By CURTIS ROCKWELL/Sports Director

Former Pascagoula High School standout baseball player Mike Seaman died unexpectedly Friday morning.
According to some social media posts, the 57-year-old Seaman died of a heart attack at his home in Pascagoula.
Seaman helped PHS win 50 games over a two year period in 1983 and 1984.
As a junior, Seaman helped lead Pascagoula to the 1983 Class AA state championship. The Panthers went 26-7 that season and brought home the first baseball state title for PHS in 15 years, as Seaman and senior Mike Thomas won 10 games apiece on the pitchers mound.
Seaman was a senior on legendary Panther head coach Johnny Olsen’s first PHS squad in 1984. Olsen was a first-year assistant on the 1983 state championship team under head coach Donnie Davis before being elevated to the top spot the next year.

“Mike was a key member of that 1984 championship team,” Olsen said, upon hearing the news of his untimely death Friday afternoon. “He was a crafty, soft throwing southpaw who just knew how to pitch and win. When you had him on the mound you knew your chances of winning were good. He was a great player to coach and an even greater teammate.”
Seaman started the overall semifinal round game against powerful Greenville in Clinton at Frierson Field on the campus of Mississippi College. The Panthers beat the Hornets, who were ranked as the number one team in the state at the time and went 29-7 overall, 7-6 to end Greenville’s season.
The next day, Pascagoula celebrated a state championship with a 6-4 win over perennial nemesis Hattiesburg to take the title.

“My gosh we were so good,” Olsen added. “We were very talented and salty, which is always a good combination.”
Pascagoula came into the 1983 season with high expectations, despite having not won a division championship since 1977 and having not won a state title since the 1967 and 1968 teams won back-to-back crowns. However, the Panthers proved their mettle early, hitting a school-record seven home runs in a 19-3 victory over nationally ranked Choctawhatchee of Fort Walton Beach, Fla.
The Panthers won the division championship with a 17-3 record, defeating such future college pitching stars as Earl Sanders of Moss Point and Rodney Mattina of Biloxi in the process. Sanders would go on to pitch at Jackson State and in the Toronto Blue Jays’ minor-league chain, while Mattina played at Ole Miss.
Olsen said he saw Seaman just last year when the Panthers celebrated the 40th anniversary of that state title and always enjoyed catching up with him when the two crossed paths.

Seaman went on to have an impressive senior season as well, finishing 9-2 including a win over Mccomb to open the Class AA South State playoffs.
In all likelihood, the Panthers would have went on to capture back-to-back state championships but a court injunction by Hattiesburg ended the postseason prematurely.
Pascagoula did win the Class AA South State title and finished 23-5 in 1984. For his accomplishments, Seaman was selected to play for the South Squad in the 10th annual Mississippi High School Baseball All-Star Game.
He went on to be a top starter at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College over the next two seasons as well.
Seaman’s funeral arrangements were incomplete as of early Friday evening. He leaves behind his wife Michelle Blakeney Seaman.