Driven past the Dizzy Dean Rest Stop in Wiggins? Here’s the baseball legend’s story.

What would baseball legend Dizzy Dean, remembered for colorful, down-home language, say about the Biloxi Shuckers stadium and all other American ballparks being emptied this spring by COVID-19?

“Awhhh, shuckkks!”

Of course, we don’t know that’s what Ol’ Diz would say because he is long gone from coastal Mississippi, where this Baseball Hall of Famer spent his final years fishing, playing golf and living life fully in the tiny pineywoods community of Bond, three miles north of Wiggins.

Ever notice the Dizzy Dean Rest Stop, complete with plaques and photos of him, just off U.S. 49 near Wiggins? It’s one of Mississippi’s memorials to this national legend whose grave at Bond Cemetery usually has real baseballs lying atop it.

Half a century after his death, people remember his humor, pranks and ballfield feats.

“Tain’t braggin’ if you kin really do it,” he’d say in his Arkansas twang, backing up words with pitching deeds.

This oft-repeated quote came after Dizzy was knocked unconscious by a World Series baseball: “The doctors X-rayed my head and found nothing.”

The meteoric pitches of the American folk hero wowed even casual sports observers in the Great Depression, a time when Americans needed heroes. So they cheered on this poor Arkansas boy born into a share-cropping family that made him abandon school to work in the fields, although he and his brothers were encouraged to play ball after chores.

Dizzy threw a fastball like few others, breaking numerous National League records. Among them were striking out 17 batters in one game and winning 30 games in one season.

Born Jay Hanna Dean in 1910, Dizzy’s life changed when in Houston for minor league. There he met Bond native Patricia Nash working in a shoe store. He invited her to his game and that night proposed. A week later, they married.

The Deans never had children but traveled everywhere together, even to games as his career skyrocketed.

Dizzy’s pitching years moved as swiftly as his famous fastball, with seven seasons as part of the St. Louis Cardinal’s coveted Gaslight Gang and four more with the Chicago Cubs. He played in five World Series, winning in 1934. That’s the one where he was knocked out but also where he and kid brother Paul “Daffy” Dean made history.

That year when Daffy joined the Cardinal pitching staff, Dizzy predicted they would win 40 games between them. They did 49, putting them in the World Series. Another Dizzy boast then predicted the brothers would win the Series for the Cardinals. They did, with each winning two games apiece.

Flame-throwing pitchers often burn out their arms and shoulders. Dizzy was no exception. He was forced to switch from a speed to a curve ball, but that combined with his uncanny understanding of the game let him play on.

Not surprisingly, his leaving the pitcher’s mound at 31 didn’t squelch the ebullient personality that justified his “Dizzy” nickname.

He spent the next three decades as a sports announcer, a radio and television personality. Oddly, his last historic game came in 1947, six years after switching to broadcasting. Frustrated with the St. Louis Brown’s bad pitching performance, he declared he could do better himself. He did, pitching four no-runs innings.

The secret to his legacy, however, is not just his game or memorable sportscasting that gave rise to such terms as swang, slud and throwed. His headstone declares he was “A friend to many.” One newsman remarked that “he was a happy humorist who made both friends and money with no apparent effort.”

Fans would say, “He was the smartest third-grade graduate you ever saw.” Dizzy’s butchered English, braggadocio and tell-it-like-it-is manner only endeared them more, proven by the thousands of letters sent to Dizzy’s wife after his death July 17, 1974. He was only 64.

He had a heart attack while in Lake Tahoe for a golf tournament and died in Reno a week later. At the news, Mississippi’s Gov. Bill Waller declared three days of state mourning. Little known is that Dizzy had contemplated running for governor himself a few years earlier.

Dizzy had fallen in love with both Pat and her home state, and that’s where he settled after leaving broadcasting. Throughout their 43 years, Pat proved to be a shrewd business manager for his interests, among them Dizzy Dean franchise restaurants. One opened in Gulfport in 1971.

Dizzy hobnobbed with U.S. presidents, the rich and the famous, sports greats, as well as Average Joes and Josephines, but he always came back to Bond, population 3,000. The Deans lived there in a sprawling ranch-style house their final decade, attending Bond Baptist Church, fishing on the Coast, story swapping with locals and establishing a small museum in Wiggins.

All the baseball memorabilia, including much from his own career, is currently displayed in the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame in Jackson.

“There’ll never be another like me,” Dizzy at least once assured the world.

Kat Bergeron, a veteran feature writer specializing in Gulf Coast history and sense of place, is retired from the Sun Herald. She writes the Mississippi Coast Chronicles column as a freelance correspondent. Reach her at BergeronKat@gmail.com or at Southern Possum Tales, P.O. Box 33, Barboursville, VA 22923.