by not participating in something that was originally intended to be a temporary pandemic-era program,” she said.
The Mississippi Department of Education said it would continue to administer the Summer Food Service Program, which serves meals on-site in low-income communities.
The Mississippi State Department of Health issued a citywide boil water notice for Jackson on Thursday morning after finding E.coli during its monthly sampling, however the city’s water manager quickly questioned the test results, saying they’re likely a false positive.
Each month, the city has to send 120 samples from around Jackson to the Health Department’s lab, which tests the samples for contaminants including E.coli. E.coli is a bacteria that’s commonly found in feces. Most of it are harmless, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, but some can lead to sickness such as vomiting and diarrhea.
JXN Water, the city’s third-party water manager, submitted its monthly samples to MSDH on Wednesday. The state agency responded Thursday morning that two of the samples showed positive results for E.coli.
That afternoon, JXN Water’s Ted Henifin called the results “highly suspect” for a number of reasons. For one, he said, JXN Water has a chlorination and disinfection process to get rid of bacteria like E.coli, and no previous samples have shown E.coli since the third-party manager took over in late 2022.
Another reason for suspicion, Henifin added, was that MSDH also reported finding E.coli in samples from neighboring Flowood, also on Thursday.
“Having positive results from any system, Jackson’s in particular, or any throughout the state, is fairly unusual,” he said during a press conference. “Having two positives from two different water systems on the same day, analyzed at the same time, seems highly suspect.”
Jacobs Solutions, which JXN Water contracts to staff the city’s treatment plants, also collects the samples around Jackson that get sent to MSDH. Yvonne Mazza-Lappi, Jacobs’ director of Drinking Water Compliance, said that there are a number of ways MSDH’s testing could have yielded a false positive.
“How they’re doing their testing and how they’re sterilizing and so forth… if those precautions are not done, we know there’s human error in there,” Mazza-Lappi said, adding that improper equipment handling — such as with control samples that contain E.coli — could lead to cross-contamination.
Jacobs also went to the sample locations where the positive results came from, she said, and found that there was enough residual chlorine at the locations that “we should have never seen a total coliform or E.coli positive.”
The earliest JXN Water could lift the boil water notice is likely Monday, Henifin said. He explained that the city has to have two consecutive days of negative test results from its water samples, and then also allow time for the state lab to analyze the samples. He added that he was confident that the next round of testing will show no levels of E.coli.
Henifin also criticized MSDH as being “overly conservative” for issuing the boil water notice, instead of going back and validating the test results.
In 2016, Mazza-Lippi said, the EPA revised its rules to allow a water system to retest sample locations that show positive results for total coliform or E.coli, and to do so before issuing a boil water notice. JXN Water requested that MSDH allow it to retest the samples before issuing the notice, but the agency declined, Henifin said.
The lab at the MSDH is the only EPA-certified lab in Central Mississippi, he added, and that the next closest one is in Purvis, about two hours away.
Henifin was frustrated with the impact the notice would have on trust among residents, something that has suffered for years with the city’s decades-long water crisis.
“There will be a number of people who will no longer drink tap water as a result of this, and they won’t be just in Mississippi,” he said. “So yeah, this is tragic. We took it very personally and we’re doing everything we can. Our poor restaurants and businesses that depend on water, they were just coming out of this PTSD around regular citywide boil water notices and starting to feel confident.”
Henifin clarified that, despite his belief that the test results were likely false positives, that Jacksonians should follow MSDH’s notice until JXN Water can get it lifted.
In response to JXN Water, the Health Department said in a statement Thursday afternoon that it didn’t believe the results were false positives.
“Officials in the (MSDH Public Health Laboratory) do not believe there was any contamination of the samples while in the lab and the results are not false positives,” the agency said. “MPHL leadership staff has done a preliminary review of the lab protocols related to these results and are confident in their validity.”
The last citywide boil water notice was issued a little over a year ago on Christmas day in 2022, after cold weather again impaired Jackson’s distribution system. JXN Water said it will hold a press conference on Friday to show steps of how to prepare for the expected cold temperatures early next week.
The Jackson boil water notice affects 188,723 customers, according to MSDH. The Flowood notice affects 27,997 customers. On Wednesday, MSDH also issued boil water notices to 713 customers in Jackson County, and 742 customers in Amite County, both of which were due to a loss of pressure in the systems. Visit MSDH’s website for instructions on what to do during a notice.
Most of the key chairs from the past four years will remain in place under the committee assignments announced Thursday by Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann.
Hosemann had his committee assignments read to the members, as is the custom, Thursday before the Senate adjourned for the weekend.
“We have spent hundreds of hours working on these assignments,” Hosemann told the senators. “My decision in these appointments is to place senators in the best position to serve the state of Mississippi and the citizens who sent us here.”
