On Thursday night, the lights came back on in Meridian.
For the first time in nearly three decades, professional summer baseball returned to the Queen City as the Meridian Blues, of the independent Mid-American Conference took the field at Meridian Community College’s Scaggs Field.
But before the Blues brought baseball back to Scaggs Field, Meridian had already lived several baseball lives.
The city’s minor league story dates back to the 1893 Meridian Bluebirds, who played in the Mississippi State League. By the early 1900s, Meridian was part of the old Cotton States League, fielding teams with names like the Ribboners, White Ribbons, Mets and Metropolitans. Those early clubs played in an era when minor league baseball was less polished and more local. Train rides, small-town crowds, handwritten box scores and summer nights where the ballpark was one of the few places in town where everyone gathered.
The Peps name came from owner Charles Buckwalter, a local Pepsi-Cola bottler. That’s the kind of detail that makes old minor league baseball great. The team name wasn’t dreamed up by a marketing firm, it came from the man trying to keep baseball alive in town. But Fairgrounds Park became too expensive. Buckwalter complained that rent and advertising restrictions were hurting the club, so Meridian baseball moved into a new home.
That new home was Buckwalter Stadium, opened in 1947. It sat near Sowashee Street and Rubush Avenue, had a listed capacity of about 3,000, and became the main stage for Meridian baseball’s golden era. The Peps played there in 1947 and 1948, then the Meridian Millers took over from 1949 through the mid-1950s.
The Millers became Meridian’s championship club. After the Southeastern League folded, Meridian returned to the Cotton States League in 1952 and won back-to-back league titles in 1952 and 1953. The 1953 team went 79-46, finished 12.5 games ahead of second place, beat Jackson in the playoffs, then swept El Dorado for the championship. Hugh Glaze won the batting title at .355, while Bob Harrison led the league with 19 wins, a 2.15 ERA and 172 strikeouts.
The park hosted Meridian teams until 1955, when the Cotton States League folded for good. Today, it survives more as a ghost of old Mississippi baseball, abandoned in the woods off Interstate 20. Today tall grass, wildlife, homeless and urban explorers take up the grounds and inside of the walls of Buckwalter Stadium.
And unlike many small-town teams, Meridian’s rosters were filled with players who either reached the major leagues or were tied directly to baseball history.
Carlos “Chico” Heron may be the most important name in Meridian baseball history. In 1954, Heron became the first Black player to sign and play for a Mississippi minor league club when he joined the Millers. He hit .325 as an 18-year-old in Meridian. Later, as a scout, Heron would help discover and mentor Mariano Rivera, one of the greatest closers in baseball history.
Then there was Roxie Lawson, the former major league pitcher who managed the Meridian Peps after serving in World War II. Lawson had pitched in the big leagues for the Cleveland Indians and Detroit Tigers before bringing his baseball life back through Mississippi. Walt Tauscher, another former major leaguer, also managed and pitched in Meridian during the 1940s after a lengthy professional career that included time with the Philadelphia Athletics.
Meridian wasn’t just some random stop on the baseball map. It was connected to the bloodstream of the sport.
And maybe no player better represented the dream of baseball in Meridian than Brian Cole.
Cole grew up in Meridian and became one of the greatest athletes Mississippi ever produced. At Meridian High School, he was electric. At Navarro College, he became unstoppable, hitting .524 with power, speed and raw athleticism that scouts described as almost unreal. The New York Mets drafted him in the 18th round in 1998, and within a few years he became one of the top prospects in baseball.
People who saw him in person still talk about him like folklore.
Five-tool player. NFL body. Baseball instincts. Freak athlete.
Many believed Cole would eventually become a major league star before his tragic death in a car accident in 2001 at just 22 years old. His story still hangs over baseball conversations in Meridian like unfinished poetry.
Then there’s Dennis Boyd — better known to baseball fans as Oil Can Boyd.
The flamboyant former Boston Red Sox pitcher became one of the biggest personalities in 1980s baseball, but his roots trace back to Meridian. Oil Can pitched with swagger before swagger became marketable. He talked trash, worked fast, threw hard, and became one of the most entertaining players of his era.
That’s the thing about Meridian baseball history. It’s filled with characters.
And maybe that’s why the city embraced the Meridian Brakemen so deeply in the 1990s.
The Brakemen only existed from 1996-97 in the independent Big South League, but the name perfectly fit Meridian. Railroad town. Working-class town. Baseball town. Even the nickname sounded like old Mississippi.
The Brakemen weren’t a polished minor league operation. They were independent baseball in the purest form — long bus rides, quirky promotions, patched-together rosters, and players chasing one last shot at affiliated baseball.
At one point, according to baseball lore, the Brakemen traded player Andre Keene for cash and a Muddy Waters record. That sentence alone feels like Meridian baseball.
And now, nearly 30 years later, baseball is back again.
Thursday night’s debut wasn’t just another opener. It felt like a city reconnecting with a piece of itself. The Mid-America League chose Meridian because baseball people still believe this city can support the game.
The Blues name itself ties directly into Meridian’s musical soul, the home of Jimmie Rodgers, railroad history, and Mississippi’s deep roots in American music. Now the Blues are playing at Scaggs Field, the same campus ballpark where the Brakemen once tried to revive the sport. The name is different, the league is different, and the uniforms are new. But the story is not new at all.
Meridian has been a baseball town for more than 130 years. The Blues are just the latest chapter.
Somewhere in Meridian, somebody can still tell you about the Millers.
Somebody remembers Buckwalter Stadium.
Somebody still owns a Brakemen cap in a closet.
And now a new generation gets the Blues.
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