Distract, demoralize, defeat

If you play center field against the Redhawks at Capaha Field, bring earplugs.

"Hey, Jeremy, how's your wife and my kids?"

"I got it, I got it."

"Are you on the roster? I don't see your name on the roster. Are you sure you're supposed to be here?"

These are Southeast Missouri State University baseball's High Hill Hecklers, and their mission is to distract, demoralize and defeat.

"We try to get in their heads, but we want to do it without being vulgar," said Hecklers captain Shannon Aldridge.

For the past five seasons, during every home game the High Hill Hecklers have parked their cars on the hill rising above left field, cracked open a few beers and yelled every name in the book at the opposing team.

'The players remember us'

But they don't just roll out of bed and start screaming. These guys come prepared.

"What we like to do is go online and print out the roster and the bios of the players. That way, anything they have on there about hobbies, the names of their mother, father, sister, we'll use all of that when we're heckling them," Jack Trickey said.

"We really get deep. We do our homework. The players remember us. They'll turn around and be like 'how do you know that?'"

And when the situation demands it and their team needs an extra push of support, they come down off the hill and stand on bleachers pushed against the back of the center field wall.

"Hey, Vern Troyer, I think that's Vern Troyer down there," said heckler Matt Davis, comparing 5-foot-10 center fielder Jeremy Davis to the 2-foot-8 actor who played Mini-Me in the Austin Powers movies.

To make sure everyone on the field can hear them, they bring a megaphone, which sometimes gets them in trouble. In the fourth inning of Friday's game against the University of Arkanas-Pine Bluff, the umpire halted the game and ordered the hecklers off the fence. The message was relayed with a cell phone call to the hecklers from one of Southeast's coaches.

"They want us off the fence. It happens all the time. If they ask us to get down, we do it," Trickey said.

Heckling, after all, is serious business.

"At the beginning of the semester I schedule all by classes around baseball," said Heckler Dustin McKinnis, who added that he didn't miss a game last season.

The High Hill Hecklers now number 24, and their ranks have grown each year since their creation. They have set up slip and slides and brought sand onto the hill for special events. For today's doubleheader against Arkansas-Pine Bluff, they say, they'll roast 20 chickens.

But they always clean up after themselves.

"We'll always pick up the trash on the hill. It doesn't matter if it's ours or someone else's, we'll get trash bags and clean it up," said Aldridge.

And in the end, most of the players take the heckling in the spirit it was meant.

"I think those guys are really funny," said Jeremy Davis, who had the thankless job of playing center field for the Arkansas-Pine Bluff Golden Lions. "I just block it out. It doesn't bother me."

Some players, though, don't quite get the joke.

"Tuesday night against Bethel College -- that was the first time a center fielder actually threw a ball at us. That was new," McKinnis said.

tgreaney@semissourian.com

High Hill Hecklers, from left, Jack Trickey, Dustin McKinnis, Matt Davis, Shannon Aldridge and Jeremy Nall cheered a Southeast Missouri State University run at Capaha Park on Friday. The group started five years ago and watches from the left field parking lot. Many other fans, although not High Hill Hecklers members, use the area and cheer on both the Hecklers and the Redhawks. (Kit Doyle)

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