The Last Home Game, and the Last Long Weekend

Good Thursday morning from The Seawall.

Sunday afternoon in Biloxi is the last home game of the year, and after that the ballpark goes quiet until spring.

The Shuckers close out the regular season at Keesler Federal Park with three straight against the Birmingham Barons — Friday night, Saturday night, and a Sunday twilight game that's the last one on the schedule. Friday is Keesler Appreciation Night, with the team in specialty jerseys and fireworks after the final out. Saturday and Sunday are Fan Appreciation Weekend: the first thousand people through the gate each night get a 2027 magnet schedule and a team poster, and Sunday the players stay on the field afterward to sign things and play catch with whoever's still there.

Forty-five miles west, 100 Men Hall in Bay St. Louis is throwing Booker Fest — three days for James Booker, the New Orleans piano player nobody has ever managed to imitate. Friday and Sunday are thirty dollars. Saturday is seventy-five and worth it: a gospel choir at two, Maggie Koerner at 3:30, Joe Krown with Papa Mali at 5:15, and Water Seed at seven. Sunday afternoon the Lost Bayou Ramblers close it out and somebody makes jambalaya for free.

Both of those are ticketed, and both are worth the money. But the weekend also has a downtown Biloxi block party on Friday night that costs nothing, an artwalk in Ocean Springs on Saturday that costs nothing, and a museum full of Blue Dogs that's free for military families right through Monday and then isn't anymore.

One planning note: Friday is the wet day. Sixty to seventy percent, and it clears out for a hot, bright Saturday and Sunday. Plan accordingly and don't cancel anything.

Full guide below — plus a six-thousand-square-foot house on the Pascagoula waterfront, and a seven-month-old brindle dog named Floral who has never once been told no.

This is the last long weekend of the summer, which on this coast is a technicality — it'll be ninety degrees for another six weeks. But the ballpark closing is real, and school's back, and the light starts leaving earlier now. Take the three days.

Friday: Showers likely with a possible thunderstorm, otherwise mostly sunny. High near 88. 60–70% chance of rain. Northeast wind becoming southeast, 5 to 10. Low around 75.

Saturday: Sunny, high near 90. Isolated afternoon storm. Light and variable wind becoming south around 5. Low around 75.

Sunday: Mostly sunny and the hottest of the three, high near 92. Isolated afternoon storm. Calm becoming southwest.

Friday is the one to work around — it's a real rain chance, not a passing shower, and it's the night of the block party and the fireworks. Saturday and Sunday clear up and heat up. Heat index will run somewhere around 100 to 105 in the afternoons, which is hot but is also just September here. No advisories are posted for the coastal zones and none are forecast.

In the tropics: Tropical Storm Edouard came ashore Tuesday on the upper Texas coast, several hundred miles west of us, and is already falling apart. It was never pointed at Mississippi. Behind it the Hurricane Center expects nothing to form anywhere in the Atlantic for the next seven days, which in the first week of September is a small gift.

Bottom line: do Friday indoors or under a roof, do everything else outside, drink more water than you think you need, and if you're getting in the Gulf on Saturday check the flags before the kids do.

⚾ Shuckers vs. Birmingham Barons · Keesler Federal Park, 105 Caillavet St, Biloxi
Fri 6:35 (gates 5:30) · Sat 6:05 (gates 5:00) · Sun 5:05 (gates 4:00)

The last three home games of the year. Friday is Keesler Appreciation Night — specialty jerseys, and fireworks after the game. Saturday and Sunday are Fan Appreciation Weekend, and the first 1,000 fans each night get a 2027 magnet schedule and a team poster, so get there at gates and not at first pitch. Sunday is the regular-season finale, and afterward the players sign autographs and play catch on the field. There is no Labor Day Monday game — Sunday is it. Box office 228-233-3465.

🎉 First Friday Block Party · Downtown Biloxi · Fri Sept 4, 6–9 PM · free (donations welcome)
Rue Magnolia and the streets around it, first Friday of the month. Free to walk into. It's also the one outdoor thing on the wet night, so watch the radar before you commit the whole family.

⛴ Ship Island · Gulfport Small Craft Harbor at Jones Park · $48 adult · $38 child · $44 senior/military
Fall schedule: Saturday and Sunday, boats out at 9 and noon, back at 2:30 and 5. Holiday weekends sell out — buy ahead and get there thirty minutes early. Parking's free.

🐠 Mississippi Aquarium · 2100 E Beach Blvd, Gulfport · 10–5, last entry 4
Buying online ahead runs $5 cheaper than the gate, and Mississippi residents get $2 off with proof. The obvious Friday answer.

