First Monster
- Updated: February 17, 2022
Former Oxford 1B Brennan McCullough first announced commitment for Choccolocco Monsters
By Al Muskewitz
East Alabama Sports Today
OXFORD – Brennan McCullough enjoyed his brief experience playing in a collegiate wooden-bat league last summer and was looking forward to another one somewhere this year. When he heard there was going to be a team in his own backyard, he jumped at the chance to get close to home.
After all, there are only so many six-hour bus rides a player can endure before they start getting old.
McCullough, a former Calhoun County Tournament MVP at Oxford and current redshirt junior at Murray State, has committed to play with the Choccolocco Monsters of the Sunbelt Baseball League and thus recognized as the expansion franchise’s first player.
“It’s special anytime you get to go back home and play; that’s exciting,” McCullough said. “When I was high school (Choccolocco Park) was just getting up and now … it’s an amazing park, beautiful, thousands and thousands of people have been to it, seen it, played at it, so just to get to go home and kind of rep the gold and black again that’s exciting.
“I’m getting chills just thinking about it because the city and the town has always been so close my heart. It just means the world to me. Just coming home to play is special.”
After a strong second half of the season at Murray State, McCullough played a half-dozen games for the Coastal Plain League team in Spartanburg, S.C. Trips in that league stretched from Hampton, Va., to Savannah, Ga. (yes, they have those Bananas).
The Sunbelt League is based around Atlanta with Oxford and Columbus, Ga., the two outliers. The aim of the league is to draw players within 60 miles of home plate.
The Monsters start play in the nine-team league partially funded by Major League Baseball in late May.
“I knew it was kind of centered in Atlanta, but how far would some of those bus rides be,” McCullough said. “We had one stretch (last year) where we went to Savannah. It was like a five-plus-hour trip, got back to Spartanburg like 6-6:30 (a.m.) and we were supposed to play the next day; thankfully the game got rained out. It was crazy.”
It didn’t take a lot of convincing to bring the first baseman aboard. He works out and has coached an Excel Baseball team during his COVID summer with former Alexandria standout Dalton Cobb, one of the two coaches on Monsters manager Steve Gillispie’s staff.
He had three hits, a double, two RBIs and three walks in his short stint with the Spartanburgers. In 45 games last year at Murray he hit .299 – second highest on the team among players with at least 125 at-bats – with four homers and 25 RBIs. He hit .344 in the OVC and hit .382 with 14 RBIs in the month of May.
His 2022 college season starts Friday.
“He’s a great guy to have,” Gillispie said. “If he was ‘Tommy Putzfigure’ I wouldn’t just take him becuase he’s from Oxford, but here’s a guy who’s put up some numbers, he’s been around, and, hey, he’s from Oxford. It’s a win-win.”
The Monsters also are said to have commitments from former Piedmont teammates Sean Smith (Wallace) and Brant Deerman (Chattahoochie Valley), former Vestavia pitcher Brennan Cohen (Wisconsin-Eau Clair) and outfielder Arty Leger, currently unattached from Douglas County, Ga.
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