Baseball may be America’s pastime, but the popular sport also draws people and revenue dollars to local communities.

Starting today, players from across the state will arrive in Andalusia for the 9U Cal Ripken state tournament.

Teams participating in the 9U state tournament include Westside, Jackson, Attala, Florence, Alex City, Theodore, Semmes and the host team from Covington County.

The tournament is being held at Johnson Park, and will draw upwards of 120 players and their fan bases to the county.

Holiday Inn Express has a few rooms left for Friday night, but no doubles. On Saturday, they will have 21 rooms available, officials said Thursday afternoon.

Quality Inn will only have two rooms available for the weekend after renting rooms to a few teams participating in the tournament.

Best Western has been completely booked for the weekend with several teams occupying rooms for the weekend.

For those still looking for a room, Days Inn officials said they have plenty of rooms left for the weekend after a team canceled their reservations earlier in the week.

These tournaments are among the reasons that economic experts say visitors leave a $37 million impact on the county.