In episode 68, We discuss our childhood trauma & dysFUNctional family. This is part one. ALL THE TRIGGER WARNINGS. Also this was unintentionally two parts so just a warning that part one ends abruptly because of it.
All Cats is part of the Truthseekers Podcast Network.
Tanner Allen celebrates his bases-clearing triple that gave State the lead for good in Sunday’s 7-5 victory over Ole Miss. (MSU Athletics)
STARKVILLE — Fewer than 24 hours after being drubbed 9-0 by arch-rival Ole Miss, Mississippi State Sunday climbed back into what Mississippi native and broadcasting legend Red Barber famously called “the catbird’s seat.”
What that means is on top, which is where the Bulldogs are currently in their long-time rivalry with Ole Miss. The Bulldogs won a hard-fought 7-5 victory by virtue of a five-run sixth inning when State greeted three different Ole Miss relievers with six hits in seven at bats.
And that was the story: The Ole Miss bullpen did not get the job done. State’s did. And so it is that State won the three-game series two games to one, which is only part of the story. The Bulldogs have now won 16 of their last 19 games against the Rebels. That’s dominance. That’s way on up there in the catbird’s seat.
A Sunday crowd of 10,522 turned out on a picture-perfect day for baseball. After a Saturday when a much larger Dudy Noble Stadium crowd of 13,000-plus never got a chance to explode, the Bulldogs gave their fans plenty to cheer on The Sabbath.
Rick Cleveland
The crowd became so loud that when Landon Sims left the bullpen to enter the game in the top of the ninth inning, the standing ovation left him, he said, with goosebumps. That was before he even threw a pitch. “When I heard that crowd I literally got goosebumps on my arms,” Sims said.
The effect must have been positive. Sims needed only 13 pitches to finish off the Rebels for his second save of the weekend. The freshman’s season numbers are phenomenal. He has struckout 47 batters in 24.1 innings, allowing only a single run. When the game is on the line, he is money.
After being silenced by Ole Miss lefty Doug Nikhazy on Saturday, Bulldog batters got the crowd into the game much earlier. The loudest moment probably came in that fateful sixth inning when Tanner Allen greeted Taylor Broadway, the Rebels fourth pitcher in the inning, with a bases-clearing triple that broke a 4-4 tie and gave State the lead for good.
Broadway’s first two pitches to Allen were balls.
“I knew he didn’t want to walk me with the bases loaded,” Allen said. “I figured I’d get a pitch to hit. I got a ball in the zone and the rest is history.”
History was a low line drive that left the bat at 110 mph and sizzled all the way to the right-centerfield wall just to the left of the 380-foot sign.
Landon Sims is greeted coming off the mound after the last out of State’s Sunday victory. (MSU Athletics)
It was a sudden turn-around. Ole Miss was leading 4-2 with sophomore right-hander Drew McDaniel providing good work on the mound. McDaniel allowed only two runs through the first five innings and then got the first batter out in the sixth with his 91st pitch of the day. That’s when Rebel coach Mike Bianco decided to go to his bullpen and called on freshman right-hander Josh Malitz, who was treated rudely. First Logan Turner, then Josh Hatcher and then Brayland Skinner all ripped singles. Bianco had seen enough and called on senior Austin Miller.
Miller struck out one batter before Scotty Dubrule and Rowdey Jordan (who had four hits, including a homer) both singled to load the bases and set the stage for Allen’s heroic triple.
“We had to use three pitchers to get two outs,” Bianco said. “It’s a shame. We just could not get off the field.”
State kept getting hit after hit. In contrast, Ole Miss left the bases loaded in both the third and seventh innings.
“That’s what it comes down to, doesn’t it?” Bianco said. “Do you get the big hits when you need ‘em. Today, they did and we didn’t.”
That has become more than a trend in this series.
“It’s a big deal for our guys,” State’s Chris Lemonis said. “We’ve got a lot of Mississippi guys on our roster. It’s important to them. It’s important, period. They are a good team, one of the best teams we have played.”
So, State moves to 27-8 overall, 10-5 in the conference. Ole Miss drops to 26-10, 9-6 in the league. Yes, and there’s plenty of baseball left to be played for two teams hoping their seasons end in late June in Omaha.
A former legislative leader who was not enamored with the state’s initiative process used to call it “government by Barabbas,” referring to the prisoner from the Bible the crowd voted to pardon rather than Jesus when given a choice by Pontius Pilate.
