Photo by: Joe Harper/bgnphoto.com
Saying Good-Bye to a Hero
6/23/2023 10:00:00 AM | Baseball
By Jack Duggan, Southern Miss Assistant Director of Athletics/Communications
They say never meet your heroes; you are likely to be disappointed.
For me, for the last 13 years, I got to work with one. And it couldn't have gone any better.
Since the start of the 2011 season when I began my second stint as the sports information contact for baseball at Southern Miss, I got an opportunity to work with a second-year head coach who had already been with the program for 10 years.
We knew each other through our shared love of Golden Eagle baseball and through the eyes of former Golden Eagle skipper Corky Palmer. His name was Scott Berry. While I didn't know him well then, I can certainly say that I have a great sense of what this man is about over a decade later.
He's the man who I simply refer to as "Coach," because how else do you refer to your heroes but in a respectful way, even if they are only five years older than you.
On the surface, the word Coach often gets used as a simple title in helping to describe an authority figure, typically over an athletic team.
On the field, Coach gave us his patented scowl and often showed a tremendous bark, revealing what a fierce competitor he was not only for himself, but for his players and this program. That competitiveness once led to an ejection that cost him a two-game suspension, allowing him to capture his 300th career victory from his office in a win over Mississippi State at the start of the 2018 campaign.
It will be tough not to see him where we have grown accustomed, at his perch on the outfield side of the third-base dugout at The Pete, the home facility for the Golden Eagles, or in the third-base coaching box with his patented skull helmet that became a staple for him after it was required several years back for coaches to wear a helmet when they were coaching on the field.
His work on the field helped him to become the school's all-time winningest baseball coach with 528 victories, while also leading the program to nine NCAA Tournaments, two NCAA Super Regional appearances, five regular season conference titles, five conference tournament titles and a league coach of the year four times. He even ended his career with seven-straight 40-plus win seasons, except for the COVID season of 2020 when the team only played 20 games, which is tops in Division I baseball.
Those are the type of statistics that gets a Coach noticed and even revered as he finished his tenure as just the fourth head coach for the program since the start of the 1959 season.
But the word, Coach, can also be used to describe someone who instructs and teaches us. And that is at the core of Scott Berry. He has been a leader of men, whose mantra "Everything Matters" truly beats to the core of his being. His players almost always talk about the man, instead of the Coach, and how he developed them not only as players but helped them transition into adulthood in becoming their best self.
While most folks only get to see his on-field side, his players away from the field saw him showcase his best features - compassion, agreeableness, well-intentioned, humorous as well as a family man.
There was only so much space for this written piece or I could go on for days and days on the people whose lives he touched over the years.
One such story is the one of a gentleman that was walking around The Pete one afternoon late in the season on an off day. It was hot and Coach saw that the man looked like he had suffered a health malady. Coach went to the door on the side of the baseball center and said hello to the man and invited him inside out of the heat. Coach brought the man into his office and they began a 20-minute conversation.
The conversation varied from many topics - to the team, the stadium, the gentleman's health of which he had suffered a stroke as they each revealed things about each other's lives over this small talk.
How many head coaches of a major Division I baseball program would simply just invite someone into his office – someone he had never met – and each share a part of their respective days with each other.
This leads me to this last story.
During my first season with Coach, we reached the NCAA Regional in Atlanta and were enjoying our practice day.
Following our practice, we had to do a press conference with the media assembled in an old batting cage area underneath the stadium that was hot – really hot – and took forever.
On the way back to the bus, I apologized for the less than stellar conditions.
He looked at me and said that everything was alright and went on to tell me if I realized that there were only 300 Division I head coaching jobs out there and how lucky he was to be one of these men to have one of those jobs.
As I look back to that day and the many days that followed, I can only think that we truly were the lucky ones.
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They say never meet your heroes; you are likely to be disappointed.
For me, for the last 13 years, I got to work with one. And it couldn't have gone any better.
Since the start of the 2011 season when I began my second stint as the sports information contact for baseball at Southern Miss, I got an opportunity to work with a second-year head coach who had already been with the program for 10 years.
We knew each other through our shared love of Golden Eagle baseball and through the eyes of former Golden Eagle skipper Corky Palmer. His name was Scott Berry. While I didn't know him well then, I can certainly say that I have a great sense of what this man is about over a decade later.
He's the man who I simply refer to as "Coach," because how else do you refer to your heroes but in a respectful way, even if they are only five years older than you.
On the surface, the word Coach often gets used as a simple title in helping to describe an authority figure, typically over an athletic team.
On the field, Coach gave us his patented scowl and often showed a tremendous bark, revealing what a fierce competitor he was not only for himself, but for his players and this program. That competitiveness once led to an ejection that cost him a two-game suspension, allowing him to capture his 300th career victory from his office in a win over Mississippi State at the start of the 2018 campaign.
It will be tough not to see him where we have grown accustomed, at his perch on the outfield side of the third-base dugout at The Pete, the home facility for the Golden Eagles, or in the third-base coaching box with his patented skull helmet that became a staple for him after it was required several years back for coaches to wear a helmet when they were coaching on the field.
His work on the field helped him to become the school's all-time winningest baseball coach with 528 victories, while also leading the program to nine NCAA Tournaments, two NCAA Super Regional appearances, five regular season conference titles, five conference tournament titles and a league coach of the year four times. He even ended his career with seven-straight 40-plus win seasons, except for the COVID season of 2020 when the team only played 20 games, which is tops in Division I baseball.
Those are the type of statistics that gets a Coach noticed and even revered as he finished his tenure as just the fourth head coach for the program since the start of the 1959 season.
But the word, Coach, can also be used to describe someone who instructs and teaches us. And that is at the core of Scott Berry. He has been a leader of men, whose mantra "Everything Matters" truly beats to the core of his being. His players almost always talk about the man, instead of the Coach, and how he developed them not only as players but helped them transition into adulthood in becoming their best self.
While most folks only get to see his on-field side, his players away from the field saw him showcase his best features - compassion, agreeableness, well-intentioned, humorous as well as a family man.
There was only so much space for this written piece or I could go on for days and days on the people whose lives he touched over the years.
One such story is the one of a gentleman that was walking around The Pete one afternoon late in the season on an off day. It was hot and Coach saw that the man looked like he had suffered a health malady. Coach went to the door on the side of the baseball center and said hello to the man and invited him inside out of the heat. Coach brought the man into his office and they began a 20-minute conversation.
The conversation varied from many topics - to the team, the stadium, the gentleman's health of which he had suffered a stroke as they each revealed things about each other's lives over this small talk.
How many head coaches of a major Division I baseball program would simply just invite someone into his office – someone he had never met – and each share a part of their respective days with each other.
This leads me to this last story.
During my first season with Coach, we reached the NCAA Regional in Atlanta and were enjoying our practice day.
Following our practice, we had to do a press conference with the media assembled in an old batting cage area underneath the stadium that was hot – really hot – and took forever.
On the way back to the bus, I apologized for the less than stellar conditions.
He looked at me and said that everything was alright and went on to tell me if I realized that there were only 300 Division I head coaching jobs out there and how lucky he was to be one of these men to have one of those jobs.
As I look back to that day and the many days that followed, I can only think that we truly were the lucky ones.
Â
True Grit: Final Episode
Friday, October 20
Episode 1: War Damn Golden Eagle
Tuesday, August 22
Episode 5: Battle for the Belt
Thursday, August 17
Episode 4: Battle for the Belt
Saturday, August 12