Darrell Holley and Jeff Akins Arrested After Starkville Fight — Mississippi
Two men were arrested after a fistfight at a mississippi youth baseball tournament Sunday, and one of them was Darrell Holley, a lieutenant with the Oktibbeha County Sheriff's Office and a coach of a Starkville under-14 team. The fight broke out after a Grand Slam baseball tournament game in Starkville and quickly pulled a sheriff’s lieutenant into the center of the dispute.
Holley and Akins at Starkville
Holley got into the brawl with umpire Jeff Akins shortly after the end of the third game of the day. Starkville police charged both men with misdemeanor fighting after the altercation near the pitcher’s mound, and Holley’s son also got involved in the fight.
Video of the incident shows Holley appearing to elbow Akins, then Akins pushing back before the two began punching each other. SPC Select 14U, the team Holley coaches, lost 13-5, and the altercation followed that result at the tournament.
Sheriff's office response
Holley has since been terminated by the sheriff’s office. Sheriff Shank Phelps cited a zero-tolerance policy for Holley’s conduct in a statement shared with local TV station WCBI.
The tournament director, Mike Narmour, said there was “no place for” that kind of fighting and called the conflict “stupidity all the way around.” He also said, “Grand Slam Mississippi is sickened and devastated by these types of events, and there is no place for this whatsoever in youth sports or adult sports.”
Narmour added, “There’s blame for the umpire, there’s big time blame for the coach and the [involved] kids of that team.” He said, “There’s no right for that and there’s no place for that in front of those kids.”
Grand Slam Mississippi fallout
The setting sharpened the fallout: this happened at a youth tournament involving a 14U team, with law enforcement on one side of the confrontation and an umpire on the other. Both arrests and Holley’s firing turned a postgame argument into a public personnel and discipline issue for the sheriff’s office.
