College Baseball Central complements its coverage of Southeastern Conference baseball by returning our feature series on Mississippi State's Ron Polk Ring of Honor. Now in its seventh class since 2019, CBC writers Doug Kyle and Bo Carter team up again to provide insight into the 2025 class of honorees, pitcher Mike Proffitt, outfielder Ted Milton, and infielder/outfielder/pitcher Mitch Moreland. Today, we profile a hard-nosed and swift outfield competitor who still ranks second in Mississippi State Baseball records for triples and enjoyed a storied career in Mississippi high school coaching ranks of baseball and football, as well administratively as an athletic director, Ted Milton.
By Doug Kyle
One of the best days of Ted Milton's baseball career also turned out to be one of the most agonizing. The penultimate day of the 1971 regular season, his Mississippi State Bulldogs swept a doubleheader at Dudy Noble Field over rival Ole Miss to clinch the Western Division title and earn their way into a second straight Southeastern Conference baseball championship series. But Milton had to hear that news, and also that the team was getting highly-desired lights from MSU benefactor E.B. "Dutch" McCool, afterward, and in some pain as well.
Milton was hit in the face by a pitch in the second game and went to the ground. He recalls that all through his career playing both football and baseball in high school, his father had never come onto the field for an injury. And yet, when the daze of the fast ball off his nose wore off, he looked up to see both of his parents, along with MSU physician Dr. Charles Longest. "My first thought was how bad is it if my father is out here?" he recalls.
"We went on the Student Health Center, and they did the usual procedures before Dr. Longest suggested we might want to go on to Jackson. I was having none of that. My team was about to play for another SEC championship, and I wasn't missing it. When we got back to Dudy Noble, I told Coach (Paul) Gregory I was ready to go the next day, but he told me the team had clinched the Division and needed me more the next week, against Vanderbilt. When my friend and roommate Mike Proffitt jokingly told me the ball off my nose was the hardest hit ball I had all day, I knew things were going to be alright. I sat out the Saturday game, which we won anyway. But next week, I was ready to go against Vanderbilt and hit a home run the next time I batted at Dudy Noble Field."
And that was just one glimpse into the career of McComb, MS native Ted Milton, recently named, along with his 1969-72 MSU teammate Proffitt and 2005-2007 star Mitch Moreland, as an honoree in the Ron Polk Ring of Honor 2025 class. Like Proffitt, Milton was a two-time SEC Champion, a Regional/District champion, and a member of the 1971 Mississippi State College World Series team, the first Bulldog group to make Omaha.
So, how did Ted Milton get to Mississippi State and become a slugging outfielder? “My high school coach was Art Nester, who had played football and baseball at State, he was a catcher for Coach Gregory. High school baseball in those days was nothing like it is now, and while I was offered by four schools to play football, I really had only one offer from a baseball school, State. Coach Nester asked me after practice one day if I wanted to go play at Mississippi State, and it wasn’t hard to choose. Coach D’Armi came down and watched me play one game, brought the papers, and I had a scholarship to Mississippi State!”
Gregory was a former major league pitcher and recruited nationwide to State, so it was there Milton met Arizona junior college recruits Jim Eichmeier and Dave Phares, with whom he became good friends. He also met fellow freshman Proffitt, with whom he quickly bonded and roomed three years until Proffitt's marriage at Christmas of their senior year. And, at some point, they also realized their paths had crossed before.
“In 1963, my Dixie Youth All-Star team from McComb won the state and went to Hueytown, AL, to play in the World Series. Years later, we were talking and realized he’d seen and remembered our unique blue uniforms. Mike said ‘They were ugly’ and I said ‘Yeah, you’re right,’ so we were both there, he remembered me and my team, but we didn’t meet until six years later at State.”
Which brings us to another of the many stories Milton is happy to share about his diamond days in maroon and white.
“Proffitt and I were playing in our first game as freshmen, which was permitted by the SEC back then. He lasted one inning on the mound and gave up nine runs, I went 0-5. After the game, we were trudging the long walk back to our dressing room, which was underneath the football stadium Scott Field, and I said to him, ‘Mike, you have an ERA of 81, I have a batting average of zero zero zero, do you think there is a team out there somewhere that would have us?’ Coach Gregory overheard me and simply said to us, ‘Boys, keep your mouth shut and keep working, everything will be alright.’ We kept at it, and sure enough, we both got a lot better at the game after that first day.”