Unfortunately, the story has been twisted in a disturbing manner through the years to promote antisemitism. That was not the intent of the legislator.
He was arguing that sometimes there is a thin line between pure democracy and mob rule, and that the initiative process has the danger of bumping up against that line.
He said he would trust decisions made by the people if they had the time and ability to gather the information he was privy to as a legislator. But without that time and ability, he feared what the initiative could lead to a type of mob rule — government by Barabbas, he called it in off the record comments. That argument might be buoyed by recent events regarding the state’s initiative process.
Oral arguments were held last week before the Mississippi Supreme Court on the future of the initiative where people gather signatures to place issues on the ballot for voters to decide. The intent of the lawsuit was to block the initiative to legalize medical marijuana.
But make no mistake about it, attorneys representing the city of Madison, and its longtime mayor, Mary Hawkins Butler, were not arguing that the initiative to legalize medical marijuana was unconstitutional, but that the initiative process itself is unconstitutional.
They argued that there is no way to conduct an initiative under the current wording in the Mississippi Constitution. To place an issue on the ballot under the state’s initiative process, the Constitution requires an initiative sponsor to gather signatures equal to 12% of the total vote in the last gubernatorial election or roughly 106,000 votes and no more than one-fifth can come from any one congressional district. In the early 1990s, the state had five congressional districts. Now it has four.
Attorney Kaytie Pickett, arguing for Hawkins-Butler, pointed out to the Court the obvious: that if one-fifth of the signatures are gathered from each of the four current congressional districts, it is impossible to garner the required number of signatures. Because of that simple math, medical marijuana, which was approved by voters by an overwhelming margin this past November, was improperly on the ballot. But the same goes for any future initiative. The math just does not work unless the Legislature offers an amendment — that must be voted on by the people — to fix the constitutional wording, the plaintiffs argued.
It should be pointed out that in the 1910s, legislators also gave Mississippians the opportunity to vote to enact an initiative process. They voted overwhelmingly to do so, but in the 1920s, because of what the Mississippi Supreme Court justices saw as a problem with the wording in that initiative, they threw it out. Legislators did not enact a new initiative until 70 years later.
Could history repeat itself?
The requirement to gather signatures from congressional districts was included in the process by legislators, Justice Josiah Coleman pointed out, to ensure all regions of the state had a say in the effort to place an issue on the ballot.
The effort to do so was either poorly worded by happenstance or on purpose by legislators who did not like the initiative process and wanted to place it in future legal jeopardy.
There is no easy way to accomplish the goal of getting signatures from all regions of the state using congressional districts. Every 10 years, based on Census data, the congressional districts must be redrawn as mandated by federal law. What if efforts are underway to gather signatures during the redistricting process? A registered voter might be in one district when he or she signed the petition but by the time the process is completed in another.
How is that issue supposed to be resolved?
The lawsuit contends based “on the plain language of the Constitution,” the current process is invalid.
Indeed, that “plain language” does make it impossible to gather the prescribed number of signatures. But the plain language of the Constitution also says “the people reserve unto themselves the power to propose and enact constitutional amendments by initiative.”
The nine members of the Mississippi Supreme Court — all of whom must stand for election — have a difficult job. Justices must decide whether they want to take that right to place issues on the ballot away because legislators used a poor choice of words when crafting the language spelling out the initiative process.
If Supreme Court justices do take that right away, what will the people say? Will they say, “Give us Barabbas?”
Ole Miss pitcher Doug Nikhazy shouts toward his teammates in the dugout after an eighth inning strikeout. (MSU athletics)
STARKVILLE — On a sunny spring Saturday from jam-packed Dudy Noble Field after an 9-0 Ole Miss whitewash of Mississippi State, why write 700 words when just two will do?
Doug Nikhazy.
OK, you know we can’t just stop there. We have to attempt to put Nikhazy’s spectacular pitching performance in perspective. Start with this: It was the first complete game of the junior lefty’s college career, and it could not have come at a better time. We will get to that.
First, the numbers: Nikhazy allowed just one hit — Brayland Skinner’s fifth inning single up the middle. He struck out 11 Bulldog batters and walked only two. He was in complete and utter command throughout. He pounded the strike zone with pitch after pitch, mixing his fast ball with a nasty curve and an occasional slider. Rarely, if ever, will you see a better pitched game.
Meanwhile, Ole Miss hitters peppered State pitching for 17 hits, taking an 8-0 lead through five innings and then cruising behind Nikhazy, who never took anything for granted.
