At The Plate: H&M Company, Inc.

The H&M logo lines the tops of the dugouts and fills the on-deck circles at the The Ballpark at Jackson. Since near the beginning of the franchise, H&M Company, Inc. has served as one of the Generals longest-standing community partners in helping bring professional baseball to the city of Jackson.

“Minor league baseball provides great entertainment value for the Jackson area,” said H&M Senior Vice President Roger Cook. “It also helps recruit business and industry that see it as something that adds quality of life to employees.”

Cook is a lifelong baseball fan and remembers the days of listening to the St. Louis Cardinals on the radio, learning and loving the game along the way.

“[I would sit] with my grandfather and listen to the 1964 St. Louis Cardinals on KMOX with Harry Caray and Jack Buck. [The] Redbirds were 9.5 games back in mid-August and won the NL pennant, and beat the Yankees to win the World Series,” he recalls. “The players included Tim McCarver, Bob Uecker, Curt Flood, Lou Brock, Bob Gibson, Ray Sadecki, Curt Simmons, and knuckleballer Barney Schultz. My grandfather also taught me how to read the box scores.”

Cook now helps lead the nation-wide engineering and construction firm, who’s founding pre-dates those playoffs of the 1964 season. H&M Company, Inc. started up near Jackson, Tennessee in 1957 and is still headquartered locally to this day and remains a privately owned corporation. According to the company website, H&M focused markets include manufacturing, heavy industrial, distribution, power, and office/institutional.

As the case with almost every industry, sports and construction alike, the recent fallout from the coronavirus pandemic as forced businesses’ to adjust.

“Many of our employees have worked from home during the virus so you don’t see everyone on a regular basis,” Cook explained. “We scheduled more conference calls and utilized Zoom for meetings. We have also limited commercial air travel and hotel stays making it a challenge to make jobsite visits on projects throughout the country. Providing a safe workplace for employees is an everyday focus.”

Now as the local and state economies begin to recover, H&M along with the Generals hope to use their partnership to help the local entertainment industry rebound as well.

“Utilizing the Ballpark and SportsPlex is just as important as utilizing the civic center and other facilities as long as they can be profitable and enhance to community.”

More information about H&M Company, Inc. and their services offered is available on their official website hmcompany.com.