How Retirement Turned Fan into Member of Alabama Softball Family

From the first practice in the fall to the last out of super regionals, George Harris spends most of the year at Rhoads Stadium. Now, he's in Oklahoma City cheering on the Tide as it tries to win its first national title since 2012.

Alabama fan George Harris shags balls in the outfield at a practice at Rhoads Stadium | George Harris

OKLAHOMA CITY–– It’s a familiar story, really — a retired businessman spending his afternoons in peace while watching the tide roll in and out. 

The only difference for George Harris is that his springs aren’t spent on the beach. Harris prefers the red dirt of Rhoads Stadium to the sand of the Gulf, and the Tide he watches is the No. 1 softball team in the nation. 

If you’ve been to an Alabama softball game, you’ve probably heard Emily Pitek Clifford and her famous chants, but chances are you’ve overlooked the Crimson Tide’s most loyal supporter. 

Harris has always been a fan of Alabama athletics, a self-proclaimed “Crimson Tide fanatic” as a Tuscaloosa native. He started going to Alabama baseball games in 1954 and also had season tickets for Tide football and basketball. When the athletic department added a softball team and built a stadium on campus, his fandom naturally followed. 

In fact, Harris started to enjoy softball more than baseball. So he dropped his baseball season tickets and went all in on softball. He still has the football and basketball tickets, but if he had to choose one sport to follow, it would be softball every time. 

Harris spent 45 years as a lawyer in his hometown of Tuscaloosa, but when he and his wife retired from law in the summer of 2018, he wasn’t content with just sitting at home. He was looking for ways to fill his time, and it turned out that there was no better place to do so than Rhoads Stadium, where his favorite team played.

“I started coming over and watching practice,” Harris told BamaCentral. “I was just sitting up in the stands, and Murphy came up and spoke to me. I guess he recognized me.”

Murphy actually first met Harris during a luncheon for the Tuscaloosa Bar Association a few years before his retirement. At that time, he didn’t realize how big of a supporter he was of the program. However, it didn’t take long to realize Harris would soon be a staple of Rhoads Stadium setup. 

“When he retired, he started coming out to the field,” Murphy said. “It was basically exercise, keeping him going, something to do, and then the girls started to talk to him, get to know him.”

He wasn’t just a spectator at practice, though. He soon became a participant. Murphy sent a manager up to the stands to tell Harris he could start coming on the field during practice as long as he stayed out of the way. 

Harris has three rules for himself at practice:

1. Don’t get hurt
2. Don’t get in the way
3. Don’t be a distraction 

He had to learn rule No. 2 the hard way when he almost collided with outfielder Larissa Preuitt as she was going hard after a ball in practice one day. Harris spent a few years shagging balls in the outfield, but after some health issues over the last year, he spends most of his time there now observing from the visitors’ dugout or out in the Brickyard to shag the home run balls. 

The retired lawyer soon became a staple at Crimson Tide practices. For the players, he was more than just a helping hand chasing down fly balls. He was a source of positivity offering a smile, hug or note of encouragement if a player was slumping or had a bad practice. 

One of the players he grew especially close with was infielder Kali Heivilin, who played for the Crimson Tide from 2022 to 2025. It’s become somewhat of a tradition for Murphy to have the new players, both freshmen and transfer, introduce themselves to Harris at the start of practice in the fall. Heivilin met him at her very first Alabama practice her freshman year and has loved him ever since. 

“Honestly, he was, and still is, like a grandfather figure to me,” Heivilin told BamaCentral. “Being from Michigan, I lived 10.5 hours away from home. So of course you have the coaching staff that are always there for you in a heartbeat, but George always gives that presence of always believing in you. I could have had the worst practice in the world, and I was super upset, and all I do is see George out in the outfield, picking up all the home run balls from everybody on the team. And he’d just be like, ‘You guys had a great practice. See you tomorrow.’”

His support over the four years meant so much to Heivlin and her parents that Harris was part of her senior day celebration down on the field with the rest of her family members. 

“I felt like, because him and I were so close, and we had that relationship, that I needed him to be a part of my special day, not only for me, but for him to understand how much of an impact he had made on my life,” Heivilin said. “I wanted to make sure he knew that, and I think the biggest way was the he was down on that field with me to kind of signify, ‘Hey, you were one of my biggest impacts when I got to college,’ and he still is.”

Kali Heivilin and George Harris after a game at Rhoads Stadium | George Harris

Heivlin still talks to Harris regularly even though she moved down to Florida once her playing career was done. 