His mantra? “I couldn’t let them have an ounce of momentum,” Nikhazy said.
Mission accomplished.
Rick Cleveland
We all know how much momentum State had before Saturday, which was what made Nikhazy’s accomplishment all the more meaningful. The streaking Bulldogs had won eight straight games this season — seven straight in the SEC — and had won 15 of their last 17 over their arch-rivals.
Just a few hours earlier, State had defeated the Rebels 5-2 before a celebrative crowd, ending the night with a huge fireworks show. An announced crowd of 13,338 flooded into the pristine ballpark Saturday, probably 98% of them ready to continue the party. And then Nikhazy, now 4-1 with a 1.86 earned run average, turned out the lights. He struck out six straight batters over the first, second and third innings. He fanned eight of nine Bulldogs, if you throw in the fourth frame. He dominated.
Said State coach Chris Lemonis, “(Nikhazy) is one of the better arms in the league and the nation. He was really good. We never got anything.”
The only question was whether Nikhazy would finish the deal. He had thrown 112 pitches through eight innings. That’s a lot. Senior Tyler Myers was ready to go in the Rebel bullpen. Mike Bianco opted to send Nikhazy back out.
Later, Bianco explained his decision. “I don’t know how many times you get a chance to throw a shutout against your arch-rivals at their ballpark with one of the largest crowds in college baseball watching,” Bianco said. “He said he felt great. He was in control. … The last three innings he really hit another gear. I wasn’t going to take that opportunity away from him.”
Nikhazy, making his fourth start since missing two weeks with a strained pectoral muscle, needed only 10 pitches to finish the Bulldogs off. By then, only about half of the original crowd was still around.
Said Bianco: “Doug will steal the headlines today and he should, but offensively we were really, really good. I’m really proud of guys.”
Expect another huge crowd Sunday at 1 p.m. for the rubber match of the three-game series that matches two of the nation’s best ball clubs. Ole Miss is now 26-9 overall, 9-5 in the SEC. State dropped to 26-8 and 9-5.
Sophomore right-hander Drew McDaniel (4-0, 2.90 ERA) will take the mound for Ole Miss. Freshman righty Jackson Fristoe (2-2, 4.14) will start for State.
Both teams know how quickly things can turn around in baseball. They’ve experienced it over an 18-hour stretch.
“We gotta play a lot better in every phase of the game,” Lemonis said. “We got beat in every phase of the game today.”
Kamren James’ fourth inning home run to left field was a no-doubter, as his reaction shows. (MSU athletics)
STARKVILLE — The Ole Miss Rebels didn’t have Jake Mangum to kick them around Friday night. But Mississippi State’s deep, talented pitching did the job anyway in the Bulldogs’ 5-2 victory before an announced crowd of 10,291 fans that might well have been even larger.
The festive crowd surely seemed larger and louder when Bulldog freshman Landon Sims struck out T.J. McCants on a 96 mph fastball for the last out, setting off an extended fireworks show beyond the right centerfield stands at Dudy Noble Field.
So make that 15 Mississippi State victories in the last 17 meetings between the two arch-rivals. Mangum, now in the minor league system of the New York Mets, had been the catalyst for many of those 14 previous Bulldog victories. Mangum was watching on TV from spring training in Florida, but State was just fine without him.
Starter Christian MacLeod, reliever Preston Johnson and closer Sims provided the pitching, allowing only six Rebel hits, while striking out a combined 12 batters. That was more than enough to make up for the sharp pitching performance by Ole Miss starter Gunnar Hoglund, who allowed only four Bulldog hits, while striking out nine, over seven innings.
Rick Cleveland
It was the kind of well-played game you’d expect from two teams ranked among the best in the country. No. 4 (USA Today coaches poll) Mississippi State moved to 26-7 overall and 9-4 in the SEC, while the No. 6 Rebels dropped to 25-9 overall and 8-5 in the league.
The Rebels will try again to break the Bulldog’s seeming hex Saturday in a 2 p.m. game, and a third game is scheduled for Sunday at 1. You can expect Saturday’s crowd to be even larger as it follows immediately State’s spring football game.
State coach Chris Lemonis has utilized a remarkable 24 pitchers in 33 games thus far. Even more remarkably, those 24 pitchers have struck out 430 batters in 296 innings. None of the three Bulldog pitchers were really taxed Friday night. MacLeod, a freshman lefty, threw 85 pitches and fanned five in his five innings. Johnson, a sophomore righthander, struckout four in his two innings and then Sims fanned three in his two innings. It seemed as if any of the three could have pitched more if needed. But if you’ve got all that pitching depth, why not use it?
