The Price to Play

It's a baseball tournament that brings hundreds of six year olds, thousands of fans, and millions of dollars to the scenic city.  But this year's dizzy dean world series event saw fewer participants because of the higher cost of gas.  Dizzy dean and the price of gasoline... tournament goers say they don't mix well.  This year, the baseball event brought about fifteen teams less than last year.  And, you guessed it, they were the teams from Texas, Louisiana, and the Carolinas... the teams that just couldn't afford to pay their way to play.

As her son slides in to homeplate after hitting a homerun, Joy Ericson cheers him on.  But, Ericson and the other parents and coaches at the Dizzy Dean World Series aren't cheerful about the cost it took to slide their teams into east ridge.

Lynn O'Brien's child plays for the Boynton Buzz.  She says, "I know it was a big decision for our team but we knew that it was really important for our boys and they really wanted to come and we'll have to make the budget work elsewhere."

But the budget will be hit even harder for the team from Florida who drove ten and a half hours.  Their coach Chris Meloy says, "I think we're gonna spend every bit of the 6 thousand dollars we raised, so it's expensive."

Expensive could be an understatement.  The sun is not only heating up the fields, but heating up every time you fill up as well.  Even causing parents, some of the only ones travelling from out of state, to paint the price they paid on their window.

Meloy says, "It's tough, it's real tough, one of parents wrote on their window, we paid 4 dollars a gallon not to come up here and lose."

But baseball commissioner Kevin Wright says the city may be losing even more.  He says there are about fifteen fewer teams here this year than last, the teams from farther away just dropped the ball when the price of gas hit too high.  Wright says, "This tournament will have an impact of about a million and a half dollars on the economy and the local area, so by not having those teams, that gas hotels, entertainment all not bought that affect local businesses."

But for the die hard fans and die hard six year olds, the only price that matters is not at the pump, but at the plate.

Ericson says, "Not really, we love baseball and we really wanted to come so it didn't cross our minds."