Game changer!
The New Jersey Little League player suspended for triumphantly flipping a bat into the air to celebrate hitting a home run will get to play in his state championship game after all, a judge ruled Thursday.
“If you’re gonna have rules and enforce them they can’t be enforced arbitrarily and capriciously,” Gloucester County Chancery Judge Robert Malestein ruled Thursday afternoon. “[I’m going to] allow him to play in tonight game.”
Haddonfield player Marco Rocco, 12, joyfully tossed a bat into the air after hitting a home run against Harrison Little League on July 16, prompting an umpire to eject him from the game, according to court papers.
He was also hit with a one-game suspension, barring him from competing in the New Jersey Little League State Tournament final at 8:30 p.m. Thursday night — a decision the judge overturned.
The punishment outraged his dad, Joe Rocco, who filed an emergency temporary restraining order against Little League Baseball Tuesday to have the suspension overturned.
The court papers claim the boy flipped the bat during a “brief moment of celebration” and that Little League breached its contract “by not allowing [Rocco] to play baseball and failing to follow its own appeals process” regarding the suspension.
The judge noted in his ruling that he was in part swayed by the fact that Little League had posted video online of other bat flips, casting them in a positive light for kids to see.
Little League International has declined comment.