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CNN Saturday Morning News
Southern Version of Little League World Series Ends Today in Virginia
Aired August 18, 2001 - 09:55 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: The Southern version of the Little League World Series winds down today in Virginia.
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN ANCHOR: And it is called the Dixie League.
CNN's Brian Cabell has more on that.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRIAN CABELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's a warm late summer evening in Virginia, just a few hours from the old capital of the Confederacy, but that's history. This night is for baseball, for the anxious and excited fans in the stands, for the rambunctious little kids frolicking out beyond the left field fence, and for the big kids inside the stadium playing big-time baseball.
This is the Dixie Youth Baseball World Series, a Southern version of the Little League World Series. Eleven states send their best 11- and 12-year-olds here to compete. The Dixie League actually broke away from Little League in 1955, when white teams in South Carolina decided they didn't want to integrate their teams or leagues.
MATT GOYAK, LEAGUE CO-FOUNDER: That was the issue them days. You know, people say, Well, you all didn't let the colored play here at all. We couldn't.
CABELL: They couldn't, he says, because the South was strictly segregated. But times have changed.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everybody ready?
UNIDENTIFIED CHILDREN: Ready!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everybody ready?
UNIDENTIFIED CHILDREN: Ready!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everybody ready?
UNIDENTIFIED CHILDREN: Ready!
CABELL: One look at the Mississippi team this year shows you the change. All the players are black. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go.
CABELL: The league desegregated in 1967, and players, coaches, and fans will tell you race hasn't been an issue in the Dixie League for years.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I don't even think about it. I don't. And I've never heard any of my coaches say anything about it.
CABELL (on camera): What about the word "Dixie," does that bother you at all?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It doesn't bother me. I live in Dixie.
CABELL (on camera): In fact, included among former Dixie Youth League players are such stars as Bo Jackson, Otis Nixon, Reggie Sanders, and Michael Jordan.
(voice-over): But, of course, most of these players in the World Series will never achieve that kind of celebrity. These are ordinary kids with ordinary names -- Lirette, Bourgeois, Soignet. Well, actually, as you might have guessed, this is the Louisiana team from Thibadeau (ph), deep in the heart of Cajun country.
And the Louisiana fans, draped in beads, are, well, a bit more colorful and noisier than the other fans, and proud of it, proud of their team as well, which plays solid, fundamentally sound baseball.
JORDAN LIRETTE, LOUISIANA CATCHER: It's just pretty scary, because you don't want to make a bad mistake. You know, we're serious.
CABELL: They didn't make many mistakes. They won their first three games here. As for the Mississippi kids, they played two tight games in the World Series, but lost both of them. They were out, and headed home.
Baseball, even on a beautiful summer evening, can be cruel to a 12-year-old.
Brian Cabell, CNN, Lynchburg, Virginia.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
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