anniversary time

There are three anniversaries worthy of recognition here as the Mississippi Braves, the Jackson area’s latest in a long line of minor league clubs, launch their 2011 season. It’s been 10 years since the lost summer of 2001, when there was no professional baseball in the metro area for the first time since 1974. The ill-fated Jackson Diamond Kats were done after their one season, 2000, and Smith-Wills Stadium was left to hosting collegiate level Cotton State League games and the state semi-pro tournament. The Jackson Senators arrived in 2002. This is also the 20th anniversary of the first season of the Jackson Generals, the Houston Astros’ Double-A club that moved into Smith-Wills the year after the Mets left. The old Generals (not to be confused with the club that the M-Braves are currently playing) left after the 1999 season. Most deserving of celebration is the 30th anniversary of the 1981 Jackson Mets season. They won the Texas League championship, the city’s first pro pennant since the days of the original Senators in the 1940s. (The old Senators actually were affiliated with the Milwaukee Braves for many years, but that’s getting off on a tangent.) The ’81 OJMs (“Our Jackson Mets”) highlighted a magical era during which the club won three titles in five years and made the playoffs eight straight years. The ’81 team wasn’t prospect-loaded but featured future big leaguers Marvell Wynne, Mike Fitzgerald and Al Pedrique. It was managed by Davey Johnson, who would win a World Series with the 1986 New York Mets. He actually predicted his Jackson team would win the league title in 1981. Then they started 8-0 and never spent a day out of first place en route to a first-half crown in the TL East. They beat Tulsa and San Antonio for the championship. “Davey pushed all the right buttons that year,” former JaxMets GM Mike Feder said in a 1984 interview. “He had the club playing the way he wanted them to, and it seemed like he outmanaged the other clubs a lot.” Thirty years later, it’s worth remembering.
P.S. He had 779 of them in the minor leagues, and now Matt Young finally has a big league hit on his ledger. The former Mississippi Braves standout got his first knock Thursday night in Atlanta’s loss to Milwaukee.