🥬 The Pass Market · War Memorial Park, 103 Fleitas Ave, Pass Christian · Sat 9 AM–1 PM

⭐ Booker Fest · 100 Men Hall, 303 Union St, Bay St. Louis · Fri–Sun Sept 4–6

The Hall's Labor Day weekend fundraiser, named for James Booker. Friday 6–9 PM, $30 — Chris Vincent & The Raw Deals at 6, The Rumble at 7. Saturday 2–8 PM, $75 — St. Rose de Lima Gospel Choir at 2, Maggie Koerner at 3:30, the Joe Krown Trio with Papa Mali at 5:15, Water Seed at 7. Sunday 2–4 PM, $30 — the Lost Bayou Ramblers, with free jambalaya. Weekend Hall Pass $110. Food Friday and Saturday. There are signed posters and, this being a Booker tribute, eye patches.

🎬 Bayou Maharajah · 100 Men Hall · Thu Sept 3, 6 PM (Lava Lounge open 5–7)
The Booker documentary, the night this newsletter lands. If you're reading over coffee, that's tonight.

🥕 Hancock County Farmers Market · 3068 Longfellow Rd, Bay St. Louis · Sat 8 AM–noon, or until the vendors sell out

🚀 INFINITY Science Center · 1 Discovery Circle, Pearlington
Indoors, which matters Friday. Call 228-533-9025 for current fall hours.

🎨 Ocean Springs Artwalk · Downtown Ocean Springs · Sat Sept 5, 10 AM–4 PM · free
First Saturday. Galleries and studios open up along Washington and Government, and you can do the whole thing on foot.

🖼 First Saturday Collective · Mary C. O'Keefe Cultural Center, 1600 Government St, Ocean Springs · Sat Sept 5, 10 AM–3 PM
Same morning, four blocks from the Artwalk, so do both. Local makers and artists.

🐕 George Rodrigue — "The Bayou Collection" · Walter Anderson Museum of Art, 510 Washington Ave, Ocean Springs · Mon–Sat 11–5, Sun 1–5 · $10 adult, $5 student, free under 5

Forty pieces, including the original Blue Dog. It runs through January 9, so there's no rush — except on one thing. Active and retired military families get in free through Monday, and that ends with Labor Day. If that's your household, this is the weekend.

🥬 Ocean Springs Fresh Market · L&N Depot Plaza, Ocean Springs · Sat 9 AM–1 PM

🎸 Nothing at Riverfront Park this weekend. The Levitt AMP series in Moss Point skips a week — the next free Saturday concert is Nik Parr & The Selfless Lovers on Sept 12. We're saying so because we'd rather you not drive to Moss Point on our account.

Booker Fest · 100 Men Hall, Bay St. Louis · Fri–Sun · $30 / $75 / $30, weekend pass $110
Full lineup above. This is the biggest music on the Coast this weekend and it isn't close.

Omar Cunningham & Band · Ground Zero Blues Club, 814 Howard Ave, Biloxi · Fri Sept 4, 7 PM (doors 6)
Ground Zero's First Fridays series. Southern soul out of Alabama — "Hell at the House" is his, and if you know it, you know. Tickets through Eventbrite; the door price is higher than advance.

Eliza Neals · Ground Zero · Sat Sept 5, 7 PM (doors 5)
Detroit blues-rock, a real voice, and a band that plays loud. Tickets through TicketWeb — no face-value number is published, so buy from the venue's own link and not from a reseller.

The Chee Weez · Hard Rock Live, 777 Beach Blvd, Biloxi · Sun Sept 6, 8 PM
The Sunday-night-of-a-long-weekend booking, which is a thing casinos do right and everybody forgets to take advantage of. New Orleans cover band, thirty-odd years of it, and nobody has ever stood still. Prices floating around online are resale — go through the box office.

Thursday — tonight: ZITA, 7 PM. · Friday: Omar Cunningham & Band, 7 PM, doors 6. · Saturday: brunch with Pete Rock, 11–2, then Eliza Neals, 7 PM, doors 5. · Sunday: brunch with Danica & Matt, 11–2.

The same note as always: Ground Zero is in this section every week because it is one of the only rooms between Waveland and Pascagoula that publishes a calendar more than a few days out. It isn't a sponsor. If you book bands anywhere on this coast, send us your dates and we'll run them — [email protected], Tuesday noon.