The state of Mississippi dominated the SEC in baseball for all four years of Milton’s career, State winning the title two of them, Ole Miss taking the other two. Milton recalls the last game of the 1970 season, in Oxford, a standing-room-only overflow crowd, with the winner taking the Western Division title and advancing to play Tennessee in the two-team SEC playoffs.
The little lefthander Brantley Jones, who finished his career as the winningest pitcher in SEC history (at that time, later broken by Proffitt), was on the mound for State, with an undefeated record to boot, in the pivotal contest.
Stories have proliferated over the years about what Jones did after he shut out the Rebels 3-0 and clinched the division. Some say he made an unflattering gesture with one of his digits, but Jones denied that happened in an interview a few years ago, still insisting he merely wore an “Archie Who” button out to warm up and was made to remove it.
Milton remembers another detail. “Brantley had this habit of swinging his glove arm up and down during his windup, and he comes into the dugout after one inning, says to me, ‘Milton, those (Mississippi Fans) think they’re getting into my head by counting my swing. What they don’t know is that it’s helping me get my rhythm. I hope they do it the whole game!’ I don’t remember if he wore a button, a lot of State students had them, but the counting absolutely happened."
And, while Milton may have not been there when the lights were promised, he did play in the first night game, staged at Dudy Noble Field in April 1972. Or was it?
“A lot of people remember that the year before, we went to LSU and got swept in a night series. Then, they came to our field the next weekend for three day games, and we absolutely waxed them. But, the night before we were supposed to play, we were all called by Assistant Coach Tom D’Armi and told to come to the field to put the tarp down. Coach D’Armi was the fiery side to Coach Gregory’s gentle easygoing side, and there was no way he was going to let any of those games, which couldn’t be made up, be rained out because we didn’t have the tarp on the field. There was only one problem. We didn’t have our own lights yet, and we couldn’t see to even find the tarp, much less put it on the field.
“So, we went up the hill to the parking lot (which in those days was pretty secluded from the rest of the campus and a popular lovers lane), pounded on windows, and convinced all the cars up there to shine their headlights onto the field. Not only did we get the tarp down, it was so bright we could’ve played the first night game at Dudy Noble Field a year before we really did!”
And, as always, there were nicknames. Pitcher Gene Henderson was “Whoopstick,” outfielder Dave Phares was known as “Groovy Dave,” Proffitt was known as Proctor because Gregory sometimes had trouble remembering it correctly, and Ted was called Yard Dog. Why Yard Dog, his mother once asked, overhearing it after a game? Don’t ask, Mom.
The 1970 SEC playoffs against Tennessee are also the stuff of legend. “We lost the first game up there (Knoxville). We flew up in a little old plane, I don’t know where Coach D’Armi found it, but I think they had to wire the doors closed! Anyway, we had the second game (and third, if necessary) at home. Somehow Coach D’Armi learned before the game started that Tennessee had already checked out of their hotel and made sure we all knew.
"That fired everyone up, that they seemed to assume they would win and just head home with the trophy after the game. We came back and won the game 4-3 in 10 innings, I scored the winning run from second on a double by Fred Yilling. And as soon as the game ended, we let them know we knew about the hotel and chided them where they planned to stay that night! I think someone with the University got them in the Alumni House, none of the few hotels in town were interested after word got out."
The series tied up, the third game was a scoreless pitchers duel until the bottom of the 8th inning. Jocko Potts led off with a triple and scored on Phares’ sacrifice fly. Milton remembers that even though it ended well and State won 1-0 for the SEC title, there was some drama, and aggravation.
“Phares’ fly ball was a Texas Leaguer, really pretty shallow,” Milton remembers. "Coach D’Armi was holding Jocko with no outs, he wasn’t supposed to go and ran on his own after watching the infielder back pedal. Right after that, I hit a fly ball to deep center field that clearly would have scored the run. So, it all worked out, but I poked at Jocko that he let Phares get all the glory instead of me!”
