Ouachita football alum Tom Fendley remembers that Tiger road trips weren't complete until team manager and 1974 graduate Roscoe Stidman took the mic. After away games, Stidman — standing 3 feet, 5 inches tall — would walk to the front of Ouachita's charter bus, assume control of the sound system and sing in his distinctive bass voice.

"Every time, he would just let it rip," Fendley said of Stidman. "He was very, very good. All these football players would go silent, listen to him and then give him a standing ovation."

As a teenager coming out of Lakeside High School in Hot Springs, Arkansas, Stidman used his signature voice to pitch himself to Coach Buddy Benson as the Tiger football team's new manager. Coach Benson agreed. Over the next four years, Ouachita went a combined 27-13-1 and won the 1970 Arkansas Intercollegiate Conference title.

Stidman became so popular with Benson's players that they dedicated 10 full pages to his exploits in the football program's collective memoir "It's Hard, But It's Fair." One story from the book describes how Stidman became an honorary member of the Tigers' 1972 AIC championship baseball roster. The team planned to utilize his small strike zone by putting him in the lineup against Henderson State, but when the Reddies threatened to intentionally hit him, Coach George Jones scrapped the idea.

Stidman got a second chance at baseball stardom four years later. The Double-A Arkansas Travelers were celebrating their 75th anniversary season. It was also the team's first campaign under general manager Bill Valentine, a retired American League umpire from Little Rock who wanted to make a memorable first impression.

In 1951, St. Louis Browns owner Bill Veeck brought in 3-foot, 7-inch Eddie Gaedel as the shortest batter in professional baseball history. Leading up to the 1976 season, Valentine promised the Travelers would break that record in their home opener. As the game date neared, however, Arkansas' GM was still searching for his man. 

During an interview with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette's Todd Traub, Valentine remembered looking over his office counter one day and seeing the door seemingly open and close by itself. Stidman suddenly rounded the corner and swung an invisible bat.

"I'm your leadoff hitter opening night," he told Valentine.

On April 20, 1976, Stidman stepped up to the plate at Ray Winder Field in the bottom of the first inning. Donning a full Travelers uniform, he looked back at opposing catcher Joey Martin and pointed toward the center field wall, mimicking Babe Ruth's famed "called shot." Arkansas Gazette writer Jim Bailey acknowledged that Stidman "wasn't officially part of the game," but "he was permitted to bunt at a pitch and be thrown out at first." According to Traub, the former Ouachita manager's payment was "a couple of $100 scholarships to a New Mexico retreat for children at his church."

In September 2006, Stidman gave an encore in Ray Winder Field's farewell game. Less than two years later, he died. Stidman would have been 75 on October 28.
 
EXTRA TIDBIT: Major League Baseball's spring training tradition began in Hot Springs. Among the players who trained in Stidman's hometown is the very man he referenced during his 1976 appearance with the Travelers: Babe Ruth.