We are in that period of the sports calendar when baseball is winding down and football talk is heating up. The Clevelands discuss Saints pre-season camp, the college football preseason rankings, the lowly Atlanta Braves, and much more.

Rusty Hampton was the sports editor at the Clarion Ledger for 11 years and worked there for 25 years in two different stints. He talks about some of the highlights, including Mississippi State’s amazing run to the 1996 Final Four.

Also discussed: a salute to Ryne Sandberg, the SEC preseason football poll, and Konnor Griffin, the newly elevated top prospect in professional baseball.

Derrick Nix played much of his college football career, hindered by a life-threatening kidney problem that sapped his strength and ended his playing career prematurely. Dexter McCluster spent much of his career with coaches and talent evaluators telling him he was too small. Eventually, Nix became McCluster’s coach at Ole Miss. Saturday night, they go into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame together.

Randy Watkins returns to the Crooked Letter pod to discuss The Open, where the weather will be wet, windy and coolish at Royal Portrush. Scottie Scheffler will be the betting favorite, but the Europeans, including Rory McIlroy, definitely will have a home-course advantage. The recent Major League Draft also will be discussed.

The MSHOF will induct eight new members on Aug 2. Rick Cleveland has covered them all and he and son Tyler talk about what makes them all special.

Before he became a Hall of Fame football coach and won 297 games, Mike Justice played on Mississippi’s first integrated high school football team in Fulton. Justice talks about that and a lot more.

We begin a series of podcasts with Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame’s Class of 2025, which will be inducted the first weekend in August. First up is highly successful baseball coach Scott Berry, who won big first at Meridian Community College and then at Southern Miss.

This week’s pod touches on a number of subjects: the grit of J.J. Spaun, Cam Akers to the Saints, the College World Series, the NBA playoffs and tomato pie.