What didn’t work out was that as State readied to go to Gastonia, NC, for the NCAA District 3 playoffs (equivalent to a regional now), they were advised that four players, star pitchers Jones (9-0) and Dennis Hall (8-1, 0.63 ERA), third baseman Bill Rorie, and first baseman Potts were ineligible because they had played as freshmen.
The SEC had permitted it, but the NCAA would not. In virtually every rules situation, a conference could impose more stringent guidelines on an issue than the NCAA (such as not allowing transfers among conference members), but this was one of the first, and few, ever levied with more stringency on the NCAA side. The NCAA allowed freshmen to play beginning in Fall 1972.
It’s an issue that still angers Milton today. “How can the NCAA take that away from those guys that had been working four years? They did nothing wrong, the SEC said they could do it, they broke no rules. Paul Gregory, Tom D’Armi, they broke no rules. We’d have made the College World Series, I’ll tell you that. How far would we have gone? I can’t guarantee you that, but the pitching staff we had, we would have walked through Gastonia."
The next Bulldogs stepped up, and the team finished second in the playoff, losing 5-4 to Florida State, which then finished second nationally in Omaha. Milton is adamant there was enough talent on the team (before the four disqualifications) to win it all, perhaps 51 years earlier than eventually happened. And for anyone who ever dared disparage Mississippi State’s 2021 National Championship due to NCAA actions, inadvertent and unrelated as that may have been, karma sure has ironic times to show up, doesn’t it?
But where were we? Oh yeah, Milton is beaned, declines a visit to the Capital City’s medical facilities, and is dead solid focused on Vanderbilt like they stole his McDonald’s french fries. And boy, was he focused. His next time up at Dudy Noble Field, Milton jacked a three-run homer, which led to a 5-1 win, and coupled with a 3-1 victory in Nashville the next day, gave the Bulldogs a second straight SEC title, the last time Mississippi State has done that.
Getting to Omaha wasn’t a done deal yet, though. The Bulldogs won their first two in Gastonia over Maryland and Miami, then got set to play Georgia Tech on Saturday night. The result wasn’t pretty, a 20-8 Yellow Jacket victory. At one point in the game, down by double digits, Milton queried of Gregory: “Coach, what are we going to do?” The response: “Boys, just focus on improving your batting average!” Milton laughs at that moment, as clearly 50+ years later as if it were yesterday.
The Bulldogs and Jackets fought fiercely on a Sunday afternoon, a 2-2 tie going into the bottom of the 9th, until Phares launched a three-run walkoff home run that caused a tidal wave of emotions and reactions back in radio-heavy Mississippi. A certain future college baseball writer (ahem) interrupted his sister’s choir practice at church to proclaim the Bulldog triumph, and Milton has a story for that moment, too.
“My dad came up to Gastonia to watch us play, and he left during the Saturday night game, when we were getting our tails kicked. He had driven all the way from McComb, MS, and he was headed back, driving all night, because my youngest sister was graduating that year. They had the baccalaureate service that Sunday afternoon. The superintendent was right in the middle of speaking and stopped suddenly. He said, ‘I have to make this announcement because we have someone sitting in the audience that needs to know this, Mississippi State just beat Georgia Tech 5-2!’ He made that announcement in the middle of the baccalaureate.”
Gregory rented Redbird Field in nearby Columbus, where the 1965-66 SEC Champion teams played during construction of Dudy Noble Field, for practice under lights, but State’s stay in Omaha was short.
As pitcher Jerry Thompson, who started the first game against Tulsa, said in a 2024 interview, the Bulldogs didn’t have a scouting report that would tell them they were facing future Major Leaguer Steve Rogers on the mound, along with three more future big leaguers. They lost to Tulsa 5-2, then Proffitt was nursing a slim 1-0 lead over Brigham Young in the 8th and gave up the decisive three-run homer in a 3-1 elimination loss.