Boomtown, Biloxi (Main Stage) — 1 Accord, Friday and Saturday, 7–11.
Island View, Gulfport (Sunset Bar) — Ty Taylor, Friday and Saturday, 7–10.
Beach View, Gulfport (Stage Bar) — STARZ, Friday and Saturday, 8–11.
Treasure Bay, Biloxi (Agua poolside) — Anderson Domingues, Saturday 2–6, free with pool access. The only afternoon music on the board, and Saturday's the good weather day.

Beau Rivage Theatre (next is Melissa Etheridge, Sept 19). IP Studio A. The Biloxi Saenger (next is Zach Rushing, Oct 23–24). The Coast Coliseum (next is King George and Friends, Sept 19). The Sound Amphitheater in Gautier (next is Jamey Johnson, Oct 2). Hard Rock Live is Sunday only.

Booker Fest Saturday at 100 Men Hall, Bay St. Louis, 2 to 8, $75.

Seventy-five dollars is the most expensive recommendation we've made all summer and it's still the pick. You get six hours and four acts in a room that has been standing on Union Street since 1922, built by a Black benevolent society, and which has had Etta James and Big Joe Turner on that stage. The Joe Krown Trio with Papa Mali at 5:15 is the reason to go — Krown played with Gatemouth Brown for years and he is one of the few people alive who can play Booker's material without embarrassing himself. Get there for the gospel choir at two anyway. That's the part you'll talk about.

And if seventy-five is a stretch: Sunday is thirty dollars, the Lost Bayou Ramblers are a genuinely great Cajun band, and they feed you.

A coffee cart is coming back from a closing. A Latte Friends in D'Iberville shut its doors last month. The nonprofit behind it, A Latte Opportunities, trains and employs adults with disabilities — and instead of folding, they're opening Sunshine Sips, a mobile coffee cart at the Mississippi Antique Galleria in D'Iberville, targeting mid-September, with ten program participants staffing it. (WLOX, Aug 9)

Gautier is building Lark Park. $1.5 million in state money for basketball, tennis and pickleball courts, a playground, a splash pad and expanded parking. Work is underway; they're aiming to open at the end of January 2027. (WXXV, Aug 25)

Freddie Mac PMMS, week ending Aug 27: 30-year fixed 6.66% · 15-year fixed 5.98%

Three weeks: 6.67, 6.65, 6.66. That is not a trend, that is a rate sitting still. A year ago it was 6.56, so we have spent twelve months going almost exactly nowhere.

The interesting sentence in Freddie Mac's release wasn't about rates at all. Sam Khater's line was that "more homes coming on the market and slower price growth in many areas are giving buyers better options and helping create a more balanced housing market" — and that is exactly what's happening on this coast, only more so. Inventory across all three counties has been climbing since spring and price cuts are routine now. The rate is the thing everybody watches. The number of houses to choose from is the thing that's actually moved.

🏠 If you're thinking about selling. The number in your head for your house is probably from 2022. Let me build you a home value report on your actual address — not an automated guess off a website, but a real comparative market analysis out of the MLS: what's active near you, what's pending, and what has actually closed in the last five months, which is the only window that tells you anything. Free, no obligation, and you don't have to be selling this year to want to know the number.

🔑 If you're thinking about buying. I can represent you on any home on this coast, including this week's House of the Week, which is not my listing. I'll set up the showings, tell you what I actually think while we're standing in the kitchen, and write the offer when it's the right one. And before we go looking, we run your numbers — I'm a Ramsey-trained financial coach and I've led Financial Peace University classes at my church in Ocean Springs, so I'd rather tell you honestly what you can carry than help you buy a payment that eats you alive for thirty years.

Either way you're talking to me, not a call center. Reply to this email or call or text 228-325-1502.

— Rob

Robert Recio · Licensed Real Estate Salesperson, MS #S-62221 · REAL Broker, LLC · Serving Hancock, Harrison & Jackson counties. House of the Week is a market feature, not our own listing unless noted. Equal Housing Opportunity.

No. And the advice you're getting is about thirty years out of date.

The "spring market" is a real thing, and it exists for a reason that has nothing to do with real estate: families with school-age kids want to move between school years, so they shop in April and close in July. That pulls buyers into the spring, and more buyers means more competition, and more competition means a better price. All true.

Here's what that folk wisdom leaves out. It pulls sellers into the spring too, and harder. Every seller has heard the same advice you have, so in March everybody lists at once and your house is competing with thirty others on the same side of town. In October you're competing with nine. On this coast right now, with inventory up in all three counties, that difference is worth more than the seasonal demand you'd be waiting for.

