BANGOR – Mike Brooker and Chris Parker got their first look at the Spanish-language version of the Little League rules book Tuesday afternoon.

And they’ve had their fill, thank you very much.

Brooker, the Senior League World Series tournament director, and Parker, the umpire-in-chief, spent more than 30 minutes dealing with a protest by the Latin America team during Tuesday afternoon’s Pool B game against the U.S. Southwest.

Although Brooker calls the Little League regional office in Bristol, Conn., occasionally during district and state tournaments, Tuesday’s protest may be just the second time he has needed a rules interpretation since the World Series was first held in Bangor in 2002.

The protest arose after Oklahoma pitcher Jonathan Sebring went out to pitch in the bottom of the fifth inning. Sebring was supposed to hit in the top of the fifth, but Aaron Maner pinch-hit for him instead. Maner wound up with a single.

Osmar Reyes, the manager of the Latin America team from Falcon, Venezuela, protested Sebring’s re-entry.

“Their interpretation of the rule book was, once you substitute for the pitcher, he cannot come back into the game as a pitcher,” Parker said. “That is not true. The rule book clearly states that he has to be physically removed from the game.”

At the Senior League level, a manager can move a pitcher into another fielding position and then move him back to the mound later – as long as the player stays in the game.

Brooker called Little League headquarters in Williamsport, Pa., just to make sure of the ruling.

“I was 100 percent sure of the rule,” Brooker said. “I just wanted them to have a Spanish speaker tell them the rule. But after I did that, they said, no, you just tell us what they say.”

The language barrier between the Latin America team and tournament organizers slowed the process. None of the Venezuelan coaches speak proficient English. Eugene Offerman, who played for the Curacao team in 2002, speaks some Spanish but had trouble translating the phrase “physically removed.”

“We finally changed it to, taken off the mound,” Brooker said. “I think that was what they were having trouble with.”

Sebring, meanwhile, knew he was the subject of the controversy but handled it well. He gave up 11 hits but just three earned runs and didn’t walk anybody.

“That game was just so exciting,” he said. “I had so much fun playing that game.”

Hidden ball trick works

The break from action in the fifth inning of the Latin America-U.S. Southwest game gave the Tulsa, Okla., team a chance to work some trickery.

While sitting in the dugout, they came up with a hidden ball play that was executed perfectly by Sebring and first baseman Wade Ambrose.

“Venezuela took so long on the [protest], so we were talking in the dugout,” Sebring said. “I said, let’s try a hidden ball trick.”

Sebring said after the protest was dealt with and he returned to the mound, he picked up the white rosin bag, played with it a minute, and put it off the mound on purpose. Sebring was standing in the grass on the first base side. When Venezuela base runner Freddy Galvis took a bit of a lead, Ambrose tagged him and showed the ball to the umpire.

“I was going to do a pitchout just in case the runner went,” Sebring said. “Wade Ambrose and I talked. I could not be on the mound when it was happening. We just did what we did in the dugout. And it worked.”

Sebring said he’d never tried a hidden-ball trick.

“We just wanted to see if we could do something to get us going,” he said.

From Madison to Maine

Fan buses are common in local sports nowadays.

It’s not every day, however, you see a bus with 40 fans travel 1,400 miles and 26 hours – most of which was spent on Interstates 90 and 95 – from Madison, Wis., to Bangor.

A plethora of parents, grandparents, and friends from the Midwest hopped on a bus and journeyed to the Pine Tree State to watch the U.S. Central representatives from Madison play in the Senior League World Series.

The Badger State boys did their fans proud Tuesday with their first win of the tourney, a 4-3 nail-biter against Brussels, Belgium.

“They’ve supported us every step of the way,” said Wisconsin manager Mike Reuter.

Reuter said the trip was advertised on the Web site of the Kennedy American Little League.

“We put on our Web site that if people wanted to get on the bus, we had seats available,” he said.

With Madison’s off day coming up today, a trip to Bar Harbor is in the works.

“We’re going whale watching tomorrow,” Reuter said.

With no oceans surrounding Wisconsin, many Madison players will see the giant mammals for the first time.

“There are no whales to watch [in Wisconsin], only badgers,” Reuter said, adding that the families have “had a blast.”