PARTICIPATION IN THE SCORING ASPECT IS STRICTLY OPTIONAL SO FEEL
FREE TO FIND THE CACHE AND WATCH ALL THE ACTION FROM THE GRANDSTAND.
GAME ON!
Welcome to the 2024 Home Run Derby! Every Saturday morning a new cache will be released. After it is published you will have roughly a week to find it and select a slugger to represent you in that week's edition of the home run derby. Select one player and include his name in your log. The number of home runs he hits the following week (starting the Friday after cache publication) is your score; don't worry, we will handle all the scoring.
The series will be cumulative points from April through September with a week off over the All Star break. The "catch" is every player must be unique, so FTF has choice of any player, second to find will have second pick and so on. The cache hiders will also be playing so the cache owner will select fifth each week. Additionally, participants are only allowed to a pick a player once during the season. In all subsequent weeks your pick must be different than any other player you had used in previous weeks.
This is week 1 of the series (1 of 25). All scoring will take place Friday March 29th through April 4th.
In the summer of 1955, all but one of the 61 chartered Little League programs in South Carolina was made up entirely of white players. The lone exception--the Cannon Street Y.M.C.A. Little League (Charleston, S.C.)--was established two years earlier and became the first and only African American Little League in South Carolina sanctioned by Little League Baseball. The league was comprised of four teams sponsored by black businesses and civic organizations and sustained by the passionate support of parents and other local citizens. After the first half of the season was complete, Cannon Street Y.M.C.A. President Robert F. Morrison and the league's four coaches selected an "All-Star" team to represent the league in Charleston's traditionally "whites only" Little League tournament. Rather than integrate, city officials canceled the event. Winners by default, the All-Stars prepared to compete in the South Carolina state tournament. In a show of "massive resistance," white Little League officials, coaches and parents gradually organized a mass boycott. As a result, the Cannon Street All-Stars became the unofficial state champions, however, there were rules prohibiting teams from playing for the World Series title after advancing by forfeit.
In a letter to Morrison, Little League President Peter J. McGovern expressed regret that the All-Stars were "innocent victims of alien influences that have deprived them of beneficial associations and opportunity to meet and know other boys in Little League Baseball" and invited the team to attend the Little League World Series as his guests. While in attendance, the All-Stars were granted a practice session prior to the championship game. The All-Stars' enthusiasm and skill inspired chants of "Let them play!" from the awestruck crowd. Despite pleas from Morrison and his fellow coaches, it was not to be.
The team's effort to integrate youth baseball inspired white teams from several southern states to secede from Little League and form a segregated organization known as "Little Boys Baseball, Inc." Today, Little Boys is known as Dixie Youth Baseball. Over the past decades, the Cannon Street All-Stars have grown into upstanding family men and good citizens. In 2002, the team returned to Williamsport and was officially named "1955 South Carolina State Champions."
