Eight-year-old Washingtonian Akira Inoue’s favorite thing about playing baseball is getting to stand on the pitcher’s mound. Inoue plays in the Senators Satchel Paige Little League‘s “Rookie” division, which uses a pitching machine and consists of kids from Northeast and Northwest. “One time, the ball was hit so hard past me that I could feel the wind go by,” he recalls.

But because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Inoue and other D.C. Little Leaguers won’t play ball for a while. Although Opening Day was slated for this coming weekend, the D.C. Little League is following a stay-at-home order issued by the District that bans group sports and goes into effect April 1. Meanwhile, the Little League International organization is strongly advising that local games be delayed until at least May 11.

Now, Inoue and his peers are trying to figure out what to do without their scheduled games. “We can’t do baseball online,” he says. “Well, maybe we could.” Inoue briefly walks through the steps of how it could work before coming to an ambivalent conclusion: “It would get a bit complicated.”

There are eight D.C. Little League organizations, each covering a different part of the city. The overall league sees more than 2,000 players every season. Each organization has different levels, ranging from 4-year-olds who use batting tees to 11- and 12-year-olds who try to qualify for the annual Little League World Series that’s popularly aired on television.

And District teams have had recent success. In 2018, the Mamie Johnson organization, which covers multiple neighborhoods located east of the Anacostia River, made national news for boasting the first predominately African-American team to win D.C.’s Little League championship in the three-decade history of the tournament.

In normal times, the D.C. Little League season starts in March with practice. Opening Day is usually at the beginning of April and the season lasts through June. End-of-season tournaments take place in July.

That schedule means that even if games were to start on May 11—the date provisionally floated by Little League International—roughly half of the regular season would have already passed. League managers are discussing extending the season through July, but a decision won’t be made until they definitively know when games can resume.

Nine-year-old Jmir Freeman plays in the Mamie Johnson league and says the thing he most enjoys about it is hitting home runs (he says he does this often). Freeman adds that he’s saddened the season won’t begin for weeks, and that, with the coronavirus-related restrictions on public gatherings, it’s been hard for him to get exercise. Instead, he’s been practicing at home using a ball-on-a-rope trainer that his parents got for him. “If I hit the ball, I’m good,” Freeman notes. “If I miss, then I need to keep trying.”

But the D.C. Little League is about more than baseball, according to the people who oversee it. Gerard Hall, the president of the Ward 8 Little League, which he founded in 2017, says the league teaches kids to work on a team. “You really have to depend on the other eight people out there,” explains Hall. “It’s about discipline and strategy.”

Andre “Smokey” Lee heads the Senators Satchel Paige Little League. He says Little League baseball has been gaining momentum in the city since the Nationals came to town in 2005, and, with the team having won the World Series last year, his organization has seen an influx of interest: There were more than 70 players in the Senators Satchel Paige recent winter camp—far more than there were in the past.

COVID-19 “is crushing inner-city little leagues just as we were moving up,” says Lee.

David Inoue, Akira’s dad and his team’s coach, says he and other league parents know how difficult the disruption is for their kids. “This is the time when they should be outside, and it’s not happening,” David says. “It’s a form of trauma.”

Right before Opening Day every year, the Mamie Johnson Little League hosts a parade, but it’s being put on hold. Thennie Freeman, Jmir’s mom, says the parade is her favorite part of the season since the kids are all wearing sparkling new white uniforms. “That’s the cleanest they’ll ever look,” she points out, laughing. “Dirt and grass stains never come out.”

The Freemans took a walk the other day and passed by the field where Jmir would typically play during the spring and summer. He says he imagined what it would be like when everyone came back, hopefully in just a few months. “I saw my team winning the game,” he says. “And I didn’t [even] hit a home run.”