(EDITORS NOTE: Some of the following was first published in The Mississippi Press newspaper in May of 2014 in a story by veteran journalist Creg Stephenson. Those portions are reproduced with his permission.)

This is the first of a three part series.

By CURTIS ROCKWELL/Sports Director

PASCAGOULA — Forty years later, you can hear in his voice that it still bothers Johnny Olsen a bit.

This month marks the 40th anniversary of one of the most strange and bizarre endings to a prep baseball season ever in the state of Mississippi. And Olsen and his Pascagoula Panthers were right there in the thick of it.

There is still, to this day, no state champion listed in Class AA that year, which in 1984 was the largest classification in the state of Mississippi. And the reason why dates back to what happened on an otherwise nondescript Tuesday afternoon at Ingalls Field in Pascagoula.

“It was just really crazy. An unfortunate series of events that could have all been prevented,” Olsen told SouthMiss6 Sports Wednesday, in an exclusive interview. “In the end, the kids were the ones that got hurt the most. And high school sports is supposed to be all about kids, that’s the most ridiculous part of it all.”

There was no official state champion for that year in 1984 by order of the Mississippi Supreme Court.

The state championship tournament was cancelled that year, after three of the qualifying teams, including defending state champion Pascagoula, along with Starkville and Tupelo, refused to participate following a lengthy court battle stemming from an incident in the South State tournament at Pascagoula. The Panthers were 23-5 that season, and were viewed as overwhelming favorites to win their second straight AA title.

However, the 1984 AA state baseball championship trophy is still in the possession of Hattiesburg High School, the Tigers having originally been awarded the state title by default. And until Smokie Harrington Park was destroyed by a now infamous February 2013 tornado, the Tigers continued to claim the state title for that year in a sign painted on the stadium’s exterior.

But Hattiesburg and its supporters are among the few who think the Tigers earned the right to be considered the 1984 AA state baseball champions for Mississippi. Many in other areas of the state, including Pascagoula, disagree and are still bitter that the defending state champion Panthers didn’t get a shot at a repeat.

“Not only was the canceled state tournament heartbreaking for us as a team and for our seniors who deserved an opportunity at winning the overall title, I’m sure it was disappointing to North teams Starkville and Tupelo who had no involvement in the situation, yet in a sense, were also being punished,” Mike Moreland told Stepehnson 10 years ago.

Moreland was Pascagoula’s power-hitting junior center fielder in 1984.

“To this day, I’m proud to say I was associated with a group of ballplayers who made up one of the more talented PHS teams in school history. We played a tough schedule and had a great season, we just didn’t get an opportunity to complete our main goal, which was to win it all.”

The season

Olsen was in his first year as head coach at his alma mater, after he served as an assistant under Donnie Davis the year before when the Panthers captured the Class AA state title. Pascagoula lost a number of key players from its 1983 state title team, including state player of the year Mike Thomas and fellow standouts Danny Holifield and Paul Tanner. But a talented roster returned, led by Moreland, pitchers Mike Seaman and Jeffrey Ellis, first baseman David Winstead, left fielder Bobby Ogle and shortstop Keith Coleman.

Pascagoula began the season 4-3, but went 19-2 the rest of the way with the only losses to Meridian and Gulfport. Olsen would go on to win 562 games in 27 seasons at PHS including the 1996 state championship.

The Panthers hit for power (28 home runs in 28 games as a team, including six each by Moreland and Winstead) and average (.455 for Moreland, .438 for Ogle) and had speed (Ogle stole 22 bases, Moreland 16). Ellis and Seaman combined to go 18-2 with 122 strikeouts, giving the Panthers a dynamic lefty-righty combo on the mound.

“We knew we had a chance to repeat, it was a very talented group,” Olsen said Wednesday. “Plus we had the experience of what it felt like to win it all the year before, and the kids kind of fed off of that all year long wanting to prove they could do it again.”

To get a chance to show their mettle on a statewide level, Pascagoula would first have to win the double-elimination South State tournament, which it hosted on May 15-19, 1984, at Ingalls Field. Also entered were Hattiesburg, Jackson Wingfield and McComb, all of whom had also played in the South State tournament the previous year.

