CORINTH — If you only watched one game from our first day on the air, this was the one. The 5A–7A All-Star Game was the best baseball of the afternoon, and the West All-Stars walked it off 6–5, scoring three runs in the bottom of the seventh to beat the East as the rain came down at the Corinth Sportsplex.
It was also the game where our broadcast started to look like a broadcast. After the audio trouble in the opener, the field mics came in by first pitch here and the play-by-play finally came through. We're not going to pretend it was flawless — you could still hear the founder scrambling to keep the score bug honest while running a one-man booth — but it was a real call of a real game.
The East struck first and led early. West answered with a multi-run rally to take the lead, the East clawed back in front late, and it came down to last licks. Trailing in the bottom of the seventh, West pushed across three runs to walk it off 6–5. A one-run all-star game in a steady rain is about as good as a Saturday in May gets.
Between innings, founder Steven Martinez told viewers exactly why this network exists. "I'm a one-man show at this point, and my goal is to eventually have a crew," he said. "The vision over the next couple of years is to create an actual network — like what you think of when you think of the SEC Network, but for north Mississippi. There's a lot of talented young players coming through these school systems. They work hard, and we want to give them that exposure." The day's umpire crew, by the way, was Gary Bircheat of Sulligent, Alabama, Antwune Freeman of Smithville, and Steve Martinez of Fulton — the founder's father, a Mississippi official of about 30 years.
The 5A–7A awards rewarded a deep field: Oxford's Witten Ellis took West MVP and New Hope's Dalton Elmore was the East MVP, with Lafayette's Taylor John earning the Ralph Blake British Memorial Award. Pontotoc's Miller Finn was named 5A Player of the Year, Grenada's Tye Edwards the 6A Player of the Year, and Oxford's James Blackwood the 7A Player of the Year. Pontotoc's J.D. Poss, Saltillo's Eric Reynolds, and Oxford's Cade Hoggard took the coach-of-the-year honors.
Thanks to Impact Health Clinics and Casey Nichols Insurance for backing the broadcast. Watch for the full replay in the archive. Where North Mississippi plays.
