If Willy Wonka based his operations in North America, Ron Caufield might well be his director of Southeast distribution.
For more than two decades, Caulfield, better known around Starkville as “The Candyman,” has endeared himself to Mississippi State faithful young and old through an ear-to-ear grin and a 40-pound bag of varying confections. Perched among the barbecues and grills in the outfield rigs at Dudy Noble Field, he’s the sweets connoisseur everyone wants a piece of.
“He’s a big kid,” Lisa Daniels, a longtime friend of Caulfield’s, said. “He’s got a big heart. … Once you meet him, if you weren’t his friend before, when you leave, you’re his friend.”
A 1975 graduate of MSU, Caulfield is as fanatic as fans come. His wardrobe is littered with varying shades of maroon and white, an ode to his love for his alma mater. Friends joke sitting alongside him at Bulldog baseball games takes getting used to, given his boisterous voice and deafening claps that permeate throughout the Left Field Lounge during the spring.
“Ron is an avid, avid, avid Bulldog fan,” Barbara Gilbert, another longtime friend and former coworker of Caulfield’s, said. “That’s all he lives, eats, sleeps and breathes.”
After leaving Starkville upon graduation, Caulfield spent 27 years working for the state, including his last 15 years with the Mississippi Department of Public Safety. There he was tasked with processing money related to major drug busts. When an arrest was made, Caulfield’s department counted the money and then distributed it to the varying municipalities involved in the apprehension. He quips he saw thousands of dollars’ worth of cash cross his desk, but he was never allowed to keep any of it.
Now retired and relocated from Jackson to Starkville, Caulfield is a fixture at most every MSU sporting event. From basketball and football to tennis and soccer, he goes anywhere a Bulldog squad is involved.
But as wide as Caulfield has cast his support net, it’s amid the haze of grill smoke in the outfield of Dudy Noble Field that he got his start and where he remains a celebrity of sorts.
During a trip to College Station for a baseball Super Regional held at Texas A&M in 1998, he and his party made quick friends with a group of Aggie fans in the bleachers at Olsen Field. The following spring, that same contingent of Texas A&M fans came to Starkville for Super Bulldog Weekend to visit Caulfield and his pals, bringing with them a couple bags of peppermints and gum as thanks for their hospitality.
Rather than eat the candy himself, Caulfield began passing it out for free to fans in the stands. Even those in the skyboxes above the concourse whipped open their doors in hopes of securing a piece.
“It got to the point where the adults were worse than the kids,” Caulfield said through a chuckle. “(They) started asking for specific kinds of candy and this type of stuff.”
Caulfield has become something of an icon in Starkville. Each time he enters through the outfield gates at Dudy Noble Field, anywhere from 50 to 100 people stop him to say hello as he makes his way to the Left Field Lounge.
Caulfield estimates he spends around $2,000 per year on candy for fans, though that’s mitigated some by cash donations folks slip into his bag as he makes the rounds. Costs aside, there’s a joy found in connecting generations through his treats. Some of those toddlers Caulfield once delighted with a chocolate bar or a piece of gum during the late 1990s now have kids of their own asking for a morsel from The Candyman.
“That was a big thing with baseball,” he said. “Because you always had the same group of people around you. So it really became a family atmosphere.”
For the first time since he began passing out candy at Bulldog baseball games around the turn of the millennium, COVID-19 has forced Caulfield’s operation to cease for the time being. He told The Dispatch Friday he’s decided to put a pause on his candy-related endeavors for this season — one that begins Thursday as MSU opens play at the State Farm College Baseball Showdown in Dallas — out of caution.
For now, The Candyman is taking a break. Soon though, he hopes he can return to his Wonka-esque escapades.
“When I was in school, I was very shy,” he explained. “I wouldn’t talk to hardly anybody or anything. And, I mean, once this got started, and I started meeting different people, different age groups, I realized that everybody has a little story to tell.”
Ben Portnoy reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @bportnoy15.
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