St Thomas set pace in baseball league

Former Major League Baseball (MLB) player Andrew Dixon says that the latest inclusion to St Thomas Baseball League has justified his choice in bringing the sport to the parish.

Dixon, who is also president and founder of the Andrew Dixon Foundation (ADF), is gearing up for the launch of the St Thomas Baseball League, which is scheduled to begin on April 2.

The tournament, which originally consisted of four teams, will now increase to five with the addition of Lyssons Primary. Yallahs Primary, Easington Primary, St Thomas Hill View Prep and Morant Bay Primary are the other four teams participating in the inaugural event which hopes to grow the sport locally and to provide at risk youths an opportunity.

Dixon said that the addition of Lyssons has shown how viable the parish can be to promote the game.

“I think that is why we choose those teams down in the country. St Thomas they say is one of the parishes who feel like they are always left out,” Dixon told The Gleaner. “If we start in St Thomas and give them something, they can boast about, instead of being at the end of the tail of the cow, they can be head of the cow. I think it is a good move because there is so much emphasis in Kingston and Portmore, so this is a good situation to surprise everybody.”

Late inclusion

Lysson’s late inclusion was as a result of the school indicating their desire to compete in the league looking for a new challenge after winning the primary school softball title, a request that Dixon and the organisers could not ignore.

“Lyssons had won the primary school softball championship last year. They were calling us and saying hey why you guys didn’t put us in because we are the champions of the softball primary school? So we want to take a chance and try to win the baseball one as well. We couldn’t leave them out,” he said.

As a result, the regular season will be shortened to seven games from its original nine and will still be followed by two play-off semi-finals and a championship game.

The games will be played on Thursdays and Fridays at the Social Development Commission (SDC) field and the Easington Primary school grounds. Dixon says that he does not anticipate the late inclusion to have any major impact to the funding of the league to which he has got support from a local sponsor. The ADF since being endorsed by the Ministry of Education, conducted several baseball clinics islandwide and have partnered with Major League Baseball’s Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) programme, which seeks to elevate interest in baseball and softball among challenged youths.

Dixon played for the San Francisco Giants for six seasons after being drafted in 1986.