Jason Crowder can’t help but laugh at his favorite Jim Ellis call, one the radio announcer made of the Burke Masters grand slam home run in 1990 that sent the Mississippi State Bulldogs baseball team to the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska.
Bart Gregory, who now calls MSU baseball on SEC Network+ but spent years working alongside Ellis, mentioned the same call among his favorites.
Crowder laughs because he knows what Ellis thinks of that call.
“Jim doesn’t necessarily like that call, but everybody loves it because it was one of those moments where Jim got caught up in the moment,” said Crowder, the voice of Mississippi State women’s basketball and East Mississippi Community College football. “In that moment, Jim Ellis, he was a fan. He got caught up in the moment, and I loved it. I thought it was great radio.”
MSU fans can look forward to more moments like that one from Ellis, but only in baseball. Learfield, which manages broadcast operations for the Bulldogs, announced Thursday that Ellis will retire from his role as the voice of MSU football and men’s basketball, easing himself into retirement while sticking with what initially brought him to MSU in 1979: calling baseball.
“I’ve been going from one long season to another for a long time now, and I thought at my age it was time to cut back, and it was the right time,” Ellis said.
Ellis said he approached then-athletic director Scott Stricklin after the 2016 baseball season about cutting back to just baseball. He said the two agreed for the 2016 football and 2016-17 men’s basketball seasons to be his last. Ellis laughed in saying he wasn’t sure if current athletic director, John Cohen, knew of the agreement when he took the job.
“I still have my health, hopefully I still have some good years in front of me, and I’m going to do it working a little less than I have all these years,” Ellis said.
Background
Ellis, a West Point native and MSU graduate, started working at the university in 1979, broadcasting baseball and quickly adding women’s basketball. He was made the analyst for football broadcasts when Jackie Sherrill took over as head coach in 1991 and spent the last six as the play-by-play man on football broadcasts.
Baseball gave Gregory another of his favorite moments with Ellis: standing by his side in 2013 when Ellis announced, after a groundout to second, that MSU would be playing for the national championship.
Now, Ellis will have more time to devote to the sport that brought him to Starkville, baseball, and take on a different role in consuming other MSU athletics.
“I’ll just be a big fan,” Ellis said. “I’m looking forward to getting to watch some sports I don’t get to watch. I’m a big tennis fan, I’ll get to go to tennis matches now that I don’t have a conflict with other sports.”
Meanwhile, MSU will search for the next voice of Bulldog football and men’s basketball. Whoever it is will be stepping into the shoes of a person Crowder always admired for making his love of MSU apparent while never showing bias in a broadcast.
“Jim’s one of the reasons I’m in this business,” Crowder said. “I can remember sitting in the floor of my bedroom, my back against the wall, with a radio in my lap listening to Jim Ellis in junior high.”
Gregory has his own debt to Ellis for getting him into broadcasting: Ellis hired Gregory right out of college 17 years ago.
Ellis is unsure how much longer he will do baseball: next year will be his 40th as the voice of MSU.
“That will be a nice round figure, and we’ll see after that,” he said. “Hopefully I’ve got health and I’m still doing a good job of it and, if the athletic department is OK with it, I might do it longer.”
Ellis’ legacy as a baseball announcer may be the most difficult to follow, whenever that time comes.
“Vin Scully (Hall of Fame radio broadcaster and former voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers) could sit in that broadcast booth and Mississippi State fans wouldn’t like him,” Crowder said. “They’d want Jim Ellis back in there. He is the Vin Scully of Mississippi State baseball.”
Follow Dispatch sports writer Brett Hudson on Twitter, @Brett_Hudson
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