Sims deserves another paragraph here. A sophomore in school but a freshman eligibility-wise, he has now allowed only one run in 23.1 innings. He has struck out 46 – or two per inning – while walking only seven. This was his fourth save.
Said Lemonis of Sims, “He’s just one of those guys, he brings energy to the ballpark. Our fans, when they see him coming in they give him a standing ovation. Our fans understand. He’s a special player. . . . I’m glad he’s on our side.”
Said Ole Miss coach Mike Bianco, “Credit their pitchers. They were outstanding.”
But then so was Hoglund, who not only fanned nine Bulldogs but did not walk any. “I felt really good,” Hoglund said. “Yeah, it’s a tough atmosphere here, but you just have to make good pitches.”
Hoglund mostly did. There were a few he would have liked to have had back. And all those were thrown to Tanner Allen and Kamren James, the second and third batters in the Bulldog lineup. Allen ripped a double and triple off Hoglund and scored two runs. James powered a fourth inning home run to tie the score after Ole Miss had taken a 2-1 lead. He then put the Bulldogs ahead for good with a sixth inning sacrifice fly, his first of two.
All the while, the SRO crowd cheered lustily.
Lemonis doesn’t take the crowd for granted.
“It’s how much they love baseball,” Lemonis said. ”It’s not out of control, it’s knowledgeable. Our fans know what’s going on. They know everything. They’re in it at the right moments….It just makes it fun for us. Even in batting practice, when the gates open, you see all the fans and students load into the berms. …We’re very fortunate to have a fan base like ours.”
The number of new COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths in Mississippi has continued the sharp decline seen since their peak in January. This is thanks to the rapid expansion of vaccination efforts across the state, though health officials continue to warn that this progress is threatened by the emergence of new variants.
Mississippi’s 7-day average for new cases is 235, which represents a more than 90% decrease from the January peak. This decline is higher than the national average, which has decreased by 75% during the same period. COVID-related hospitalizations in Mississippi have also decreased by nearly 86% since their peak.
As COVID-19 numbers have trended downward, the arrival of new variants bodes the possibility of a new wave of infections. On Friday, The White House announced a new plan to dedicate nearly $2 billion from the American Rescue Plan towards strengthening and expanding the tracking of COVID-19 variants across the country.
“State and local public health departments are on the frontlines of beating back the pandemic, but they need more capacity to detect these variants early on before dangerous outbreaks… This investment will give public health officials the chance to react more quickly to prevent and stop the spread,” Andy Slavitt, acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said during a press briefing.
The B.1.1.7 variant, which originated in the United Kingdom, represents the vast majority of variant infections in Mississippi and the majority of new infections nationally. The variant is estimated to be around 60% more contagious and 67% more deadly than the original version.
Over the last month, three new variants of COVID-19 have been detected in Mississippi: one that originated in South Africa and two that originated in California.
Vaccination is still the best guard against the virus in all its forms, officials have said. Though the state passed the 1.5 million shot mark earlier this week, Mississippi currently ranks last in the nation in the share of its population that have received at least one dose. A delayed start in the vaccine rollout, accessibility issues and vaccine hesitancy have all contributed to the state’s comparatively low rate of inoculation.
Vaccination efforts across the country were slowed on Tuesday after federal health agencies recommended a pause in the use of Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose coronavirus vaccine after six recipients developed an extremely rare blood clot.
The Mississippi State Department of Health instructed vaccine providers to refrain from using the Johnson & Johnson vaccine until more guidance is available from federal health agencies. Out of all the Mississippians who have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, less than 5% of them received Johnson & Johnson.
It is unclear how long the halt will last and how it will impact public trust in COVID-19 vaccines. Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, appeared on several local TV stations across Mississippi on Wednesday to assuage the concerns of those troubled by the Johnson & Johnson halt.
In an interview on WLOX, Dr. Fauci encouraged Mississippians to remember that they have a less than one in one million chances of forming the blood clotting in question after receiving the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
“So if I were not in my position, and I was looking at it from the outside, I would say the bottom line is that those people (federal and state health agencies) are paying a lot of attention to safety,” Fauci said. “So when they say something is safe, you better believe them because they are really paying a lot of attention.”
