A Black high school baseball team won a championship in 1969. Their hometown waited 50 years to celebrate.

By Gregory S. Schneider
April 17, 2021 at 9:18 p.m. EDT

KILMARNOCK, Va. — The old-timers stood along the first-base dugout Saturday on Little League opening day. The base lines were crisp, grass and dirt perfectly groomed, home plate glowing white.

Most of these men, squinting under the brims of blue Brookvale High School caps, had never been on this field before. When they played more than half a century ago, Black people weren’t allowed through the gates.

And when they won their big state championship game on May 21, 1969, down in Petersburg, they returned home to . . . nothing. No celebration, no commendation from Lancaster County, which they had represented in a decisive 11-5 victory over a team from outside Richmond.

On Saturday, this rural county aimed to make amends.

Before hundreds of cheering spectators, Black and White, the surviving members of the Fighting Warriors trotted — or, in some cases, tottered — across the infield as the announcer called their names. At the pitcher’s mound, members of the county government gave them what a previous generation had denied them: championship rings.

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