Jim Mallon, born James Mallon Jr., lived from March 6, 1944 to February 26, 2012. Most people here know him as "Coach Mallon."
Coach Mallon began coaching baseball at Southwestern University in 1971 following his retirement from a successful career in professional baseball, and coached the team until he retired in 2004. He is memorialized in a statue on the east side of campus between Southwestern Boulevard and the Rockwell Baseball Field.
The statue depicts Jim Mallon in Southwestern baseball attire leaning on a baseball bat with his left hand, his right hand on his hip as he looks in the direction of the baseball field below. The figure is a recreation of a photo of Jim Mallon from his days coaching at Southwestern.
This life-size bronze figure of Mallon sits atop a rectangular pedestal surrounded by a square of concrete with three stone
squares large enough to sit on and a stone home plate to recreate the appearance of a baseball diamond.
The plaque at the foot of the statue reads as follows: “Head Baseball Coach Jim Mallon 1971-2004 Record 1197-601.” This is in reference to his record as coach, 1,197 wins to 601 losses. I myself know very little about sports averages and records, but from my research that is a pretty impressive record.
What was even more impressive in my research was Coach Mallon’s record of inspiring those who he knew to share the positive impact he had with others. One sign of this is that on the base of the rectangular pedestal are the names of over 100 individuals whose donations made the memorial possible.
The effort to raise funds for the memorial began with the creation of a Facebook group “Jim Mallon Memorial” less than a year after his death in December of 2012. Although Coach Mallon was an active member of the Southwestern community, the memorial was not commissioned by the University itself but was instead made possible by the crowdfunding efforts of two Southwestern baseball alumni, Danny Mickan ‘84 and Pat Leonard ‘90. The two came up with the idea of a memorial to their former coach and friend and the two hand-sketched many designs, one of which ended up being the memorial we see on campus today.
Their effort to build the memorial was supported by Mallon’s surviving family, including his wife Jane Mallon and his two sons Jeff and Jarret Mallon, all of whom were present at the dedication of the statue which took place February 1, 2014, almost two years after Coach Mallon’s death.
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When I first visited the site, all I saw in this memorial was a monument to a man’s career in baseball, after doing this research, I now look at it very differently. Being a coach was not just Jim Mallon’s day job. Jim Mallon’s life was spent on the baseball field and baseball was the medium through which Coach Mallon created and maintained community and relationships with the people in his life.
It was not unusual for Coach Mallon to keep in touch with his former players. At the dedication ceremony, six Southwestern baseball alumni, including Danny and Pat, took turns at the podium to speak about the man they called simply “Coach.”
At the unveiling, They shared not just stories of their time with Coach Mallon at Southwestern but also of their ongoing relationship after college, phone calls, emails, and inside jokes.
It's clear that Jim Mallon was not just someone who taught them how to play baseball but he taught them how to play in the game of life.
One speaker at the dedication emphasized that while his players called Mallon “Coach” to his face, behind his back he was “Dad.” Coach Mallon’s qualities of perseverance, preparedness, and organization were also common themes at the dedication that day as well as in his online obituaries.
Most bronze memorials in public spaces such as university campuses remember historic figures such as university founders, donors,
and presidents. Such memorials usually emphasize how their lives and accomplishments shaped the lives and values of the university itself.
This is what makes the Jim Mallon memorial distinctive. While it certainly proclaims Mallon’s accomplishments, the motivation behind the statue was grief shared by two friends shortly after Coach Mallon’s death and subsequently by the grief shared by hundreds of people whom he knew personally.
In many ways, memorials are souvenirs of the dead. Souvenirs are an opportunity to physically represent something about a past experience that is gone. Jim Mallon will never really don his Pirates uniform again or watch over a game, but this memorial provides his mourners a place to “put” their memory of Jim Mallon that they can visit or not visit at their leisure.
Jim Mallon was also a family man, a father, and someone who loved to hunt and fish. His widow and sons surely have a place to remember Jim as their family member, but for the rest who knew Jim through his career at Southwestern, his memory is manifested at this place between Southwestern Blvd and the baseball fields.
By creating a life-size bronze statue of Jim Mallon, his mourners are very much calling him back into existence, almost resurrecting him from the grave. By creating a stone baseball field and placing him right where he used to be, they are returning Mallon to where he was in life.
Furthermore, by placing this memorial just above the baseball fields of Southwestern he now “looks over'' future generations of baseball players much like a guardian angel.
The “spirit” of Jim Mallon is also conveyed by the quote chosen to accompany the bronze statue. In an interview with the Williamson County Sun in 1991, Mallon said the following: “I hope the kids who play for me learn more than how to hit right field. I want them to have become a better person for having been in our program. I’m not always an easy person to play for, but if you play hard for me and do what’s expected, well, I’m an easy person to play for.” That's the quote the creators chose for the memorial.
At the dedication ceremony, there were many references to Coach Mallon’s use of coarse language and tough love. There was also an acknowledgement by each who shared such a story that this “difficulty” did not stem from a short temper or hostility but was a curated aspect of the Coach’s persona and part of his recipe for success.
There were several references at the dedication to the fact that Coach Mallon may have been bashful or hesitant to be commemorated in such a way. There were several invocations of “What would Jim say?” For example, Southwestern’s baseball coach at the time said he hoped the statue would inspire current and future Pirate baseball players to return to the successful run of Mallon’s era of coaching.
But after studying the history of how the memorial was created and analyzing the memorial itself, I think this memorial is more about living with grief than inspiration. It’s a message that I think was best summed up by Pat Leonard that Saturday morning in 2014 at the dedication, when he said, “I thought about it a lot and think if he was here today, he would walk up, he would take a look at the statue, and in his way, he would look at us all and go, ‘I miss y’all, too.”
