SOUTH WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. -- The 8th Annual Grand Slam Parade in downtown Williamsport was a little different this year. Oh, the spectators were again four deep behind the lawn chairs on West 4th Street to celebrate the start of the Little League World Series, and the marching bands, cheerleaders, furry creatures and floats provided what the Williamsport/Lycoming Chamber of Commerce calls "Americana at its best."

What distinguished this parade from the others, though, were the players in the crimson uniforms waving from the float shared by the teams from the U.S. Southwest Region and the Mideast and Africa Region. They were the ones from Lugazi, Uganda, a town 30 miles east of the capital of Kampala, and as they smiled and mugged and threw candy alongside their counterparts from San Antonio, Texas, the spectators on the mile-long route gave the first African team to play in Williamsport the warmest of receptions. After all, the Little League World Series is now a little bigger -- and the world is a little smaller.

"Go get 'em, Uganda!"

"Welcome to America!"

"Good luck, Lugazi!"

The Ugandans will need a little luck since their last real game was a month ago, they have only 11 players, they have never performed in front of a crowd and their first game on Friday (5 p.m. ET) is against a more experienced team from Panama. But they won't lose for lack of trying, or practice. Some 12 hours before the parade, at 6:15 a.m. in the Little League complex in South Williamsport, they marched down from their dormitory rooms in the players' village known as The Grove to the batting cages behind their coaches, Henry Odong and Richard Stanley.

Both of them speak to the origins of baseball in Uganda. Odong, who's known as Bouncer because of his size, is one of the country's pioneer players, taught by Christian missionaries. He even named one of his sons Glen after one of those missionaries, the late Glen Johnson. Bouncer traveled to Williamsport with a photo album tracing his own involvement in the development of Ugandan baseball. "I need to thank so many people," he says, and to that end, he has been busy writing thank-you messages on poster boards in the hopes that they will be seen on international television -- the baseball fans of Lugazi will be watching the first game live on ESPN2 at the Patron Hotel at midnight on Saturday.

Stanley, a chemical engineer and the 69-year-old part-owner of the Class AA Trenton Thunder, is the old-style benefactor of Uganda baseball, having built a baseball complex and village near Mpigi, a town east of Kampala. He also funded the past three trips to the MEA Regional tournament in Kutno, Poland, each at a cost of about $30,000, to bring attention to the talent in Uganda and build a bridge to America.

The first two trips ended in heartbreak. After thinking they had made the championship game in 2010, the players from the Nsambya ghetto of Kampala had to be told they had been eliminated because of an arcane tiebreaking rule. Last year, the same team beat the perennial MEA representatives from Saudi Arabia in the title game only to later be denied visas because of inadequate age documentation. So the Arabian American team from Daharan went again.

For the 2012 regional, Stanley sent a team from Lugazi, a sugar town largely run by the Mehta Corporation. In the championship game, the Ugandans beat a team from Kuwait 5-2, and this time the state department issued them visas.

Now, the sometimes tone-deaf Stanley can be described as a piece of work, but put the stress on "work" because he is as tireless as he is devoted. He's not only the timekeeper and gatekeeper for the team, but also the left-hander who throws every pitch in the batting cage.

But what's clear from the practice later that morning is that the trip to Uganda is not about Stanley or Bouncer. It's about Ronald Olaa, Justine Makisimu, Stephen Lematia, Job Echon, Felix Enzama, Tonny Okello, Andrew Namwanjja, Daniel Alio, Tom Agaku, Rolence Okonzi and Fred Ojerku. These are the newly visible children of Uganda, kids who take joy in baseball, whether it's on the luscious diamonds of Williamsport or the hard-packed lot they share with soccer players in Lugazi. The laughter, the delight in besting one another, the hustle down to first on a missed third strike are the same in either place.

Felix, who goes by Fefe, is probably the best player on the Ugandan team, a pitcher/shortstop/catcher with a quick and powerful bat. Even though all the players now have baseball shoes, Felix still prefers to practice barefoot, hitting liners off Bouncer, running around the bases with abandon, frustrating Stanley when he steps to the plate left-handed -- "You hit a homer in Poland right-handed!" -- only to hit yet another line drive.

It says something about Felix, and the world we live in, that his favorite player is Nick Punto, the Red Sox utility infielder. Felix told Jay Shapiro, a documentary filmmaker who has been following Ugandan baseball for several years, that he saw Punto, then with the Twins, on a DVD a few years ago and "liked his energy."

The Ugandans also like giving each other nicknames. Justine is Chulu. Tonny is Jack Sparrow. Ronald is Hustler -- don't challenge him in pingpong. Job is Uncle Pee. And Tom, the smallest of the players, is Kamunguluze, which means Dizzy.