Republican Briggs Hopson of Vicksburg will remain as Appropriations chair, and Republican Josh Harkins of Flowood will continue as Finance chair, two powerful committees with jurisdiction over budget and tax policy.
Despite criticism from former state Sen. Chris McDaniel, who unsuccessfully challenged him in last year’s Republican primary election, Hosemann, as is the custom of past Republican lieutenant governors, continued to appoint some Democratic committee chairs — most notably Hob Bryan of Amory as the influential Public Health chair.
Bryan, the longest-serving state senator in the chamber, told Mississippi Today that he had not thoroughly analyzed the full list of committee chairs, but he believed Hosemann appointed qualified people to lead the committees.
“I have great confidence in the presiding officer of the Senate,” Bryan said of Hosemann.
In 2020, Hosemann named 13 Democrats as chairs. On Thursday, he named 10. The 52-member Senate has 41 committees.
Jennifer Branning, R-Philadelphia, who maintained her post as chair of the Transportation Committee, said, “Certainly diversity is not a bad thing. I do think the lieutenant governor recognizes the talent in this chamber. He has made a good effort to capitalize on the talent we have here.”
Jeremy England, R-Vancleave, who will chair Elections Committee, replacing Jeff Tate, R-Merdian, who will chair Veterans and Military Affairs Committee, said he believes Hosemann appointed hard workers as chairs.
“Mississippi is so much different than what they have in Washington,” England said. “… We have some great talent to offer regardless of party.”
Most, if not all, of the committees are comprised of a majority Republican membership that limits a Democratic chair’s power.
Officials from the Mississippi State Department of Health have confirmed the state’s second pediatric flu death of the 2023-2024 flu season on Thursday.
A pediatric death is defined as the death of an individual under the age of 18.
There have been a total of 26 pediatric flu deaths, including this one, in the state since pediatric flu deaths were first reported during the 2008-2009 flu season. Flu season in Mississippi usually peaks between January and March, and the vaccine can take up to two weeks to provide immunity.
The patient in this case had not received a flu vaccine this season, according to the health department.
“We highly encourage people to get a flu shot. A vaccination won’t necessarily keep you from getting the flu, although it can reduce your risk of infection and is the best protection to keep you from a severe outcome,” interim State Epidemiologist Dr. Kathryn Taylor said in a press release. “With a few months left in this season, we recommend everyone six months of age and older consider a flu and COVID-19 vaccination.”
For individuals 18 and under, flu shots are covered by insurance, Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program. Some children may be eligible for free vaccination under the Vaccines for Children Program at qualifying locations.
Uninsured and underinsured adults who meet certain high-risk criteria qualify for an adult influenza vaccination at county health department clinics. The vaccine is available for insured adults through pharmacies, retailers and private physicians throughout the state.
A prisoner at the Walnut Grove Correctional Facility, a state prison once deemed among the worst for sexual misconduct in the nation, has pledged to go on another hunger strike if the Mississippi Department of Corrections fails to investigate his allegations that a guard inappropriately touched him during a pat down.
The status of Garnett Hughes’ three-month-old complaint is unclear as he has received conflicting information from prison staff, and MDOC wouldn’t comment on the case except to say “the agency is handling this matter in accordance with our policies and procedures.”
Garnett Hughes, who is incarcerated at Walnut Grove Correctional Facility, has pledged to go on a hunger strike if his PREA complaint is not investigated by Jan. 15. Credit: Courtesy Danielle Hughes
On Oct. 16, Hughes, 35, filed a grievance alleging that a week earlier, three officers had awoken him in the middle of the night, ordered him out of bed and, while patting Hughes down, touched him “in the wrong area.” When Hughes said “don’t touch me there,” one of the officers allegedly told Hughes to shut his mouth and follow orders before doing it again.
This grievance should have triggered MDOC to conduct an investigation under the Prison Rape Elimination Act, a federal law that requires prisons to maintain “zero tolerance” toward sexual violence.
But Hughes said no one from MDOC ever spoke to him about what happened until early December when — in the midst of a hunger strike Hughes undertook to regain his canteen and phone privileges that he lost after attempting to flee — a nurse practitioner told him the case was closed due to a lack of visual evidence. It’s not clear how the nurse practitioner learned of Hughes’ complaint, which is supposed to be confidential, and he did not receive any formal notification as required under the PREA (pronounced pre-yuh) law.
A few days later, Hughes said another prison staff member told him his complaint was being investigated. Still, no one has contacted Hughes to ask him any questions, such as the name of the officer Hughes alleges violated him, which isn’t noted in his grievance. And, those same officers continue to come to Hughes’s zone, he said.