“I’ve gotten to meet almost all the parents, Kali and her parents were really special,” Harris said. “Kali calls me her adoptive grandfather, and I don’t know if you noticed, but on her senior day she invited me to come down on the field with her family, and she spoke about me during her talk on the big board. I told her mother as we were going back up to the stands, ‘You know, if I wasn't a Southern male, I'd be balling.’ I was taught not to cry. I've overcome that partially.”

(You can watch Heivilin's senior day video in the Tweet below. She starts talking about Harris around the 1:20 mark.)

Happy Senior Day Kali Heivilin!#Team29 #RollTide pic.twitter.com/BNPiRBHu7C

— Alabama Softball (@AlabamaSB) March 16, 2025

When Harris has had some health struggles, the team has been there for him to encourage the same way he has done for them so many times. He was hospitalized in January with a bout of pneumonia, and his daughter contacted Alabama director of player development Ryan Iamurri. 

Next thing Harris knew, Iamurri showed up at the hospital with Murphy and six Alabama players. 

“They'll never know how much that visit, when I was in the hospital with pneumonia, how much it lifted my spirits and kept me going,” Harris said. “It was right in the first three or four days when I was really pretty miserable. It was the first time I had sat up since I’d been admitted to the hospital.”

Members of the Alabama softball family (head coach Patrick Murphy, assistant coach Ryan Iamurri, players Lauren Johnson, Alea Johnson, Salen Hawkins, Abby Duchscherer, Mari Hubbard and Jena Young) visit George Harris in the hospital | George Harris

Members of the staff, players and players’ families always make sure Harris is taken care of. When he got overheated during the Texas series, former pitcher and current manager Catelyn Riley and her family took him to the hospital. Once he recovered Jocelyn Briski’s dad, Paul, picked him up to take him home. 

Harris goes to dinner with the Briski family after some Saturday home games. The player moms who are nurses, like Heather Johnson and Kelly Duchscherer, give him extra attention and care. The managers and staff make sure he has any water or food he needs during game from his loyal perch atop section G.

“George is awesome,” Briski said. “He's our No. 1 fan. Cannot say enough great things about George. It’s actually funny, my parents bought a house in Tuscaloosa, and he was my parents’ neighbor. So, he’s even close with my parents. He loves my grandparents. I’m sure they’ll be having a good time together out there this week. He just means so much to me and so much to my family and the Alabama softball family.”

Harris never needed the Bama family more than in January of 2025 when he lost his wife of nearly 30 years Paula. The players immediately knew something was wrong and were concerned when Harris wasn’t at practice.

The day after his wife passed away was going to be a Saturday scrimmage at Rhoads. Harris told his daughter, who had driven over from Atlanta, that he thought they should just stay at home.

“And she looked me right in the eye and said, ‘Get in the car,’” Harris recalled. 

So they went over and entered Rhoadds at the gate closest to the locker room. One by one, starting with the coaches, every member of the program came up to Harris to give him their condolences. The coaches,  trainers, managers, volunteers and players all wanted him to know how sorry they were and wanted to know if there was anything they could do.

One member of the program, student manager Jackson Taylor, was busy when Harris first arrived that day, but he still made it a point to speak with Harris. 

“The last person to come was Jackson, who's the senior manager now,” Harris said. “He was busy, so he came over to my seat. He said the same thing. I said, ‘Jackson, you are the 200th person that’s told me that, but I believe every one of you.’”

Harris has a daughter and grandchildren, who he says are the only things that could ever get him to leave his beloved Tuscaloosa. But each fall, it’s almost like he gets a new crop of family with the Alabama softball players and their loved ones. 

It gives Harris something to look forward to for most of the year. He expressed countless thanks for what Murphy, the staff, particularly Ryan Iamurri and Jadyn Spencer, have done for him to include him in the Alabama softball family. He is also so grateful to all the players he has interacted with. There are too many to name, but he knows every name from those that spend the majority of the season on the bench to the stars like Montana Fouts. Team 30 has been very special to him.

“Last summer after Paula died, I would do something in the morning, run errands or whatever, I would eat lunch, and then I would come home, and I would sit around and say, ‘What am I going to do now?’ And that’s the only time that I’ve done that,” Harris said. “The rest of the time, I think, ‘Now, when’s the next practice? What time should I go over there? It keeps me engaged and not feeling isolated.”

Harris has had a front row seat to what Team 30 has become since their formation back in the fall. Now, he’s getting to experience it from the stands in Oklahoma City as No. 1 Alabama has secured its spot in the Women’s College World Series semifinals. He’s hoping to cheer the Tide on to its first national title since 2012, carrying on a fandom decades in the making. 

“I knew we were going to be better hitters, and I thought that Jocelyn had probably worked so hard over the summer, that she would be better,” Harris said. “Well, neither one did I dream that they were going to be as good as they are.”

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