There are certain sounds that just belong with baseball.
The crack of a bat. A ball popping into a catcher’s mitt. The low hum of a crowd settling into its seats before first pitch. And if you have spent much time around Pete Taylor Park, there is another sound that has quietly become part of the experience: the Grateful Dead.
Earlier this year, I wrote about how the Dead became the unofficial soundtrack to Southern Miss baseball.
Jerry Garcia’s guitar drifting through the Mississippi pines before a game has become almost as much a part of The Pete as the Right Field Roost, the 16 oz. Lounge and somebody inevitably yelling at the opposing pitcher to throw it in the dirt.
Tomorrow night, “The Music Never Stopped.” It just moves about 75 miles south.
The Biloxi Shuckers will host Grateful Dead Night Thursday at Keesler Federal Park, bringing together minor league baseball, tie-dye and the music that has become so familiar around Southern Miss baseball.
For Southern Miss fans, maybe we should just call it what it is. The Pete is going to the beach.
Keesler Federal Park has gone by several names over the years. It opened as MGM Park and officially became Keesler Federal Park, but Southern Miss fans have developed a few unofficial names of their own. Pete Taylor Park South. The Pete at the Beach. Whatever you want to call it, the Biloxi ballpark has developed into something of a second home for Southern Miss baseball whenever the Golden Eagles head south to play on the Coast.
Now, for one night, it will even have the soundtrack.
The Grateful Dead never really fit neatly into one category, and neither does Southern Miss baseball. That was part of what struck me when I wrote about the connection earlier this year. Pete Taylor Park isn’t trying to be Dudy Noble Field, Swayze Field or Alex Box Stadium. It has its own personality, its own traditions and its own slightly strange little baseball universe tucked beneath the pine trees.
The Dead fit that world perfectly.
They built their following without doing things the conventional way. Their fans created their own culture around the music. People traveled from city to city, traded recordings, made friends in parking lots and became part of something that was difficult to explain to anyone who wasn’t already in it.
Sound familiar?
Southern Miss baseball has that same energy.
People pile into the Roost. Chairs appear hours before first pitch. Generations of fans know exactly when to yell the same heckles. Somebody fires up a grill. Somebody else has a story about a regional from 15 years ago.
And year after year, Golden Eagle fans keep showing up. Like Jerry Garcia said just keep “Truckin’.”
That’s why Thursday night in Biloxi feels like such a natural crossover. Instead of Garcia’s guitar floating through the pine trees surrounding Pete Taylor Park, it will be Grateful Dead music mixing with the salt air a few blocks from the Mississippi Sound. Instead of the Right Field Roost, there will be the Right Field Tiki Bar. Instead of college baseball, there will be Southern League baseball. The Cubs prospects vs. the Brewers prospects.
Different ballpark. Same vibe.
And if there was ever a Grateful Dead song built for a night like this, it might be “Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo.”
Maybe Thursday is the Mississippi Half-Step of baseball season – one step out of Hattiesburg, another toward the Gulf, carrying a little bit of The Pete along for the ride. From the pine trees of the Pine Belt to the palm trees and salt air of Biloxi, the Dead provide the bridge between two ballparks that Southern Miss fans know well.
And there may be one familiar Southern Miss face in the crowd Thursday night.
Head Coach Christian Ostrander is a Deadhead himself. When Baseball America asked NCAA Tournament coaches to name their favorite bands and musicians in 2024, Coach Oz’s list included Pearl Jam, Metallica and, his favorite band, the Grateful Dead.
So maybe it shouldn’t have been surprising to see Coach Oz make the trip down to Keesler Federal Park for Grateful Dead Night as he showed up last year. For anybody who has spent a spring afternoon at Pete Taylor Park with the Dead playing over the speakers, Thursday is a pretty easy excuse to make the drive south.
Wear the tie-dye.
Throw on the black and gold.
Grab a hot dog and a cold drink.
Find a spot near the Tiki Bar and listen to the music.
Then settle in for nine innings of baseball.
Maybe that’s the best thing about the Grateful Dead and baseball in the first place. Neither one needs to be rushed. You show up, find your spot and see where the night takes you. Earlier this year, I wrote about the strange connection between the Dead and Southern Miss baseball and how music recorded decades ago somehow became part of the soundtrack to spring nights at The Pete.
Tomorrow, the next chapter gets played.
It’s roughly 75 miles from Pete Taylor Park to Keesler Federal Park. Down Highway 49, over to I-10 and toward the beach.
You can call the destination Keesler Federal Park. You can call it Pete Taylor Park South. You can call it The Pete at the Beach.
For one night, you might as well call it Shakedown Street.
From The Pete to the beach, the music never stopped.
It just headed south.
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