Mid-South News

If you think you’ve been at your job for a long time, think again.

Stan Bronson Jr. has been the bat boy for the baseball team at the University of Memphis for more than half a century. He holds the “most durable bat boy” title in the Guinness Book of World Records, has a retired jersey on the outfield wall, and is a beloved icon to generations of students and Tigers fans.

To acknowledge Bronson’s years of service, at the end of the seventh inning of each home game, Bronson stands on home plate, tips his hat and takes a bow.

When Maxine Smith was born in Memphis in 1929, the city was segregated by race.

Smith graduated from Booker T. Washington High School at age 15. She attended Spelman College in Atlanta, where she knew Martin Luther King, Jr., who had also graduated high school early and was attending the nearby Morehouse College.

“He was a nerd,” Smith recalled years later.

Smith earned a Master’s degree at Middlebury College in Vermont and taught college level French.