Wasn’t that long ago families organized their summer itineraries around two main ingredients: work and baseball.

Mom and dad asked their superiors for vacation days, and they made sure those dates did not conflict with any of Little Johnny or Susie’s ball games.

James Earl Jones’ character in the film &uot;Field of Dreams&uot; dubbed baseball America’s &uot;one constant … It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again.&uot;

However, it seems as though in the Miss-Lou, no one’s picking up the chalk to write a new era for Dixie Youth Baseball.

Instead, it appears someone has gotten a little belligerent with the Liquid Paper, as DYB is slimming down its number of leagues to accommodate a shortage of players.

It’s a national concern for DYB, as the organization’s national numbers have dropped approximately 10 percent within recent years.

&uot;In my opinion there’s not a quick fix,&uot; said Dess Fontenot, DYB state director in Louisiana. &uot;Just like public education, you’ve got people moving out of areas for whatever reason. It may be racism, but it’s a reality.&uot;

Others paint a rosier picture, believing the current drought is something cyclical, and in due time kids will pick up America’s pastime once again.

&uot;We’re holding our own, I think. We’ve got 126 leagues and 65,000 kids playing from coach-pitch to 11-12,&uot; Mississippi State Director Houston Stuckey said.

While Mississippi has added five new leagues statewide this year, the numbers at the Major League and Minor League level are down.

Sixteen years ago, when Gary Hinton got involved with Dixie Youth Baseball in Ferriday, La., there were five Major League teams with 13 and 14 to a team.

This year, Hinton, who has been Ferriday’s DYB president the last five years, presides over four teams, with one only carrying eight players.

&uot;I think all of Dixie Youth is fighting the same thing. Nobody knows,&uot; Hinton said. &uot;I’ve talked with five or six different people, talked to the district and state director (Fontenot) and nobody has the answers.&uot;

And it’s not just ebbing away at Dixie. T.M. Jennings League President Peter Jackson said across the board there’s cause for concern for his organization. That group maintains teams as young as T-ball all the way up to 15 and 16, which has seen rapidly fewer numbers as more choose to play for their high school teams.

&uot;What we’re trying to do is establish a cooperation of parent to parent and child to child,&uot; said Jackson, president for 27 years. &uot;We want to intertwine the two and have a stronger emphasis of what teamwork is all about. If we could get that through to the parents, I think it could bring baseball back.&uot;

DYB Major League Co-Commissioner Joe Eidt has actually seen a slight increase in enrollment to 84 11- and 12-year-old players, yet it is so few, Eidt has cut the league back to one division instead of the historical two.

His fears fester knowing many 12-year-olds will be gone next year and the crop of Minor Leaguers that will turn 11 next year is few.

&uot;There’s more interest in tournament ball,&uot; Eidt said. &uot;We don’t have the numbers here in Natchez to justify a tournament-team role.&uot;

Select group

One of the biggest plagues on DYB is &uot;select&uot; teams, which take an area’s premiere players, pool them together and hit the road for weekend tournaments.

There’s only one known tournament team that operates from the Miss-Lou that affects DYB, but a handful of kids play select for clubs out of Baton Rouge, Vicksburg and elsewhere.

Kids that participate on traveling teams are allowed to play Dixie if they so choose, but that ballplayer must cease any affiliation with the select team two weeks prior to the inception of the first Dixie Youth tournament, according to DYB bylaws.

&uot;They’re taking so many of our best kids out of our league,&uot; said Mike Bowlin, Vidalia, La., Dixie Youth president for the past six years. &uot;Some places are even recruiting. They travel around to places like Baton Rouge and Houston. It’s great for the kids, but it does affect our local leagues. Dixie Youth is made for all kids, not just the All-Stars.&uot;

Bowlin, whose father C.A. Bowlin is one of three national directors for Mississippi, has seen a drop of six to five teams in his Major League compared to a year ago.

Stuckey feels like select teams don’t have kids’ best interests in mind, especially pitchers, when they haul them off on weekends to throw more than the DYB standard six-allowed innings weekly.

