‘Hey man, we’re national champs’: How a Socastee grad led Mississippi State to CWS title
Jake Mangum knew after just one season with Chris Lemonis as his head coach.
Following Mississippi State’s exit from the 2019 College World Series a win shy of the semifinals, the then departing senior gave an impassioned farewell directed at Lemonis during the postgame press conference.
“Thank you for everything,” Mangum said while holding back tears. “You’re going to bring the first national championship to this baseball program. You are, and it’s going to be awesome. I can’t wait to see it.”
The SEC career hits leader didn’t have to wait long.
Lemonis delivered the predicted title last week when the Bulldogs defeated Vanderbilt 9-0 in the championship game of the first College World Series held since Mangum’s prophecy.
It’s the first NCAA national title in any sport at Mississippi State, and there was cause for celebration among some in Myrtle Beach as well, as it was delivered by a Socastee High School alumnus.
“Our state is so excited about their first national championship and it’s really cool,” said Lemonis, a 1988 Socastee grad. “I mean, I’ve gotten more fans crying and everything else, they’re just so excited that we finally won, which has been pretty special.”
Enjoying the championship
A victory parade was held in Starkville, Mississippi, last Friday, two days after the championship was won, “and it was a parade like I’ve never seen,” Lemonis said. “It was like the whole state was here in Starkville and it was really cool. So that’s kind of what made you realize, ‘Hey man, we’re national champs.’ ”
Lemonis was able to share the title with his family, who joined him on a vehicle in the parade, and it brought some solace and an opportunity to rejoice in an otherwise difficult year.
The title was particularly special for his father, Thomas, a 1973 Mississippi State grad who had Chris living with him as an infant on campus.
Lemonis’ mother died this past fall, and she was the caretaker for Thomas, who has dementia. Thomas became ill prior to the CWS, was hospitalized and was unable to make the trip to Omaha, Nebraska, but he and Chris met at the airport upon MSU’s return to Starkville.
“It was pretty special. It’s been actually a really tough year from a personal standpoint,” Lemonis said. “. . . But that emotion of that moment. And he was a grad, so he’s loved Mississippi State since he was in high school, went to school here.
“You know he still doesn’t remember everything but he got to go on the parade with us the next day. [He said] ‘Can you believe this?’ I said, ‘No dad, I can’t believe it.’ . . . He was awesome, and I can tell even though he doesn’t remember a lot of things it was really special to him.”
From Myrtle Beach to Starkville
Lemonis credits Rick Hardwick, Socastee’s baseball coach his senior year, with keeping him in the game through college, leading to his collegiate coaching career.
Hardwick had recently graduated from The Citadel and convinced Lemonis to attend the Charleston military school and walk onto the baseball team.
“I wasn’t good enough to play [at Coastal Carolina], so I ended up going down to The Citadel on an engineering scholarship, and so that’s how [Hardwick] . . . got me a chance to go there. I didn’t know anything about The Citadel but they gave me academic money so I went. I was a walk-on from the day I showed up and had to earn my stripes.”
Following a playing career at The Citadel that included 162 starts over three seasons and a .367 batting average as a senior first baseman, Lemonis was a Bulldogs assistant and later associate head coach over 12 years through 2006. Citadel made six NCAA Tournament appearances during his time there as a player and coach.
Louisville was college baseball’s winningest program during the eight years (2007-14) Lemonis was on staff as an assistant, and he was named the ABCA/Baseball America Assistant Coach of the Year in 2013.
In his four years (2015-18) as head coach at Indiana, the Hoosiers were the only Big Ten program to appear in three NCAA Regionals, and he became the first coach in program history to earn three NCAA regional berths in his first four seasons.
Mississippi State was coming off a berth in the CWS when Lemonis was hired following the 2018 season, but he was the fourth head coach in four seasons. Andy Cannizaro replaced John Cohen in 2017 but was replaced by pitching coach Gary Henderson on an interim basis early in the 2018 season when Cannizaro resigned due to off the field indiscretions.
“Even though there was some success, there was a lot of just turmoil, is the best way to put it, and I thought our staff brought in some stability, and I think that’s what the kids enjoyed the most, the organization and stability,” Lemonis said. “We have a good relationship with our players. The game is so pressure packed here, it’s in front of so many crowds, as a staff we try not to create that so our the biggest thing that we try to have is a relationship and understand kids and coach them and I think the kids appreciate that side of it.”
Success at MSU and the CWS
In his first season in Starkville in 2019, Lemonis set a new record for wins for a first-year SEC head coach with a 52–15 record and took the team to its second straight CWS, where it won its opener before losing two straight. The Bulldogs went 12-4 in the COVID-shortened 2020 season.
Lemonis has been a frequent visitor to Omaha in June. He led Citadel to the program’s only CWS appearance in 1990 as a player, returned to the CWS three times between 2007-14 as an assistant at Louisville, and has taken Mississippi State to the past two.
He wanted 2021 to be different.
“It’s such an unbelievable place to be,” Lemonis said. “I don’t want to say it’s a party, but there’s tent city and there’s ceremonies and you lose the focus of baseball some, and this year I became a boring guy. My kids were probably mad at me but I just kind of hung out in my hotel room, I didn’t run everywhere, I kept telling them it’s our time to win and I just want to stay focused on the baseball, and that was kind of the message to the [players].”
Lemonis isn’t yet sure what to say to his team entering the 2022 season as the defending national champs. He plans to speak to Coastal Carolina coach Gary Gilmore, former South Carolina coach Ray Tanner and others about the challenges of coaching a season after winning the NCAA title.
“Here it’s worse than anywhere,” Lemonis said. “Our kids will walk around and everybody’s gonna pat them on the back and tell them how great they are for the year, and I have to have a good message I just haven’t worked on it yet. . . . It’ll take some time and me calling some different coaches across the country.”
The Myrtle Beach connection
Lemonis doesn’t have immediate family members in the Myrtle Beach area any longer, as much of the family moved to Birmingham, Alabama after he graduated from Socastee.
But his family vacationed in the area every year in his youth before moving here, and he still makes regular visits.
“I’ll be there next month playing some golf and hanging out with my buddies,” he said. “. . . Myrtle Beach is a special place for us. When I was in Louisville we vacationed there every year. I still like getting back. And I had a lot of friends and teammates reach out to me during the last two-week period congratulating us, so it was kind of neat to hear from a lot of friends back home.”
His wife, the former Jill MacEldowney, is a Coastal Carolina graduate so Lemonis was obligated to watch his former hometown college capture the national title in 2016 before he was able to.
“We made sure we watched it. I was just happy for Gilley. Who wasn’t?” Lemonis said. “Even when I was at Indiana we came back and played in that beautiful ballpark a couple times, and what they’ve done there with their baseball program over the years is phenomenal and I’m lucky to call Gilley and those guys friends in the business.”
Lemonis expects to someday again reside somewhere between Myrtle Beach and Charleston. One of his daughters is moving to Charleston soon and the other wants to attend grad school there.
“Well it’s home,” he said. “It’s where I went to high school and we raised our kids in Charleston and it’s a special place. We’ll retire somewhere up and down that two hours on the coast at some point in time. . . . It feels like where we grew up. You think about I went to high school in Myrtle Beach and college in Charleston, I mean it’s hard to beat that as a young kid and we just enjoy getting back.”
