CORINTH — The first baseball game North Mississippi Sports Network ever broadcast was the 1:00 opener of the 35th annual NEMCABB All-Star Games, and the West All-Stars made it a comfortable one, pulling away from the East 11–3 at the Corinth Sportsplex.
We'll be honest about how it looked: the first game is where most of our day's technical gremlins lived. We had almost no field audio for long stretches — a one-man crew working the kinks out live on the air. If you tuned in for the 1A–2A game and wondered why it was so quiet, that's why. We could have waited for a cleaner setup. We'd rather go live and learn.
On the field, West controlled it early and never gave the lead back. The scoreboard told the story long before the last out: 11 runs for the West side, 3 for the East, a final that was settled well before the late innings.
Between the baseball, NEMCABB honored its newest Hall of Fame class at the mound, including longtime coach Jamie Russell — a 260-win career with state championships at East Union, a 1A title at Smithville, and a coaching stop that started back at Ripley in 2009. The kind of resume this all-star day exists to celebrate.
The 1A–2A award slate went out before the next game: West Union's Jon Grey Morrison took West MVP honors, Pine Grove's Ayden Jones was the East MVP, and East Union's Ethan Lamontagne earned the Rusty Brown Memorial Award for the way he carries himself on and off the field.
It wasn't a perfect broadcast. It was a real one — the first of many. Watch the full replay above. Where North Mississippi plays.
