The Little League World Series is a prestigious event where kids 11-13 get to play baseball, and get to live their dreams of being on national television. Now, The Department of State is ruining one of those team’s dreams.

A team from Uganda would have been the first African team to ever compete in the Little League World Series, but, now, the US Department of State has denied visas for them, preventing them from entering the country.

The Department of State has denied to comment why they made this decision, but, they did say that the team’s documentation “contained discrepancies.” Contained discrepancies my butt. Are they racist? They deny to comment why they did this and give some stupid excuse.

They denied these kids the chance to live their dreams and play for something, but, now, they can’t. They live in a poor country, and by getting into the LLWS, they would have made their country proud. The DoS has denied their chance at glory.

“It is unfortunate, as we were very much looking forward to welcoming the first African team to the Little League Baseball World Series,” league president Stephen Keener said. “However, we have worked very closely with our State Department in recent years, and we very much appreciate their diligence in this matter.”

Little League VP Patrick Wilson said the State Department cited privacy issues in declining to reveal more details.

“We knew their documents were under review … but it’s been a couple days of back and forth.” That was before the decision was confirmed Friday, Wilson told The Associated Press in an interview by phone. He said the decision was considered final (which is stupid-they can’t reverse a decision like this in more than half a month?).

The Rev. John Foundation Little League team from Kampala won the Africa and Middle East region tournament, which was played in Poland on July 16, where they beat the Arabian American Little League, from Saudi Arabia, team 6-4. The Saudi Arabia squad was mostly made up of US citizens’ children who lived overseas.

The Ugandan team is rather new, playing in their first tournament in 2008. It’s sad to see the Department of State deny them.

(Credit to the USA Today for the info.)

It was the first time an Africa team has made it this far.