The Diamonds of Dixie

In the summer of 1993, die-hard baseball fan and displaced Southerner Ernest Green took off in his ancient pickup on an odyssey that would cover 17, OOO miles and every Southern state. His quest: to visit thirty minor league teams, from the Durham Bulls to the El Paso Diablos, and see what remained of the minor league baseball and the South he remembered from his Oklahoma boyhood in the 195Os. Along the way, he reveled in "haute Dixie" cuisine, met old minor leaguers who had played in parks so small they weren't named, and talked with young hopefuls who were counting each at bat as tragedy or triumph. Whether the games were attended by 50 or 5,000 fans, Green discovered that minor league baseball has evolved into a new form of entertainment with wacky contests and frenetic public relations, different from the intensely followed community game of his boyhood, yet charming in its own way.