A year after all but one of Mississippi’s public universities declined to increase tuition due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s business as usual: Tuition is once again going up this fall for most students at public universities.
The Board of Trustees for the State Institution of Higher Learning (IHL), which oversees the state’s eight public universities, unanimously and without discussion approved tuition increases at its monthly meeting on Thursday. Every university requested a tuition increase except for Jackson State University, which will not increase tuition in the fall.
This brings the average tuition for in-state undergraduates to $8,219, up $222 from last fiscal year, a modest increase compared to previous years. In-state tuition increases will range from $6,928 at Mississippi Valley State University, an increase of $202, to $9,110 at Mississippi State University, up $310, according to the IHL finance committee.
To some families, those increases may not seem like much. But for working-class students and their families, a couple hundred dollars “is often the make or break between, ‘Can I go to the university or do I go to community college?’” said Ann Hendrick, the director of Get2College, a nonprofit that works to increase the number of students attending college statewide.
These tuition increases mean that students and families in Mississippi will continue to shoulder the bulk of the state’s public university budgets, Hendrick said. This is a trend that goes back to 2000, when Mississippi started to slash its higher education budget. As state funding has plummeted in the years since, universities increasingly turn to tuition revenue to cover their operating costs.
Tuition now comprises the majority of universities’ revenue in Mississippi. In 2018, tuition comprised 54% of public university revenue, compared to 25% in 2008, according to the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association.
“Any time there’s a cut to higher education, it results in an increase in tuition, and it pushes the cost to students and their families,” Hendrick said. “It puts college out of reach. And it lowers choices for students, in particular choices for low-income students.”
The tuition increase comes even as the Legislature increased funding for public universities by 4.3% this session. Much of that increase will go to fixing up infrastructure and boosting faculty and staff compensation.
Ford Dye, the IHL board president, said the trustees appreciated the increased appropriations intended for faculty pay raises.
“It is important that we invest in those who work hard every day on behalf of our universities, our students, and our state,” Dye told Mississippi Today. “The board has advocated for additional funds to be used in this manner for several years.”
“However, our faculty salaries remain 20% lower than the Southern Regional Education Board average, and 11.2% lower than the universities in our neighboring states,” he added.
The average family income in Mississippi has also stagnated compared to the rising cost of college. In 2019, the Clarion-Ledger reported that in-state tuition rose 71% from fall 2009 to fall 2019, while annual income for the typical Mississippi family increased by 25%.
This fall, a typical family will spend 18% of their annual income to afford the average tuition at Mississippi’s public universities.
“We have so many students that simply can’t afford the cost of college without borrowing,” Hendrick said.
As a result, more than half of Mississippi college students graduated with an average of $31,651 in student debt in 2019, according to the Institute for College Access and Success.
At Thursday’s meeting, IHL also approved tuition increases for professional schools, including UMMC, and raised tuition for out-of-state students to $12,273, up $358. Four universities — Delta State University, Alcorn State University, Mississippi University for Women, and MVSU — don’t add a surcharge to tuition for out-of-state students.
The average dorm room rates for double occupancy is also increasing to $5,545, up $74, though JSU is dropping its rate by $59. Meal plans are also increasing to an average of $3,873, up $123.
Most universities did not increase tuition last year, citing the COVID-19 pandemic. The sole school to increase tuition was Delta State.
Editor’s note: Get2College is a program of the Woodward Hines Education Foundation, a Mississippi Today donor.
We want to hear from Mississippians — particularly millennials and Gen Z — about the future of the state we call home.
We intimately understand that constant internal question: “Should I stay in Mississippi, or should I leave?” We watch in sorrow but understanding as our peers make the decision to leave and build their lives elsewhere. We hear the complaints of young people who stay about a lack of policy focus on what we need, and we continue to cover the same tired platitudes from politicians.
Additionally, many young people speak up about the importance of Jackson — our state’s capital city and the anchor of our largest metropolitan area. However, as our friends and family members are leaving Mississippi for nearby vibrant cities, Mississippi state leaders continue to offer little support to Jackson.
Many young people are thriving in Mississippi. More often, many are struggling or making great sacrifices to stay. Others want to leave but don’t have the means or ability.
Regardless of your perspective, we want to hear from you. We’re launching a reporting project centered on these realities, and we need your help. Spend some time with these questions, and share them with your friends. The more data we have, the better informed our reporting will be.
The information you share about yourself will not be shared outside our newsroom. But if you’d be willing to talk more with us about your thoughts and ideas, please say so in the final question.
