a baseball-fest

Columbus is honoring the life and baseball career of the late Sam Hairston this weekend. It’s a much deserved celebration of one of the best players the state has produced but one who remains largely unsung. Some may know him as the patriarch of the only black three-generation major league family: His sons Jerry and John were big leaguers, and Jerry’s sons Jerry Jr. and Scott are current members of the San Diego Padres. Sam Hairston, who said in a 1990s interview that he was born in Crawford, just outside Columbus, got only five at-bats in the majors with the 1951 Chicago White Sox. But in the Negro Leagues, where he launched his career in the days of segregated pro baseball, he was a star. He won a Negro American League Triple Crown with the Indianapolis Clowns in 1950, hitting .424 with 17 homers and 71 RBIs in a 70-game season (according to James A Riley’s Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues). Hairston also won a league MVP award in the integrated minor leagues after hitting .310 with 102 RBIs in 1953 with Colorado Springs and later added a batting title with a .350 average in 1955 for the same club. He played until 1960 and later served as a hitting coach for the Double-A Birmingham Barons. He died Oct. 31, 1997. Sam Hairston Baseball Park at Weyerhauser Field, near his childhood home, is to be dedicated today with a Mississippi Department of Archives and History marker planted on the site. Another historic marker will be erected at the Queen City Hotel, where Negro Leaguers stayed when playing in or passing through Mississippi.