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Chattanooga to host 720 players and 210 coaches for Tennessee Dixie Youth's 50th anniversary

By: Matt Wilson
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Skipper Fairbanks
Ryan Crimmins
Rob Hensley

It’s the bottom of the sixth as the Lookout Mountain all-star team takes the field, the last inning and the last game of the local Dixie Youth Baseball leagues’ 2008 round-robin tournament.

The Signal Mountain All-Stars, down 11-1, ready themselves for a round of at-bats in Senter Field on Lookout Mountain. A call comes from the dugout: “We can win this!” a player shouts. “We’re only losing by 10!”

Three outs and no runs later, the game was over, and the winning and losing teams alike lined up to say, “Good game.”

The players have gotten a little bigger and a little stronger, their hair has gotten a little shaggier, and the bats have changed from wood to aluminum. But the winning attitudes haven’t changed much in Dixie Youth Baseball’s 50-year history in Tennessee, said Skipper Fairbanks, one of the founders of the Red Bank youth league.

“The kids have always been excited,” he said. “They’ve had a nice place to play, and we probably spoiled them because they didn’t have to go too far to play.”

About 720 players and 210 coaches from all over Tennessee will come pretty far to play here this week as Red Bank, Signal Mountain and Lookout Mountain host Dixie Youth’s 50th anniversary state tournament. Lookout Mountain will play host to the 11- and 12-year-olds, 9- and 10-year-olds will play on Signal Mountain and the 5- through 8-year-olds will play in Red Bank.

An opening ceremony with 60 teams is set for tonight at McKenzie Arena. About 4,000 current and former players, parents and fans are expected to attend.

Rob Hensley, who played in the Red Bank league from the time he was 5, said Dixie Youth and other sports constituted “a great learning lab for life.”

“You can teach these kids things they can’t really learn anywhere else,” he said.

The lessons learned on the field in 2008 are the same as the ones kids in 1958 learned, said Mr. Hensley.

“Really, it’s about teaching these kids teamwork, hard work, teaching them discipline,” he said. “The more they’re enjoying those things, maybe they don’t realize they’re learning those lessons today, but they’re going to serve them in the long run.”

But Bryson Crimmins, 13, a player for the Lookout Mountain all-star team who hit back-to-back home runs with teammate Elliott Dockery at the June 24 final game of the round-robin, knows he’s learning something.

“I’m (finding out) how to work hard, how not to give up,” Bryson said.

The Baylor School student, whose dad, Ryan Crimmins, is a former Dixie Youth player and his coach, hopes to play baseball when he gets to high school. He’ll be at today’s opening ceremony, he said.

And playing for his dad, who has coached him since his T-ball days, isn’t so bad.

“Sometimes he can get annoying,” Bryson said. “But it’s pretty cool.”

Coach Crimmins said his background as a player inspired him to coach his own children.

“I had so much fun playing as a kid that when my kids came through, we wanted to carry on the tradition,” he said. “It’s just been a lot of fun.”

Stepping up to the plate

Dixie Youth, established in 1955 and originally called Little Boys Baseball, didn’t lead off in Tennessee. The six states with teams in Dixie Youth’s first World Series were Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Virginia, documents show.

Tennessee joined in 1958 with leagues in Dyersburg and Trenton. Lookout Mountain started its own league a year later and soon would be batting cleanup for the whole organization.

“Lookout Mountain was the nerve center of Dixie Youth Baseball for 30 years,” said Montgomery, Ala., resident P.L. Corley, Dixie Youth’s president.

By 1966, Nick Senter, then Lookout Mountain’s commissioner of parks and the guiding force behind bringing Dixie Youth Baseball to the area, was commissioner over every state with participating leagues. The late Mr. Senter, a former mayor of Lookout Mountain, has been remembered as saying, “Any ball you have to put air in ruins it.”

The late Buck Stamps, Lookout Mountain’s community recreation director for 40 years, also helped bring the league to life.

In the early to mid-1960s, leagues started in Red Bank, Signal Mountain, Brainerd, White Oak, Rivermont, Lakeside, East Ridge and East Chattanooga. The Rivermont team was the first state champion from the area in 1962. However, today only the Lookout Mountain, Signal Mountain and Red Bank leagues remain active.

At its peak in the mid-1990s, about 50,000 children in Tennessee were participating in Dixie Youth leagues, said Herman Nicholson, Dixie Youth’s Tennessee state director.

Before joining Dixie Youth, Mr. Fairbanks coached youngsters in what he called the Twilight league, because of the time of day they played. Mr. Fairbanks said he was impressed by Dixie Youth’s rules when Mr. Senter introduced him to the organization.

“You have to play your way to get to a World Series,” he said of the Dixie Youth rules. “You had to win a subdistrict, then a district, then the state. You didn’t just pay a fee and go to the World Series.”

Little League Baseball national and international tournament teams comprise players selected from chartered leagues, just as in Dixie Youth.

