Austin Bishop

There are “cheap” home runs, and then there are no-doubters, the kind that leave vapor trails etched across the sky as they exit the stadium. 

Sure, they all count the same, but some leave lasting memories because of who hit them, when they were struck or the circumstance that surrounds them.

The stories behind the three mammoth blasts I’m about to share are what make them special. Two I witnessed while officially on duty as a reporter, while another came while attending a game with my oldest son, Ryan.

Two were hit by future Major Leaguers, but none came in a major league game — one occurring in a junior college game, and the oher two in Minor League contests.

Join me on a journey into the past, beginning with home run No. 3 on the list:

•Darryl Strawberry played 17 years in the Major Leagues, earning Rookie of the Year honors in 1983. He crushed 335 MLB homers in his career, including a National League-leading 39 in 1988 as a member of the New York Mets.

In 1982 “Straw” was a member of the Mets’ AA affiliate in Jackson at the tender age of 20. When he arrived in Jackson, he was 6-foot-6 and skinny as a rail, but his talent and power was unquestionable.

During those days the Jackson squad would routinely open its season at Smith-Wills Stadium on Lakeland Drive with an exhibition contest against one of the in-state universities. In April of 1982, that game was against Jackson State. I don’t remember a lot about the game other than the Mets won handily, it was brutally cold and the game was mercifully stopped after seven innings due to the weather.

During its tenure as home to the Jackson Mets, Smith-Wills was notoriously unfriendly to power hitters. Long fly balls of home run distance often became doubles or outs.

Most of the fans who attended that night came to see just how good this young phenom for the Mets actually was.

He didn’t disappoint.

Somewhere in the midst of the blowout win over JSU, the lanky lefty lifted a towering fly ball into the top of the pine trees behind the right field fence. It was the no-doubter of all no-doubters, the only question was where it would land. There is no real evidence that it did.

Strawberry went on to hit .283 for the JaxMets that year, clubbing 34 homers and driving in 97 runs in 129 games.

•The second homer is one of the baseball stories I yearn to tell.

In 2005, Ryan was attending college in the Jackson Metro area, so we decided to meet up at Trustmark Park in Pearl and catch a Mississippi Braves game.

There were several future Major Leaguers on the Braves’ roster at the time, including Jeff Francouer and Scott Thorman.

I’m not sure who Mississippi was playing against, but right in the middle of the contest the opposing pitcher absolutely lost the strike zone. I mean, he couldn’t get close.

After walking Francoeur on four pitches, which as most die-hard Atlanta Braves fans will tell you is a near impossibility, he threw three straight balls to Thorman, who was hitting clean-up at the time.

I looked over at Ryan and said, “I don’t care what happens, if he swings at this pitch we are going to stand up and boo.” He agreed.

Of course you know what happened.  The pitcher grooved it right down the middle and Thorman, a left-handed hitter, launched it onto the patio of the restaurant that still stands behind the right field fence to this day.

True to our word, Ryan and I stood up and booed while waving our arms and laughing uncontrollably. In just a matter of seconds we had the fans around us who had overheard our conversation chuckling as well, including a Major League scout just a few rows down.

You have to admit, it’s odd to be booed by the home crowd while you are circling the bases after a long home run. It still makes me smile to this day.

•The one at the top of the list is one of the most memorable home runs in the history of the storied baseball program at Meridian Community College.

In 1996, the Eagles made it to the Championship Game of the Junior College World Series played in Grand Junction, Colorado, before falling to Northeast Texas 4-3.

Oddly enough, MCC was almost eliminated in two straight games in the double-elimination tournament.

The Eagles had lost to Middle Georgia 8-5 in the opener and were trailing traditional power Indian River (Fla.) CC 11-6 in the seventh inning of Game 2.

After MCC had managed to scratch out one run to draw within four and then loaded the bases, up to the plate stepped freshman third baseman Scott Cheek.

The former standout from Wingfield High School in Jackson had struggled so mightily during the fall that he had seriously considered quitting. That MCC team was loaded with talent, and Cheek felt he was over-matched. Only after urging from his father David and a sit-down meeting with then-MCC assistant coach Scott Berry did Cheek decided to return for the spring semester.

Cheek says that conversation with Berry, who later became head coach at MCC and is currently the head man at Southern Mississippi, was life-altering.

Berry basically told Cheek, “I didn’t sign you to hit singles.” All of a sudden, Cheek understood what he needed to focus on.

“That made me more comfortable just swinging it hard and trying to hit for power and not worry about anything any more,” Cheek said. “It showed me he had more confidence in me than I had in myself. That one statement changed my outlook on hitting from then on.”

Now, back to our story.

With the bases-loaded, the lefty-swinging Cheek launched a towering bomb into the Colorado sky that cleared the 40-foot high scoreboard behind the right-field fence and landed three rows into the parking lot more than 400 feet away from home plate.

MCC went on to win the game 15-14, with another key hit later in the game being a two-run single off the bat of Cheek.

Meridian went from teetering on the brink of elimination to winning its next three games 12-3, 19-3 and 13-4 to reach the championship game.

Cheek hit 32 homers in his MCC career, as well as 25 while at Southern Miss, but none had more meaning than the one that left its mark in Grand Junction on that summer day in 1996.

“I really didn’t think about it much at the time, but I guess it was pretty big,” Cheek said.

Yes Scott, it was.

Austin Bishop, AKA The Old Sports Dude, has been covering high school, college, amateur and professional sports since 1975. He is currently pastor of Great Commission Assembly of God in Philadelphia, Miss. He may be contacted by email at starsportsboss@yahoo.com.