And the buyers who are out in November are not browsing. Nobody tours houses in the cold rain for entertainment. The fall buyer has a job start date, a lease ending, a closing on their own house, a relocation, a military transfer — and on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, with Keesler and the shipyard and Stennis, that last category is not small and it does not care what month it is.

The honest version: seasonality is real and it is smaller than almost everybody thinks, and it is much smaller than the things you actually control. Price and condition and photographs will move your number more than the calendar will. If your house is ready now, list it now. If it needs six weeks of work, take the six weeks — and then list it, in October, without apologizing for the month.

The one true argument for waiting until spring is that you need the winter to get the house ready. That's a good reason. "Fall is a bad time to sell" is not.

3117 Beach Blvd, Pascagoula

Six thousand square feet is a number that usually means somebody lost the plot. Not here. This is a custom house built in 1993 on an acre and change on Pascagoula's Beach Boulevard, facing the water, and the square footage went into rooms people actually use — including two primary suites, which is the single most useful thing a big house on this coast can offer. Aging parents, a grown kid who came home, a couple that keeps different hours, a rental you don't have to explain: two primaries solves problems that a fifth bedroom does not.

The lot runs an acre and a fifth with a gated entrance at the back and a detached workshop, and the water views work at both ends of the day — sunrise and sunset off the same property, which is a Pascagoula thing and not something you can buy in Ocean Springs at any price.

And it's Beach Boulevard in Pascagoula, which for years has been the most underpriced waterfront address in the three counties. At $799,000 this is a hundred and thirty-three dollars a foot. The same house on Harrison County beachfront is a two-million-dollar listing and everybody knows it.

The numbers: $799,000 · 5 bed / 4.5 bath · ~6,000 sq ft · 1.19 acres · built 1993 · $133/sq ft · 41 days on market · MLS 4156629

Listed by Sissy Strunk · Gulf Coast Heritage Realty

Floral

Somebody's dog got out in Gautier about seven months ago, and by the time anybody noticed, there were puppies. One of them is a brindle Mountain Cur mix named Floral, and nobody ever came to claim her.

She is seven months old, spayed, and good with other dogs. She is also, by every account at the shelter, relentlessly agreeable. Their own write-up on her: "She's affectionate, outgoing, and the kind of dog who wants to be your loyal shadow wherever you go. Whether it's hiking trails, road trips, coffee runs, or backyard games, Floral is ready to be your enthusiastic partner in crime."

Seven months is a particular age. She's past the worst of the puppy math — the three-in-the-morning crying, the housebreaking from zero — and she is still young enough that whatever you teach her this fall is the dog she'll be for the next twelve years. A cur mix out of coastal Mississippi is a working dog by ancestry, which means she wants a job, and the job can be as simple as going where you go. Give her a truck to ride in and a person to watch and she is set.

She's brindle, she's medium-sized, and she has the look curs get where the head is a little too serious for the body.

And Leo is still there. Fifth time we've asked. The 13-year-old Black Mouth Cur at the same shelter — the one who should be, in their words, "supervising snack time from a fluffy dog bed" — has now spent an entire summer in a kennel and is heading into a fall. He's neutered, vetted, still has pep, and can go home today. Virginia, the Lab found as a stray in Moss Point, is still waiting too.

We said last week we weren't going to stop bringing him up. We meant it.

Jackson County Animal Shelter · 4400 Audubon Lane, Gautier · (228) 497-6350
Mon–Fri 10–4, Sat 10–2, closed Sunday. $50 adoption fee, which covers vaccinations, worming, spay/neuter, and a certificate for a free health exam from the Jackson County Veterinary Society. Go during shelter hours and meet her.

"He took twelve. There are two hundred games between now and the first one."

Forward this to somebody who'd use it. New readers can subscribe at theseawallms.com. Venue owners, shelter folks, and anybody with something happening: [email protected], by Tuesday noon.

And if you know somebody thinking about moving here — a kid coming home, a coworker transferring in to Keesler or the shipyard, a friend who says every February that they're done with winter — forward them this instead. Rob started a channel for exactly that conversation, and the first one is Ocean Springs: what the town is actually like day to day, who it suits, and the honest tradeoffs, insurance included. Seven minutes, no drone-footage nonsense. Moving to Ocean Springs, MS — Watch This BEFORE You Do

Fireworks over the outfield Friday, a piano player's name on a marquee in the Bay, an artwalk, a hot Sunday, and the last home game of the year. Then it's fall, whatever that means down here.

Pick something. Take someone with you.

— The Seawall