The incident

Pascagoula trounced McComb 16-1 in the tournament opener, with Winstead slamming a pair of three-run homers and Moreland adding a two-run shot. The other first-round game pitted Hattiesburg (the 1980 state champions) against Wingfield.

Wingfield jumped out to a 10-3 lead in the top of the fifth inning, when a dispute erupted between Hattiesburg coach Jimmy Pierce and home plate umpire Robert Phillips. Interestingly enough, Phillips and his entire crew were from the Hattiesburg area and had had run-ins with Pierce before.

Olsen told Stephenson 10 years ago that he was on-hand watching the game, but didn’t recall the events all that vividly. Moreland and a few other teammates had left for a post-game meal at Pizza Hut, but Ellis, who was scheduled to pitch in the semifinals, was still hanging around to see who the Panthers would play next.

“I was sitting in the stands on the first-base side watching it,” Ellis said, 10 years ago. “There was a disputed play out in the outfield. (Pierce) went out there to argue, and it went on for several minutes, and then they threw him out. And he would not leave the field. We were sitting there watching it. I saw the umpire tell him, ‘if you don’t leave the field, we’re going to have to forfeit the game’ (to Wingfield).”

Pierce’s account differs slightly from that of Ellis, as he told Stephenson 10 years ago. The former Hattiesburg coach is now 71 and long since retired, but told Stephenson he clearly recalled the events of May 15, 1984.

“We were getting destroyed and our pitcher couldn’t throw a strike, so I wasn’t real happy anyway,” Pierce said. “All I did was go out there and talk to my pitcher, and Robert Phillips told me to hurry up. We were already mad, because we were getting slaughtered and I turned around and told him, ‘well, if you’d call some strikes, maybe we wouldn’t have this problem.’ Of course, one thing led to another then. I certainly don’t blame him for throwing me out.”

What happened next would have ramifications still being felt four decades later. By rule, back then, coaches who are ejected have 60 seconds to leave the field. If they fail to do so, a forfeit can be declared, and that team is automatically ineligible to continue on in the playoffs.

Pierce said he knew the “60-second” rule, but his temper got the best of him. After Phillips warned him that he had one minute to leave the field, Pierce decided to get his money’s worth for the ejection and state-issued subsequent fine.

“I made a statement to (Phillips) that really upset him,” Pierce said. “I said ‘well Robert, I guess that leaves me a few seconds to continue to chew you out.’ He didn’t like that, so he went ahead and called the forfeit, and it hadn’t been five seconds.”

Moreland and his teammates arrived back at Ingalls Field around this time, hoping to catch the final few innings of the Hattiesburg-Wingfield game. Instead, the stadium was beginning to empty.

“When we pulled up, everybody was walking out,” Moreland told Stephenson. “We thought it was maybe a 10-run rule or something, but then we found out what had actually happened.”

Though Wingfield won the first-round game by forfeit over Hattiesburg, the Tigers beat McComb 5-0 in an elimination contest later that night to advance to the semifinal round.

And to Olsen, that was also a big mistake.

“They should have never been allowed to continue in the tournament,” Olsen said, on Wednesday. “They should have been done after the forfeit. That, in hindsight, probably opened up the real can of worms.”

South State domination

The first-round South State games were held on a Tuesday, with the semifinals set for Friday and the finals on Saturday. According to media reports at the time, MHSAA officials, including executive secretary Woodrow Marsh (now deceased) spoke by phone with Hattiesburg High administrators to inform them they were on probation and the baseball team ineligible for the state tournament.

The father of one of the Hattiesburg players happened to be an attorney, and found a sympathetic judge in Forrest County. The judge issued an injunction, ruling that the Hattiesburg players’ rights had been violated due to a dispute between their coach and an umpire, over which they had no control.

With Hattiesburg now back in the tournament, the teams played on. Pascagoula thumped Wingfield 8-3 in the first semifinal, then Hattiesburg eliminated the Falcons with a 5-1 victory in Friday’s late game.

That set up the championship round, with Hattiesburg needing to beat Pascagoula twice to win the South State title. No such luck for the Tigers, as Doug Crump pitched a no-hitter and the Panthers won 17-1 to claim the South State championship.

Up next: No State Tournament

(Part two of this three part updated story will be published on Friday on SouthMiss6 Sports)