&uot;That’s not our call. It’s the parents’ call. I think if they want to play both, let ’em play both,&uot; Hattiesburg League Director Larry Doleac said. &uot;They worry about pitching, but that’s the parent’s responsibility. If a parent feels their kid has the ability to excel in baseball, they’re going to put them at the highest level they can.&uot;

That being said, Doleac &045;&045; whose league experienced a massive dropoff in the mid-1990s when Oak Grove initiated its own DYB league before recovering to its original state by 1999 &045;&045; is against tournament teams after seeing kids burn out before they reach adolescence.

&uot;There’s no parent out there that wouldn’t want their kid to play every weekend away,&uot; said Natchez Minor League Commissioner Porky Smith, whose league has dropped from 88 players last year to 80 this year. &uot;But the economy is not good enough here for (families) to go and stay in hotels, eat out and pay five dollars each time for parking. I’m not saying we’re at the bottom of the pole, but shoot.&uot;

$trapped for cash

The lapse in Dixie Youth across the Miss-Lou only magnifies the area’s dramatic economic problems.

With the closing of industries in recent years, such as International Paper last July, Johns Manville in the fall of 2002 and Titan Tire in April 2001, an exodus of families have been forced out of town to seek employment elsewhere.

&uot;Playing cost to play in the leagues is minimal, but when you’ve got multiple kids it can get expensive,&uot; Eidt said.

Ferriday’s $35 DYB registration fee is the lowest in the area, with Vidalia costing $50 and Natchez $45.

When considering the cost of other equipment, such as bats, gloves, belts and cleats, parents will eventually spend up to $300 for one child.

Hinton, whose leagues are proposing to cost $40 next year, has a policy where if a family can’t afford the registration fee for their child, the FDY board will put it up the money themselves.

&uot;It does dig deep into your wallet,&uot; he said. &uot;Plus, if a mom works over in Natchez and lives in Monterey and there’s practice at six, chances are she might not get off (work) in time to get her child out there.&uot;

DYB gives out annual scholarships, but those are reserved for ex-players looking for help with college tuition once they reach the 12th grade.

&uot;We don’t have families coming back to Natchez when they get married, deciding to make it their home anymore,&uot; Edit said. &uot;Until we get the economy problems cured, I don’t know that there will be a change.&uot;

Other interests

Baseball doesn’t have the lure over parents and children that it once did.

The boys and girls of summer are swinging golf clubs, kicking soccer balls or staying in the comfort of their air-conditioned houses instead of bothering with a sport that has lost some of its luster with overpaid prima donna players complaining about salary contracts.

&uot;When these guys out here that are coaching were growing up, we didn’t have (Sony) PlayStations and Nintendos,&uot; said Smith, who has been involved in youth baseball since 1969. &uot;Our mamas didn’t let us sit around the house and watch TV. These kids know more about computers now than we do.&uot;

Eidt echoed his comrade’s sentiment: &uot;We’ve got lazy kids. They’re not interested in going out in the sunshine and being hot and sweaty.&uot;

It used to be that parents, particularly fathers, wanted their sons to play baseball, so they could coach them.

However, now the stigma of a coach’s son being one of the best players on the team has driven some parents to forfeit the idea of wasting their children’s time, and perhaps weakening their spirits.

&uot;From a parent’s perspective, why should a kid play baseball if they’re gonna practice all week and play just one inning,&uot; Fontenot, Louisiana’s state director, said. &uot;Even if we made it mandatory that the kids got to play three innings, (the parents) aren’t gonna be satisfied. We all want our kids to be superstars.&uot;

Eidt said that’s precisely the problem, and wants to see a de-emphasizing of winning, although he admitted that would be the pot calling the kettle black.

&uot;I wish I knew the answer because I’d like to address it. One thing is clear,&uot; he said. &uot;Coaches need to get the most out of the time they have ’em because their attention span doesn’t last long.&uot;

And until coaches can determine a way to pique interest in the Miss-Lou once again, youth baseball is left holding the chalk without a canvas.