By CURTIS ROCKWELL/Sports Director

LUCEDALE — The annual “Dandy Dozen” list for prep baseball players across the state of Mississippi was released on Monday.
The once prestigious squad, as produced annually by The Clarion Ledger newspaper of Jackson, has featured some of the state’s most outstanding performers over the past 30 years or so, and did so once again this year.
Except there seemed to be one glaring omission on the most current list.
George County senior standout Ben Davis, who earned Class 6A Player of the Year honors last season while leading the Rebels to the state championship in that classification, was inexplicably left off of the picks.
All Davis did in his junior campaign was hit .357 with 40 hits including four home runs, eight doubles and three triples and 41 runs scored. He walked 22 times and stole 17 bases.
He played second base last year for his father, GCHS veteran head coach Brandon Davis, but has settled into an outfield role this year. The Rebels went 30-5, one of the best seasons ever in a long and storied baseball tradition-rich program.

The younger Davis, a Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College commit, was one of the only returning “Player of the Year” winners out of seven in the state returning to the prep level for his final season, but still somehow wasn’t picked for the Dandy Dozen list.
““It is the same publication that didn’t think Hayden Dunhurst was one of the top 40 players in the state his senior year, so it doesn’t surprise me that they miss some kids in South Mississippi,” Neil Walther, a veteran head coach with almost two decades of experience in the prep baseball circles in South Mississippi, said. “I saw Ben for two years and he might be the toughest out in 6A.”
Walther spent 17 seasons as head coach at Pearl River Central and is now in his first year as the pitching coach at Oxford High.

Dunhurst was his catcher when he led the Blue Devils to the 2017 Class 5a state title. All Dunhusrt did, after being left off of the Dandy Dozen list, was head to Oxford and start at catcher for three seasons in the rugged Southeastern Conference.
He was also considered one of the top catching prospects in the Southeast region going into his senior season.
He capped his collegiate career by helping get the final out in the 2022 College World Series as the Rebels won their first and only national title on the baseball diamond.
Davis would have joined a handful of former Rebels that were named Dandy Dozen over the years, including Justin Steele, Mason Robins and Wendell Fairley among a few others.

Davis and Dunhurst are just two of the latest senior standouts from the “Southern Six” that seem to be obvious omissions for the list at the time of publication though.
In 2016, Ocean Springs pitcher Garrett Crochet was left off the Dandy Dozen list.
Crochet was the opening day starting pitcher for the Chicago White. Sox last season in his first full season in Major League baseball and went on to be named to the All-Star Game to represent the American League.
This season, after being traded to the Boston Red Sox over the off season, he is in the running to be the opening day starter for the Red Sox as well.