The West Virginia Power have a busy little Saturday planned at their ballpark. From 9 a.m. to noon, the Appalachian Power Park will play host to the World's Largest Yard Sale before the Power play host to the Lake County Captains in the evening. It will be Negro League Tribute Night, with members of the Power wearing old uniforms to pay homage, and there will be informational booths set up as part of Strike Out Stroke Night. Fans can also win trips to Dollywood at the first of many Pigeon Forge Nights at the ballyard.
And, if somehow all of that wasn't enough for the last Saturday in May, it was also scheduled to be Barack Obama Bobblehead night with 1,000 dolls of the President of the United States in his high school basketball uniform given out to the Power faithful. Everyone's just going to have to make do with all of the other festivities, because the Obama dolls won't be making it to West Virginia in time.
U.S. Customs is currently holding the bobbleheads for an extended search in its Los Angeles warehouse. The bobbleheads have been in Customs since Wednesday, May 20th.
Although attempts have been made by the production company, it is unclear when the bobbleheads will be released. The West Virginia Power has attempted to contact President Obama to make him aware of the situation.
Perhaps they'd have better luck getting through on the White House switchboard if their team's name didn't sound quite so close to a white supremacist group?
That's too bad for the fans hoping to take home a prize, but they'll get a voucher to trade in when and if the dolls ever make it through Customs. Hopefully this can serve as a lesson to our nation's minor league teams. It might cost you a few more bucks, but there's just something unseemly about outsourcing bouncy approximations of our Commander in Chief as a Hawaiian hoopster. Buy American and all your problems go away.
The good news for Power fans is that this little snafu will probably have the team making extra sure that they've got enough lead time to make sure nothing goes wrong on Senator Robert Byrd Bobblehead night.
Josh Alper is a writer living in New York City and is a contributor to FanHouse.com and ProFootballTalk.com in addition to his duties for NBCNewYork.com.
