Little League World Series 2011: Did Uganda Attempt to Cheat Their Way In?

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Little League World Series Removes Uganda from Tournament

Uganda had recently qualified for the 2011 Little League World Series but they were removed just weeks before the tournament after discrepancies arose on the birth certificates of some of the Uganda players.

ESPN has the scoop on what happened to the Uganda Little League team,

A youth baseball team from Saudi Arabia received a berth to the Little League World Series after a squad from Uganda was denied visas because of discrepancies over players' ages and birth dates.
The State Department last week said some visa applications for Ugandan players included birth records altered to make players appear younger. Youth ages 11 or 12 as of April 30 can play in the World Series, which runs Aug. 18-28.

Cheating and changing birth certificates goes back a long ways, all the way back to 2001 when Danny Almonte made a splash at the Little League World Series.

Almonte pitched a perfect game and went on to guide his team to a third place finish in the series before it was discovered that his birth certificate was forged by his father. His father was eventually arrested and was sent to jail for the incident.

The Almonte scandal was one of the biggest scandals in sports history, so who knows what would have happened had the Uganda team been allowed to participate this year.

The Little League World Series could not afford another disaster by allowing ineligible players to take part in the tournament as the event lost a lot of its luster following the 2001 World Series. The Danny Almonte experience was bad enough for the sport and the event, so hopefully these things can continue to be prevented in the future.

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—Matt Faulconer