Rick’s Cafe: Big oil wins again … Saudi Arabia to replace Uganda in Little League World Series

There’s a lot to like about the Little League World Series. For one thing, the kids are about a decade ahead of Bud Selig when it comes to common sense innovation (no real surprise). Also, the players are sequestered from the parents for the entire duration of the event, so you know there’s a lot of this going on in on barracks (Engelbert also has a foot locker full of candy under his bunk).

But there’s also plenty not to like: This large helping of nightmare fuel, for instance. Also, they let Canada in. I happen to know that Canada just learned about baseball about two years ago — their bat racks are filled mostly with hockey sticks and umbrellas. But we let them play for the same reason you let your little brother play when you were kids — mom told you to.

Oh, and Saudi Arabia is replacing Uganda this year.

If you read our post last week on the subject, you know that Uganda became the first African nation ever to qualify for the Little League World Series, beating Saudi Arabia in the Middle East & Africa Regional championship game in Poland, 6-4, on July 18. Having lost the title game to the Saudis in 2010, one can imagine how excited the Ugandan kids were to earn a trip to Williamsport, Pa., this year. But as it says in every single Chicago Cubs media guide for the past 102 years, it was not to be. The dream season for 12 kids of the Rev. John Foundation team from Kampala was about to end in a nightmare.

Due to discrepancies contained in some of the players’ birth documentation, the U.S. State Department denied their visa application. For awhile there was some hope that someone high up in the State Department would intercede on their behalf, but that never happened. And so the second-place team from that regional, Saudi Arabia, was given that LLWS berth.

As opposed to the Ugandan team that would have been making the trip for the first time, this is the 12th straight World Series for Saudi Arabia. And the Saudi team’s inclusion is not exactly the international flavor that Little League had in mind when it opened its tournament to other nations. Most of the squad is made up of United States kids whose parents are working in the Saudi oil industry (others are from Venezuela and Jordan).

Here are some of them below. And here’s what’s going on with the hair: The Saudi players dyed their hair bleach-blonde, a traditional custom for the Arabian American Little League each year.

“We’re all kind of American kids, and everybody thinks the kids come from Saudi Arabia,” said assistant coach Donny Sumner, who is from Ocala. “Or Saudis or Arabs, so they wanted to show up looking like a bunch of kids from California and it’s just kind of stuck with us every year.”

The Saudi team was already in this country when Little League asked them to replace the Ugandans — having traveled here to participate in a summer exhibition series. As far as the LLWS goes, they’re pretty much getting a free pass — because no way would most of those same kids, competing against all the players in the U.S., have qualified for this.

Some are even saying that the State Department may have given the Saudi team preferential treatment because their parents are involved in the oil industry. Wally Grigo of the New Haven Register writes:

Is Saudi Arabia a political constituency that was not going to be denied a trip to Williamsport? Were phone calls made and gifts exchanged after the stunning upset by Uganda? It’s hard to ignore the appearance of impropriety.

This mess ultimately falls in the laps of the secretary of state and the White House. Do Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama want the U.S. to be perceived as a big bully, dashing the dreams of a bunch of poor African kids in order to appease a few well-connected fat cats?

It may be small potatoes, but this is the kind of episode that can define leadership style and character. All it takes is a 60-second phone call to the American Embassy in Uganda: “Get those boys on a plane to Philadelphia or fax me your letter of resignation.”

I’m not ready to sign on to any conspiracy theories, and there’s even a report that the state department may have denied the visas because some of the birth dates were willingly falsified. That has yet to be proven, and sounds to me like someone was just trying to cover their butts when some negative publicity got out. What is known is that Uganda is struggling to get baseball to take root in a nation where an estimated 40 percent of children have been orphaned by AIDS. It’s an ordeal to obtain equipment — there are no baseball equipment manufacturers in Uganda — so they have had to rely on donations, mostly from the United States.

Richard Stanley, a minority owner of the Double-A Yankees affiliate the Trenton Thunder, has been instrumental in bringing baseball to Uganda. Most of Uganda’s 12 Little Leagues have equipment thanks to his efforts, and he has made periodic trips there to teach coaching clinics and donate gear.

Stanley was on hand as an assistant coach during Uganda’s MEA Regional tournament victory in Poland. He says that the real problem in getting the team to Williamsport is that no one at the U.S. State Department in Uganda wanted to take responsibility.

“The problem is that in third world countries, the people who control visas are concerned that that the people who they give the visas to won’t come back,” Stanley told Off the Bench. “So if they find any inconsistencies or contradictory statements on birth certificates or other paperwork, they refuse to issue the visa. And if there’s a question on just one kid from the 12 on that team, the whole team doesn’t go.

“It’s much safer for the State Dept. to say no than it is for them to say yes,” Stanley said. “If they say yes and something happens, they can get into trouble. If they say no, there’s no way they can get into trouble. But no one on that team was interested in getting lost. These were 12 kids who just want to play ball.”

The problem in Uganda, said Stanley, is that a lot of birth records aren’t written down. Some children aren’t born in hospitals, and many are not being raised by their birth parents.

“When a State Department official asks a parent if they are the birth parent, they often don’t even know what that means,” Stanley said. “In that country, the adults you grow up with are your birth parents.”

Meanwhile, Uganda is slowly but surely falling in love with baseball.

“The kids play baseball there all day, all year ’round,” Stanley said. “There’s no TV, and most families don’t even have electricity. So the kids play baseball all day. When I was with them in Poland, they got up at 5:30 every morning, and were out running. Then it was breakfast, and then baseball for two or three hours. Then it was lunch, and more practice. Unless it was a game day.

“They are happy to do this, and because of the weather there they are able to do it 52 weeks a year. The kids are in great shape — there’s no such thing as obesity there. These kids just want to play ball.”

Grigo is probably right: It most likely would have taken just one phone call from someone high up in the state department, and those kids would have been on a plane to the U.S. That’s supposed to be what youth sports is all about — expanding minds and providing opportunities and helping kids become capable adults. But in this case a group of 12 kids was just overlooked, because the right people didn’t want to take the time to set things right. And that’s a shame.

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Rick’s Cafe Americain appears each Thursday. Contact: Rickchand@gmail.com.