Another appealing aspect of Dixie Youth was the fact that everybody got to play, regardless of ability, Mr. Fairbanks said.

“We had a lot of kids that just wanted to play baseball,” he said. “We thought it was important that they get to play, too.”

By its third year in Dixie Youth, Lookout Mountain was the host of a World Series that included eight states. Red Bank hosted a World Series in 1967 and another in 1976.

The Dixie Youth network now includes 11 states. Besides Tennessee, Arkansas, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas joined the original six states over the years.

Baseball for all

About the time Dixie Youth came to Tennessee, the baseball league was dealing with many of the social issues that shook the South in the 1960s.

Dixie Youth started as a whites-only organization, but integrated in 1966, Mr. Corley said.

“Everything was separated,” he said of the time before integration.

Officials had considered integrating earlier but couldn’t make it work, Mr. Corley said.

“We had to go with society,” he said. “It was a very bad time.”

Several black sports stars, including Michael Jordan in North Carolina and Bo Jackson in Alabama, passed through the Dixie Youth program after leagues were integrated.

The organization once known as Little Boys Baseball allowed girls in 1975, Mr. Corley said.

“Some of them played ball so well, they caused some guys to quit,” he said.

The Confederate battle flag was included in the organization’s logo until the mid-1990s, documents show. By the 1996 World Series in Dothan, Ala., the image of the flag was gone and the stars in the logo’s flag motif background were replaced with baseballs.

By 2001, the logo bore no resemblance to the Confederate Stars and Bars.

As for the name including the word Dixie, Mr. Nicholson said he was not aware of any efforts to make a change.

“That’s accepted,” he said. “I don’t see that Dixie’s offensive.”

The organization had to change its name from Little Boys Baseball for the 1963 season because of a legal battle with Little League.

“They were going to sue us over the ‘little,’” Mr. Nicholson said.

Staff Photo by Patrick Smith
Members of the Red Bank All-Stars line up along the third base line before the start of their game against Signal Mountain.

Swinging for the fences

With Mr. Senter’s retirement as executive director of Dixie Youth Inc. in 1996 and his death in 2006, as well as Mr. Stamps’ 2005 retirement and his death in March, Lookout Mountain became a little less instrumental to the organization, Mr. Corley said. Marshall, Texas, now serves as Dixie Youth Baseball’s home, he said.

Still, the area is important to Dixie Youth tradition and history. Mr. Corley said bringing the state tournament to the Chattanooga area for the Tennessee league’s 50th anniversary was a big undertaking.

“That took a lot of vision,” he said.

One of the planners who waved the state tournament home to Chattanooga was another former Lookout Mountain mayor, Ryan Crimmins, who also coaches the town’s all-star team for 11- and 12-year-olds. Mr. Crimmins said he was carrying on the legacy of Mr. Senter “perhaps subconsciously, but not intentionally.”

“Nick always told us growing up, and even as an adult, that the statewide organization loved to come up here and play,” Mr. Crimmins said. “So we thought it was time to bring them on back.”

Rick Dockery, head of Dixie Youth on Lookout Mountain, said organizers are “tickled to death” to be able to honor Mr. Senter through holding the tournament here.

“The principles he taught the kids, we try to continue to do the same thing,” he said.

The sportsmanship award for 11-and 12-year-olds will be renamed the Nick Senter Award starting this year, said Mr. Nicholson.

And, of course, there’ll be the game itself, which Mr. Senter loved.

“We’re going to be playing a lot of baseball,” he said. “We start on Monday and we’ll go all the way through, even possibly, Sunday.”

The winner of the state tournament will go to the World Series in LaGrange, Ga., next month.

Following through

Jeff Jump, whose 12-year-old son Ian plays for the Lookout Mountain All-Stars, said he didn’t notice too much difference between the Dixie Youth baseball his son plays and the Little League he played in Ohio more than 30 years ago.

He said parents don’t usually get too upset over umpires’ calls and try not to put pressure on their children.

“It’s pretty laid back,” he said.

One thing he did notice, though: The players these days seem to be more skilled.

“The talent level’s a lot better than we ever were,” he said.

Bailey Lyness, 17, Mr. Fairbanks’ granddaughter, said playing in the Red Bank league toughened her up as a player and a person.

“Just playing with the boys, it made me a stronger athlete,” she said. “Everybody just treated me like one of them.”

Being in the league has stuck with her, Miss Lyness said, through friendships and a lasting connection with her grandfather. She also plays softball for Red Bank High School and hopes to play in college.

“It’s still my favorite place to be in the world,” she said of the Red Bank field, which is named for her grandfather.

That field remains an important place for her grandfather, too.

Mr. Fairbanks didn’t father any sons of his own, he said, though his daughters attended tournaments regularly. But he feels a family connection to every player who came through the program.

“I’ve got about 2,000 sons,” Mr. Fairbanks said.

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