Pascagoula High Archives - All Mississippi Baseball

reverse course

After a sluggish start to his pro career, Willie Joe Garry Jr. has taken off in Year 2. The former Pascagoula High star, 19, is batting .314 with a homer, seven RBIs and 12 runs in 21 games for Elizabethton, a rookie-level club in Minnesota’s system. Garry went 3-for-3 with three RBIs in an E-Twins win on Wednesday. The 6-foot-1, 170-pound lefty hitter batted just .160 in the Gulf Coast League in 2018. He was a ninth-round pick by the Twins in 2018, the third prep player drafted out of the state behind Brandon’s J.T. Ginn and Hattiesburg’s Joe Gray. Garry’s draft stock soared following a strong showing with his travel team in the summer of 2017, according to a story in the Biloxi Sun-Herald. A five-tool talent, he then hit .432 with three homers and 21 steals as a senior at Goula. Garry, a second cousin of former Southern Miss football star Ben Garry, told the Sun-Herald he credits some of his development as a player to ex-big leaguer Matt Lawton, his youth league coach. (Lawton also was drafted by the Twins and played seven years in Minnesota.) Garry plays center field for the E-Twins, usually flanked in right field by USM alum Matt Wallner, a first-round pick this year who is hitting .316 with a couple of homers. P.S. Jarrod Dyson, the former McComb High and Southwest Mississippi Community College star, left Wednesday’s game for Arizona with a hamstring cramp. Dyson helped fuel the Diamondbacks’ 19-4 win at Texas with three hits, including his career-high sixth homer. The 34-year-old outfielder is batting .254 with 43 runs and 21 stolen bases in 77 games.

no looking back

He was one of the best high school players in the state in 2011, a first-team All-America outfielder from a strong Pascagoula High program. He was drafted in the eighth round by the Boston Red Sox and reportedly offered $1.4M to sign. Had he done so, he might have reached the Double-A level by now, knocking on the door of the big leagues. But he turned the Red Sox down, going off instead to try his hand at two sports, football and baseball, at Ole Miss. That plan didn’t work out so well. He’s barely played any baseball for the Rebels and he hadn’t made a huge impact in football either. Until Saturday. If Senquez Golson had any regrets about passing on pro baseball, he doesn’t have any at this moment. The 5-foot-9 senior defensive back’s interception in the back of the end zone against Alabama sealed one of Ole Miss’ biggest football victories ever. This might be a special season for the Rebels, and Golson surely will love having been a part of it. He might have a future in football. Heck, he might get another shot at baseball — though he won’t get another $1.4M bonus. As Peter Marshall used to say on Hollywood Squares, “I might have gone to Paul Lynde to block, but this may work out.”