Stu’s Notes: What If the Cuban Little Leaguers Defect?

UPDATE: It happened. Maybe. At the very least, one of the assistant coaches has disappeared. Here’s the story.

My brother had an interesting Little League World Series question this morning:

Will the Cuban team defect?

In the culmination of a decade-long effort, Cuba’s national champion received legal access to the Little League World Series for the first time this year, losing their opening game Wednesday to Japan. It’s an interesting competitive development, a country with phenomenal youth baseball suddenly playing within Little League’s rules, and losing 1–0 to Japan doesn’t tell us a whole lot about this particular team, Bayamo Little League, other than that they have at least one capable pitcher (it’s disrespectful how hard it is to find Little League World Series box scores, by the way, and I’m not joking about that). Even more interesting is the question looming over the games in Williamsport. The defection question.

I know the situation has softened between the U.S. and Cuba. I know defections have been dangerous and deadly in their past. But a Little League baseball team seeking asylum, in the best scenario stealing away in the night from a small town in the Pennsylvania Appalachians, would be too cinematic for us to really worry about any cultural consequences.

Also, if it sets back international relations, that sounds like a problem with the country whose people want to defect.

Fargo vs. Needville

Fargo Little League gets the primetime game tonight, and I’m nervous. I still don’t know what kind of pitching these guys have. Needville, though, has already had to play a game, which should benefit Jackson Molden and Cash Martinez. If one of those guys hits a dinger, I’m calling it a moral victory. Especially if everyone has fun.

Hugh Freeze Explains The Blind Side

Hugh Freeze, who was coincidentally hired at Mississippi as an “assistant athletic director for football external affairs” right as his star high school tackle, Michael Oher, joined the program, would like us to know that he loves everybody involved, but that the Tuohy Family would have made this all right had Oher just gone to them. Now, Oher does seem to have gone to the Tuohys, and the Tuohys have accused Oher of trying to extort them, but on the moral plane Hugh Freeze occupies, what’s a little extortion amongst family?

Now that I know we can ask Hugh Freeze about scandals, I want to ask him about all of them. Need to know how much he loves everyone involved with the Fulton County indictments.