BOWLING GREEN, Ky. — A powerful movie being made here in Kentucky is mixing sports and history to create a historical drama.

What You Need To Know

  • A movie about the 1954 Middlesboro Little League Kentucky State Champions is being made

  • "This Field Looks Green to Me" tells the story of an integrated baseball team

  • The movie's co-produccer, Howard Bailey, is from Middlesboro and his knowledge is helping tell the story

Howard Bailey spends his days in his man cave, but recently he hasn’t used it to relax. He’s been co-producing a movie about the 1954 Middlesboro Little League Kentucky State Champions, an integrated baseball team playing during segregated times.

Bailey said, “Young children, Black and white, need to know from which this country came from.”

The movie follows the boys’ season, and the challenges they faced as an integrated team while traveling outside of their town.

Bailey said, “Mentoring, race relations, all of that is in this movie.”

The movie is titled “This Field Looks Green To Me.” The inspiration for the title comes from a confrontation between the team and the mayor of Lexington during a game in after the mayor discovered an integrated team was playing on a whites-only field.

Bailey said, “While on the field, he came out and said, ‘This field is for white kids. There’s other places in town where negroes can play.’”

But the team’s manager, who was a white man, didn’t budge.

Bailey said, “Harry came back at him and said ‘Mr. Mayor, this field looks green to me.’”

Bailey is a Middlesboro native and knows what segregation was like during that time. He said segregation there differed from other parts of the country where Black and white children would interact.

Bailey said, “We would walk up the sidewalk, the same sidewalk; he’s got his lunch box, and I got mine, and we would talk about what we’re going to do when we get out of school that afternoon. He’d turn and go that way to the white school, and I’d turn and go to the other school.”

The producers are currently gathering interviews from the players who are still alive, and the crew is hopeful to get it on the big screen. For Bailey, the film reminds him of trips with his father.

Bailey said, “He and I would go from Middlesboro, Kentucky, to Cincinnati, to watch the Reds play on the weekend. I have seen from Jackie Robinson to Willie Mayes.”

With Bailey’s knowledge of the past and producer Ron Schmidt coordinating interviews, they want the movie will show the good and bad side of history. 

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