Remembering Jimmy Yawn: A MISSISSIPPI SPORTS LEGEND

One summer's night, I dug in my cleats at home plate just like Mickey Mantle, Jackie Robinson, Ted Williams or Willie Mays, established major-league stars, would be doing on baseball diamonds elsewhere in America.

They had nothing on me except age and talent.

Stars of epic renown they were at the time, I had big problems in my at-bat.

It was 1956 and I was in my first season as a member of the Coca-Cola Bottling Co.-sponsored team in McComb Little League Baseball.

The opposing pitcher for the McComb Manufacturing Co. team was a grizzled veteran of the local league named Jimmy Yawn, one of the most splendid athletes ever to compete in our hometown.

I was 8 and a rookie. Yawn was 12 and a five-year veteran of the Little League battles. I heard he was already shaving.

My teeth were rattling and my knees buckling. The bat shook my hands. I probably was crying and wondering where my mother was when I needed her the most.

I hung in there and struck out on three pitches. Yawn could've rolled the ball off the pitcher's mound and I'd swung. I couldn't reach the dugout any faster, continuing to wail.

Jimmy Yawn died at age 81 on Aug. 14 in Memphis. He had been a longtime resident of Arkansas.

He was as good as they come, both in heart and physical talent. I don't know if I can say it enough that he was one of Mississippi's best-ever high school and college baseball players. He pitched and hit McComb High to two state Class A-AA championship runner-up positions, losing only to fabled teams from Clarksdale and Columbus.

He was a starting forward on McComb's 1962 overall state class A-AA basketball champions--the first team from the state's old Big Eight Conference to pull that off. He was the punter for MHS, good enough to punt in college.

But it was baseball that made Jimmy Yawn. After putting fear in the hearts of every Little League, Babe Ruth, high school and Legion ball performer in Mississippi he moved on to All-Southeastern Conference and All-American status with the Ole Miss Rebels. And he did it as an infielder, not as a pitcher.

Yawn played shortstop and second base for the Rebels from 1965-67. His .390 career batting average is third best in team history. He hit 19 home runs in three seasons.

He once hit four home runs in an SEC playoff game against rival LSU.

In 1966, Yawn batted .408 for Ole Miss and was first team All-America at shortstop, one of a few Rebels' first to reach that status. He was All-SEC in 1965-66-67, playing two infield positions.

Yawn was selected in the third round of the Major League draft in 1967, going to the New York Yankees as the 41st pick, eventually reaching AAA.

Playing on a McComb High team with some truly superior athletes, Jimmy Yawn's pitching arm had the Tigers in the fight for the state big-schools' state baseball championship for three straight years.

I submit he loomed largest in the local youth leagues. In one 1960 McComb Babe Ruth League game he struck out 19 of the 21 batters he faced--exemplary of his legendary status.

Jimmy Yawn, a manufacturing sales representative as an adult, was in reality one of our high schools, and Mississippi's, superior athletes of all-time. He didn't just play; he led, as he did on that MHS state championship basketball team.

And I can still see him throwing darts at me from 46-feet away one summer's night.

---Mac Gordon is a native of McComb. He is a retired newspaperman. He can be reached at macmarygordon@gmail.com.