Fifty years ago, not long out of college, Jimmie Lewis was a frustrated youth-league baseball coach in his hometown. It wasn’t baseball that frustrated him, or the kids, or the parents. It was his real job, working at the labor department.
“It taught me really quick that I didn’t want to do that, sitting inside a nasty building where everybody smoked so much you couldn’t see the front of the room,” Lewis said. “So I was coaching recreation ball and thought, man, this is pretty cool. I always loved playing ball. I said I need to check into this.”
So Lewis, a former Augusta College outfielder with a behavioral sciences degree, enrolled in night school, became certified as a social studies teacher and started work at his high school alma mater, Harlem, in the fall of 1976. Best of all, he got to be the assistant baseball coach, and his commute was three blocks.
Harlem has won eight state titles in baseball since that career move, the first as an assistant. Lewis has won 927 games since Harlem promoted him to head coach two years later.
With Lewis in the dugout for the 49th season, and riding a 41-game win streak, Harlem enters the state baseball tournament this week as the No. 1-ranked Class 3A team and the two-time defending champion. Harlem is playing a three-game series with Mount Zion of Jonesboro starting Friday.
“There’s a lot of pressure on us right now,” Lewis said. “We happened to go through the regular season 29-0, and everybody is expecting us to go 10-0 and three-peat and all that stuff. There are powerhouse teams in 3A now with a lot of good 4A teams dropping into 3A (with reclassification). We don’t have near the depth we had (the) last two years, and that worries me a little bit. An injury to our starting nine puts us in a bind.”
That’s how coaches speak and fret. Lewis loves to do that and everything else about coaching a ball team. It’s been a remarkable journey for him, and there’s no hint of his slowing down.
Lewis’ first team as head coach, in 1979, was a defending state champion, but it returned no starters. It began 6-7 but won 14 consecutive — “probably saved my job,” he said — and won the championship again. Lewis guided Harlem to five state titles in his first eight seasons.
Then Harlem didn’t win a championship for 37 years. Lewis continued to field competitive teams, just never the best.
A bigger Columbia County school, Evans, rose up to win five in the 1980s and 1990s. Another one, Greenbrier, opened in 1996 and won six. A couple of those were won by Rodney Holder, Hiram’s current athletic director. Holder’s father, Terry Holder, won several state titles at both schools.
Hiram and Lewis just hung around, waiting their turn, and here they are again, sporting a 102-2 record over three seasons.
The 2023 champion had big-time player Tryston McCladdie, who now starts for Clemson. Lewis credits him for setting a new standard that remains.
“I didn’t see it coming,” Lewis said of this three-year run. “I knew we had few good players coming in, but they’ve really developed. McCladdie came in with a fantastic work ethic, and a lot of times players can lead better than coaches. Our coaches worked them tremendously hard in the weight room and on the field. The kids bought in. They practice wide-open due to the kids that came in and set the example the last four years.”
Lewis talks about hard work. All coaches do. But not everyone defines it as he does.
“We practice long and hard,” Lewis said. “Ain’t no come out there and take batting practice and a few ground balls and go home. We practice three, four hours Monday through Friday and six to seven hours Saturday. We’ve got players who would rather be there six or seven hours than doing anything else. When they finish, they want you to leave the cages open so they can hit some more. When you’ve got that, it makes my job easy.”
Lewis reveres his assistant coaches. He has four of them. Chris Waters and Bob Hatcher are former players of his. Hunter McBride played at another Columbia County school, Grovetown. Benji Moore is a former teammate — which means Harlem has two coaches who were in high school when Hank Aaron was the Braves’ best player.
A key former assistant, Rusty James, left after the second championship to become an assistant principal at Evans High. He also played at Harlem for Lewis.
This year’s team has five players who are two-time state champions. One is Will Holder, a second baseman and right-handed pitcher committed to Georgia Southern. He is Rodney Holder’s son.
The others are pitcher/infielder/outfielder Walker Spivey, outfielder/left-handed pitcher Domenic Titus, third baseman/outfielder Brody Knight and right fielder T.J. Lindo. Catcher Steven Harshbarger is the only other returner from the 2024 team.
There’s hard work. And there’s talent, too.
“When you make stupid old coaches look good, that’s when you’ve got great talent,” Lewis said. “I’ve got a good situation going right now. I don’t know how long it will last. I’m just blessed with a great team right where I can just put them on the field and try not to screw it up.”
Lewis’ career record is 927-439. The only coaches with more wins as Georgia coaches are Bobby Howard (1,030) and Gerald Barnes (956), both retired. Lewis’ 49 years at one place tops them all.
“This is where I was meant to be,” he said. “I never entertained the thought of moving anywhere. A friend once asked me if I was ever going to coach in college. I said yes, as soon as they build the University of Harlem. This is my home. It’s where I grew up. I don’t have any desire to go anywhere else.”
Lewis says he looks at his coaching future one season at a time now, but it doesn’t feel like the bottom of the ninth. More like extra innings with no ghost runner to hurry it along.
“I don’t feel 72,” Lewis said. “During the game I feel like I’m 30. After the game I feel like I’m about 106. We’ll look at the end of the year and see how it is, whether I’ve still got the burning desire and fire in me. Right now it’s still burning pretty strong.”
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