I’m a text message hoarder.

I have a fear about erasing text messages — and emails to a lesser extent — and one day down the line needing contents that’s in one of them. Ole Miss athletics director Keith Carter mentioned to me last month that his phone is set to automatically delete texts after 30 days. It makes sense. It’s practical. I’m not close to implementing that strategy.

A few days ago, my ridiculousness paid off. A friend and I were discussing how far back my texts go, and as I scrolled to the very bottom, I saw a friendly name and a text that brought together something that was already on my mind.

Sam Smith pitched for Ole Miss from 2012-2015 and started SEC games during all four seasons. There’s not a long list of players who have done that, and he was the Sunday starter during the Rebels’ 2014 season that finished in the College World Series semifinals.

Sandra Smith loved her son and would email me and later text me about him and her and the baseball things on her mind. The first email came in 2013 and mentioned a press conference quote and how Sam was doing that season. Most were about games or series and either celebrated her son or hurt for him when things didn’t go well. Parent stuff we all feel.,

Our final contact was in June 2015, just as Sam’s eligibility finished at Ole Miss. She was checking on me and my family situation. Sandra passed away a few months later. She’d been dealing with inflammatory breast cancer for three years, the entire time we’d been in contact.

What stirred me this week wasn’t her text checking on me or anything in those final communications. It was her wants and cares for her son and the lengths she was willing to go to support him, even while her health deteriorated.

That 2014 team went 2-2 in the College World Series and was the one that broke through the super regional ceiling for Mike Bianco. While it’s been moved down the podium now after this past summer, at the time it was evidence of what was deserved and possible and finally removed the lack of Omaha count from the conversation.

Sandra was in Lafayette, Louisiana, for the super regional, making the hour drive from Lake Charles for that three-game set, but she’d put off two needed surgeries until after baseball season, and her health didn’t allow for her to be in Oxford for the regional or travel like she wanted for the College World Series.

The day Virginia eliminated Ole Miss she sent me this: “It’s a sad day, but I’m just so proud of all of them. I want to see his face when he gets back to Oxford and see the people cheering his team for what they’ve accomplished. Don’t say anything. I want to surprise him.”

That’s stuck with me. She was in the fight for her life, but she’d use any energy she had to surprise her son and have that memory, that moment. And really that’s what sports are at their best, and that’s — in my long-winded way of getting there — the legacy of the Rebels who won the national title.

The new season starts in fewer than two weeks. There are new names and games, and you turn the page.

It’s a chance for new moments and time with family members or teammates and the enduring part of last year is obviously the improbable road from the bottom of the SEC, but beyond that it’s about how everyone has the place in time they will always remember, and the team gave the fans and each other that.

The way Omaha exploded and the stadium stayed full after the final game, as spectators hugged and cried and called home. It was a snapshot before time moves on.

TJ McCants hugging his mother in the stands in Omaha is seared into my brain. Felicia McCants gave every ounce of her energy to have that with her son. She passed away in the fall. TJ was told in April she had weeks to live, and he played through that torture while watching his mother overcome odds and deliver strength and hope. She told TJ they would be together in Omaha. She was right.

My friend Tim Climer is the biggest college baseball fan I know, and his dad, Tommy, was a pitcher on the Ole Miss teams that won the SEC in 1959 and 1960 but couldn’t play in the postseason. Tommy’s health didn’t allow the father and son to enjoy last summer the way they deserved, and Tommy passed away last month.

The point is the clock keeps moving. Somewhere at Swayze Field, there will be an empty seat that was filled a year ago — whether it’s death or sickness or simply relocation that means in-person Ole Miss baseball isn’t possible. We have the time we have, and we try to fill it with as many good things as we can.

Hunter Elliott will throw the first pitch of the season to a Delaware batter on February 17. There will be celebration and commemoration that weekend to honor the national champions. Then, the games continue and a new season fully takes bloom.

The pursuit for more wins and more trophies and to build on the lofty foundation that’s there. And more chances to celebrate and experience with people you care about. The investment that gives back in those times.

There were so many personal stories in Omaha and Hattiesburg. Many I don't know. The lengths people went to in order to share in the collective tidal wave. Remember that about last season. Hold on to your version of whatever that looked like and felt like in those days.

That’s the legacy of last season before, soon, it all begins anew.