If you were at Pete Taylor Park during the 2023 Super Regional between Southern Miss and Tennessee, you don’t need a reminder, you just need someone to bring it up.
Southern Miss was rolling that night. The Golden Eagles had jumped out to a 4-1 lead in the top of the fourth, behind the excellent pitching of Tanner Hall. The Roost was rocking, trucks lined up in right field, and everything felt like it was leaning black and gold and headed back to Omaha for the first time in 14 years. Then Tennessee first basemen Blake Burke stepped in, and changed the feel of the entire game with one swing.
He didn’t just hit it out. He sent it out of the park
The ball jumped off his bat and kept carrying, over the Right Field Roost, over the line of trucks, and through those tall pine trees that sit beyond the fence. It finally came down on the other side, banging off concrete and bouncing off the brick St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church. A two-run shot that cut it to 4-3, and for a moment, took the air out of a place that doesn’t lose its breath very often.
And if you were out there in the Roost, you know exactly how far that is. That’s not just a home run, that’s one people still point to when they’re standing along the fence talking past Southern Miss games. After winning game 1 on Friday night against the Tennessee. Everything was going well for the Golden Eagles, until Blake Burke’s dagger to the heart, felt like the beginning of the end for Southern Miss in that Super Regionals. The Volunteers would win the next game 5-0 to win the Super Regionals and advance to Omaha.
Burke wasn’t some unknown rolling through town, either. The Brentwood, California native made his name at Tennessee, building into one of the most dangerous bats in the SEC. Big frame, smooth left-handed swing, and the kind of power that shows up in a hurry. By the time his college career wrapped, he had turned that production into real draft stock, eventually getting selected in the first round of 2024 MLB Draft by the Milwaukee Brewers.
Now fast forward, and Burke’s bringing that same kind of power to the Coast with the Biloxi Shuckers at Keesler Federal Park.
And it hasn’t taken long for it to show up.
A week into the season, he’s already sitting on 6 home runs, jumping on pitches and sending balls out in a hurry. It’s the same swing, the same sound off the bat, just a different backdrop.
Pete Taylor Park and Keesler Federal Park don’t play the same. Pete Taylor is known as a hitter-friendly yard, especially down the lines, with right field listed around 330 feet, and the ball tends to carry, especially in that Roost corner when the conditions are right. It’s a place where offense can snowball in a hurry.
Keesler Federal Park, on the other hand, is a little more balanced. Right field stretches out closer to 335–340 feet, with deeper gaps and that Gulf Coast air that can either help you or hold everything up depending on the night. It’s not impossible to leave, it just makes you earn it a little more.
But when you’ve already seen a guy send one over the Right Field Roost, past the trucks, and through the pine trees, dimensions start to feel more like suggestions than limits. You stop wondering if he can do it again—you start wondering where it’s going to land.
The berm. The Tiki Bar in the Right Field. Maybe something that keeps carrying toward the lights of the Beau Rivage Resort & Casino sitting out there beyond the park.
That night in Hattiesburg is already part of the fabric of Pete Taylor Park. One of those swings that gets brought up every time someone asks about the farthest ball ever hit out there. Now he’s in Biloxi, and if this first week is any indication, it might not be long before Biloxi gets a moment like that of its own.
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