George F. Will: The Little League All Stars Who Were Never Beaten

George F. Will writes for the WaPo.

They are nearing 70 now, the 11 men who were 12-year-old boys in 1955 and who are remembered for the baseball games they could not play. They were — actually, with their matching blue blazers and striped ties, they still are — members of the Cannon Street All Stars.

The Cannon Street YMCA is near the Ashley River, which flows toward the harbor and Fort Sumter. The unpleasantness that started there in 1861 had left pertinent questions unsettled 94 years later, when the All Stars, all African Americans, decided to enter this city’s Little League tournament. Charleston canceled the tournament because blacks and whites simply did not play together. Actually, they did, all the time, in informal settings, on vacant lots. “Kids do not mess up the world, adults do,” says Leroy Major, 69, the All Stars’ pitcher and a retired schoolteacher.

Never mind, said the All Stars’ coach, who entered them in the state tournament in Greenville. That was too much for the 61 white teams, who withdrew. Well then, said the coach, we will head for Rome, Ga., and the regional tournament, where the winners of eight Southern state tournaments would compete to see which would go to the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pa....