Little Leaguer Marco Rocco of Haddonfield, N.J., 12-years-old, hit a majestic home run in a Little League tournament game against a team from Harrison last week. Marco emulated what many big league players do in similar moments of triumph: he flipped his bat into the air to celebrate as he began to circle the bases. His homer put his team up 8-0 and a step closer to the Little League World Series.

But Marco was ejected from the game, and, by the Little League rules, the ejection included a one-game suspension for the next game too. Marco’s innocent bat flip meant he would would be barred from playing in a showdown against Elmora Township, with a the New Jersey state Little League title on the line. Marco’s father was told that in the umpire’s judgment, his son broke a rule that “At no time should ‘horseplay’ be permitted on the playing field.” No rule mentions bat-flipping.

So Mr. Rocco, who is a lawyer, filed a motion asking a New Jersey court for a temporary restraining order, and got it. The judge that Marco could play, in the next game, which took place yesterday, holding that “Little League is enjoined from enforcing its suspension.”

Marco’s lawyer/dad explained after the hearing., “He [the judge]said he wasn’t going to prevent a kid from playing because he did something that [the Little League] promote[s] all over their own social media.”

Marco’s case largely relied on videos of players flipping their bats in celebration at the Little League World Series, including a video posted on the Little League World Series Facebook page from a game in 2022, when Luis Garcia of Nicaragua hit a three-run home run and flipped his bat much the same way Marco did last week. Joe Rocco said that he and his son had seen that video, and that his son was now understandably confused. “He doesn’t understand what rule he broke when he sees this all over the Little League World Series and he knows that they promote it to the kids,” he told the New York Times.

And, as any baseball fan knows, bat-flipping is now fairly routine when a Major League Player hits a dramatic home run. Bat-flipping was long considered to be “hotdogging” and disrespectful of the pitcher, often guaranteeing a beanball in the offender’s next at bat, but as MLB embraced a “Let the kids play” ethos to make the game seem more spontaneous, that ethical standard has gone the way of single admission double-headers.

The Little League moaned in a statement after the ruling that it supported the decisions of its umpires and was “disappointed that a legal ruling contradicts the integrity of Little League International’s value and rules.” That warrants a “Bite Me!” What integrity? That was the whole point of the judge’s correct ruling. How can the Little League simultaneously promote bat-flipping and punish it? Moreover, whatever a bat flip is, I wouldn’t call it “horseplay.” Horseplay is when players dump Gatorade on the heads of players during on-field, post-game interviews.

If the Little League wants to have a rule against bat-flipping, then it should pass a rule that specifically forbids “bat-flipping” and defines what constitutes a flip. That umpire abused his authority. I don’t like parents running to the courts over official’s decisions in sports contests, but in this case, that response was ethical and necessary.