Kids who won't play on Sabbath lose

You probably don't know that there is a big Little League championship tournament underway in San Bernardino, with a team of Northridge 11- and 12-year-olds involved. One contender has a bit of a disadvantage. The mostly Mormon boys from Santa Clara, Utah don't play games on Sunday. When Little League officials refused requests made weeks ago to reschedule their Sunday game, the boys voted to take the first forfeit loss in the history of the tournament.

"This is consistent with what Little League always does,'' Western Regional director Jim Gerstenslager said. "The problem with (accommodating Utah) is that it opens up a can of worms, where maybe you have a team with Seventh-Day Adventists and they can't play on Saturday or another religion can't play some other day. We have to draw the line somewhere.''

Utah manager Kyle Frei is disappointed in the ruling. He thinks Little League could have been more flexible.

Frei said when the West Region schedule came out July 15, he called Western Regional headquarters and asked them to re- schedule Utah's game with Nevada for a day other than Sunday.

"We hit a brick wall,'' Frei said. "We had our league president and district administrator call and nothing worked. We made about six calls.''

Utah's kids then lost 14-1 to Hawaii in their first game yesterday. The Northridgers play Arizona tonight. More at SoCal Sports Observed.