Legendary Mississippi State baseball coach Ron Polk held a captive audience at the Newton County Baseball First Pitch Dinner with a free speech.
“Do you believe in the bill of rights. I said, yes. If you believe in the constitution, bill of rights, you've got to believe in free speech. Yes,” Polk said of his conversation with Newton County baseball coach Jordan Smith about the event. “You're going to give a free speech.”
Polk had told numerous anecdotes from his career in baseball coaching which has spanned more than 50 years. He also holds the record for the most wins in SEC history, a mark that he said even Nick Saban can’t even match.
“There's no way. Nick Saban is good. He won’t challenge it because we played 56 games a year. Then you go to SEC tournament playing regional, super-regional, maybe like last year and win the national title,” Polk said. “I think we determined how many years it will take for him to pass me over here. He would have to be 427 years old.”
Polk also owns the record for ejections by a coach. One time he was thrown out, his coach asked him why he got thrown out.
“I said, I think he threw me out cause I was kicking dirt all over home plate,” Polk said. “And he said, that's no reason to get thrown on the ballgame. And I said, yeah, but he was sweeping home plate at the time.
“At the University of Kentucky, my last season playing them Friday, Saturday and Sunday, I got thrown out a Friday night's game. I got to tell them on a Saturday night's game. And I got thrown out at the lineup exchange at home plate Sunday.”
Polk said the umpires were on a three umpire rotation at the time. The ump on that Sunday was the same ump that threw him out the other two days. He asked if the ump would throw him out if he said he was a crook. He said no.
“What if I told you I thought you were a crook,” Polk said.
That umpire then threw him out.
Polk also had a message for the students present at the event.
“I think you know that these kids today have more distractions right now than we even dreamed about when we went to school. No question about it,” Polk said. “And I'm just going to tell you a few things that I think that would be very important for you guys to hear because distractions are not good unless they are good distractions.”
The good distractions he was talking about included going to school, church, playing sports and working hard.