Now Hughes is pledging to go on another hunger strike ifhe doesn’t hear anything by Jan. 15 from the Corrections Investigation Division,the office within MDOC that is responsible for investigating complaints of prison rape. Hughes also has a Change.org petition seeking his release.
“I’m putting my trust that they are gonna do their jobs,” Hughes told Mississippi Today, adding, “but I gave up on asking, and I’m like, whenever the 15th comes, I’m going to go back up on my hunger strike and deal with it that way.”
Hughes’ stance toward MDOC isn’t unusual; many incarcerated people distrust internal processes to resolve their complaints about sexual abuse, which often go unreported, according to the National PREA Resource Center.
In Mississippi, that’s an instinct borne out by the troubled state of MDOC’s facilities which face widespread understaffing, deteriorating infrastructure and a culture of violence. And Walnut Grove, where Hughes has been incarcerated since December 2022, had an especially notorious reputation for horror and violence when it was a private prison, with the Justice Department once finding that “the sexual misconduct we found was among the worst that we have seen in any facility anywhere in the nation.”
Walnut Grove closed in 2016 but it was reopened by Commissioner Burl Cain in 2021 to house alcohol and substance abuse programs and anyone deemed a gang member.
Data also backs up the lack of trust Hughes and other incarcerated people feel. Under PREA, any allegation of sexual violence toward an incarcerated person — whether in the form of a grievance filed by that person or a call from a third-party source — is supposed to trigger an investigation. But according to state and federal data, when cases are reported, what often happens is: nothing.
At the federal level, a 2022 congressional report found that of more than 5,000 allegations of sexual abuse by Bureau of Prison employees, 134 were substantiated.
In Mississippi, there were 194 allegations of sexual misconduct or harassment by prison staff on incarcerated people between 2012 and 2021, according to reports available on MDOC’s website. Just eight were substantiated. The rate isn’t much better for prisoners who allege they were assaulted by other prisoners: Of 602 allegations, 18 were substantiated.
These numbers don’t include MDOC’s reports from 2014 and 2016, which aren’t available, and 2019 because it contains duplicative numbers from 2018. An MDOC spokesperson said the agency would update its website “to reflect our current PREA statistics.”
There are several reasons why so few allegations of prison rape are substantiated, said Julie Abbate, the national advocacy director at Just Detention International, an organization that aims to end sexual violence in detention facilities. Abbate was part of the working group that helped draft PREA standards.
One reason is that the correctional officers often charged with investigating PREA complaints apply a tougher burden of proof than they are supposed to.
“Because correctional staff have a law enforcement mentality, they often go to the burden of proof of ‘beyond a reasonable doubt,’ which is quite high,” Abbate said. “For administrative investigations, they should only be using a ‘preponderance of the evidence’ standard.”
Another reason is officers may feel like it’s futile to punish an incarcerated person when they’re already serving prison time. Put differently, every aspect of incarceration, from intake to the fact that guards have total authority over prisoners, can exacerbate conditions that lead to prison rape.
“It’s been illegal to rape people forever,” Abbate said. “If you could just criminalize your way out of this issue, it would be done, just like if you could criminalize your way out of the crime problem in the country, it would be done. It doesn’t work on the streets, and it doesn’t work in a correctional facility.”
And prison rape can be difficult to substantiate. In particular, Abbate said allegations like Hughes’ of improper pat downs can be especially tough to prove since pat downs are, by nature, invasive.
Other aspects of Hughes’ case are emblematic of the problems that persist in prisons despite PREA, Abbate said. Most alarming to her is the nurse practitioner who knew Hughes had a complaint and that it was closed.
“Allegations are supposed to be disclosed just on a need-to know basis to avoid any sort of retaliation or rumor-mongering,” she said.
Since PREA complaints are confidential, MDOC isn’t required to share information about Hughes’ case with anyone, including the press. Confidentiality is crucial to protect incarcerated people, but Abbate noted it can backfire in some circumstances.
“It can certainly have unintended consequences when well-intended outsiders are looking at what’s going on on the inside,” she said.
That was the case with Anthony Allen, a former correctional officer who now works as a bail bondsman in south Mississippi and makes YouTube videos about the conditions in MDOC’s prisons. In mid-October, Allen was contacted by a prison-reform advocate who was concerned about Hughes’ case. So, hoping to help, he called Walnut Grove to make a third-party report.
Allen was transferred to CID.
“I’m trying to see if y’all will take the complaint and investigate it,” he told the staff member, according to a recording he made of the call.
“What’s your name?” She asked. “And who do you work for?”
It wasn’t until Allen explained he is still a certified correctional officer that the staff member told him, “I’m gonna get your number and get our investigator to give you a call.”
No one did.
“You could be someone sweeping the floor in the warden’s office,” Allen said. “If you are given a complaint, that is failure to report and that is a big fine and that is something you do not do.”