Milton played another season, leaving Starkville as the career leader in triples with 14, later exceeded only by Mike Kelley’s 20 in 1976-79. He was drafted twice, in 1972 by the Cardinals, just like Proffitt was, and again in 1973 during a supplement draft by the Angels. By then, though, he’d decided minor league ball’s $500-600 monthly wasn’t for him.
“I had a graduate assistant position and was going back to get my masters when Coach Nester moved from McComb to Kosciusko and called to offer me a coaching job. At first, I turned him down and said I was going to graduate school, then he let me know he’d spoken to my father too. Coach Nester was also like a father to me, I respected him a lot, so I went to Kosciusko and coached four years. Then I went back to McComb and coached several more years before taking a job with Coca Cola.”
Milton remembers it was a great job, but “I missed coaching, so I went back to McComb coaching. We had great baseball teams, went 33-3 in 1992, won the state, ranked very high nationally. I also coached football for financial reasons, was defensive coordinator 15 years, eventually head coach and athletic director, and I retired from that 19 years ago (2006)."
Milton met his wife, Sally, at a coaching clinic, “So we had a lot in common,” he says. “She had four children, and I had an adult one.” Milton’s son Lea is an assistant principal at Biloxi High School, and Milton has enjoyed coaching baseball with him and grandson Anderson, even throwing batting practice to Anderson.
Coaching gets into one’s blood, but Milton adds that "You also get to watch those young men develop as a baseball player, as a person, as a student. That’s what made me stay in it. In high school, you can’t go out and recruit, whoever’s in that high school is who you have, and you have to develop them.”
Milton laughingly adds one proviso to his coaching approach. He loves his wife and his marriage, but the two tend to steer clear of critiquing each other’s work. And one other individual, his longtime good friend Proffitt, lived just 20 miles away during Milton’s coaching years. Ted allowed Mike access to the sidelines in games, but when Mike would sometimes call up the next morning and start quizzing Ted on his coaching moves, he was threatened somewhat jokingly with banishment to the stands.
We now return you from high school football coaching to the Mississippi State campus and ask Ted Milton to sum up his college career and what the April 5 induction into the Ron Polk Ring of Honor means to him.
“I ask my wife every day since I got the call, ‘Come in here and kick me, make sure I’m not dreaming about it.' Because, I never thought something like this would happen. I had coach and athletic director of the year honors in my career, but I didn’t do that, my players did. Baseball can be an individual sport, you’re often up there by yourself, you have to produce, and there are times when you’re a team, too. I was just so honored, I didn’t even think people knew who I was, I went to Mississippi State to play baseball just because I love the game."
Milton confides, "I didn’t care (then) if they gave me a scholarship or not, I just loved playing. I’m still in awe, because this is the seventh class of the Ring of Honor, and there are so many great Mississippi State baseball players. To be ranked even in the seventh class is an honor and exciting, I would’ve thought I might have made it in about the 50th class!”
Milton is grateful for his background as well. “I thank all the people who supported me as a youth in McComb. They believed in baseball. I was on that Dixie Youth team that Mike saw, and my family deserves a lot of credit too. I was a middle child and I was challenged, and demanded, to excel by my older siblings. My dad was away several days a week for work, but my mother took care of eight, and we never missed a meal, any practices or games."
As has been pointed out, even by Coach Polk himself to Thompson, Milton is proud that his teams helped lay the foundation and start traditions at State and Dudy Noble Field.
“They didn’t keep attendance records back then, but we played in front of some tremendous crowds in those days,” Milton remembers. “Jocko played first base, and he chatted with teams from out of the area who came in to play, they’d always be amazed at the number of fans we drew, just like opposing players are today.”
There was a reunion of the 1970-71 teams at Dudy Noble Field in 2024 during Super Bulldog Weekend. How did Milton feel as he and the teammates who could make the trip walked out onto the same field where they’d won so often and so much?
“It felt good because we had put so much into it out on that field, brought back memories, the guys I played with, being out there together. You don’t do this, all we did, by yourself. And we remembered those who are no longer with us: Mike Proffitt, Jim Eichmeier, Phil Still, Bobby Myrick, and Roy Horne. Hugh Arant was there and just passed away in the fall. Many of us spent four years together, fighting to bring Mississippi State Baseball to what it is today.”
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