The Mississippi Braves are moving to Columbus, Georgia, after this coming season, and I can’t say I am shocked. That’s because I can’t begin to tell you how many times I have been to M-Braves games at Trustmark Park over the past two decades when empty seats outnumbered warm bodies by at least five to one.
Let’s put it this way: I am not nearly as shocked as I was on April 1, 2004, when we first got the news that the Atlanta Braves were moving their Class AA minor league franchise to Pearl from Greenville, S.C.
Rick Cleveland
At first, I thought the news was an April Fool’s joke. Both the New York Mets and the Houston Astros had moved Class AA franchises out of the Jackson area because of financial woes stemming from lack of ticket-buying customers. Con Maloney, who was Mr. Baseball in mid-Mississippi, had tried everything he knew to try to make minor league baseball work at Smith-Wills Stadium in the capital city. Despite several championship teams and a world of talent that came through here, it just did not interest enough fans.
And I remember asking John Schuerholz, the remarkably successful Atlanta Braves general manager, if the previous baseball failures in the Jackson area were a concern for his franchise.
“No,” he answered, matter-of-factly. “We don’t care what other people do. We have a system and we believe in it. We made a 20-year commitment here. We have confidence in the way we operate. Excellence is our byword.”
“A 20-year commitment,” Schuerholz said. Do the math. That was 2004. This is 2024. The Braves are out of here after this coming season. And, yes, the Atlanta Braves got a sweetheart deal 20 years ago. Trustmark Park, replete with 22 suites, was built at a cost of $28 million. It would cost nearly double that today. The Atlanta Braves, who signed a 20-year lease, provided none of those millions. They just provided the talent, and there has been plenty of that, which we’ll get to here shortly.
Much has changed in 20 years. Back then, the Braves’ Class A team had just moved to Rome, Georgia, and was the only Braves minor league affiliate in Georgia. Otherwise, Atlanta Braves had minor league franchises in Danville, Virginia; Richmond, Virginia; Myrtle Beach, South Carolina; and Pearl.
This time next year, all the Braves’ minor league teams will be in Georgia. That has to be by design.
Columbus, Georgia, has agreed to spend $50 million to renovate a century-old ballpark. Ironically, when the Houston Astros moved their Class AA franchise to Jackson in 1991, it moved away from the very same Columbus stadium, Golden Park, because of a lack of attendance there.
Some terrific ballplayers, including future Baseball Hall of Famers, have come through Trustmark Park. Several have made the leap from the Mississippi Braves to Atlanta, skipping Class AAA all together.
Ronald Acuna bats for the Mississippi Braves at Trustmark Park in 2017. (Courtesy Mississippi Braves)
Freddie Freeman, for sure, will have a plaque in Cooperstown. Reigning National League MVP Ronald Acuna, barring injury, is headed in that direction, too. Craig Kimbrel, who has saved 417 Major League Baseball games as a closer, was virtually un-hittable as a fresh-faced, 20-year-old flame thrower here.
Indeed, future Major League stars who played in Pearl are almost too many to name, but here are a few: Brian McCann, Martin Prado, Jeff Francoeur, Yunel Escobar, Charlie Morton, Jason Heyward, Dansby Swanson, Ozzie Albies, Austin Riley, A.J. Minter, Spencer Strider, Max Fried and Michael Harris.
In all, 169 former Mississippi Braves have advanced to the Major Leagues. That’s an average of more than eight per season — and that’s a lot.
Mississippi Braves Manager Brian Snitker taken at Trustmark Park in Pearl on April 20, 2005. (Tom Priddy, courtesy Mississippi Braves)
Brian Snitker, manager of the 2021 World Champion Atlanta Braves, was the first Mississippi Braves manager in 2005. Five of Snitker’s World Series champion everyday starters were former Mississippi Braves. All five starting pitchers were former M-Braves, and much of the bullpen staff had come through here as well.
We have seen some phenomenal talent come through here. Unfortunately, too few people watched them while they were here.
Speaking at a press conference Wednesday afternoon, Pearl Mayor Jake Windham said the city, Rankin County and state officials had done all they could to keep the Braves at Trustmark Park. “We are sad to see them go,” he said. Windham also said every effort will be made to bring another minor league franchise to fill the void.
On a positive note: Trustmark Park, has been well maintained. It looks virtually brand new and is a really nice minor league ballpark. The negative: If an Atlanta Braves minor league franchise didn’t draw well enough here, who would?
We shall see.
Mississippi Braves’ Gregor Blanco, left, shares some of the team’s “professional-grade” bubble gum with youngsters before the team’s home opener against the Montgomery Biscuits, Monday, April 18, 2005, at Trustmark Park in Pearl, Miss. (AP Photo/Rogelio Solis)
