Lawyer goes to bat for son over Little League suspension for celebrating home run
When Marco Rocco, a 12-year-old Little League baseball player from Haddonfield, New Jersey, hit a home run in the sixth inning of a game that could send his team to the state championship playoffs, he did something to celebrate: He flipped his bat in the air.
As Marco trotted around the bases with his team ahead 8-0, an umpire ejected him from the game for tossing his bat. Under Little League rules, an ejection also required him to be suspended for one additional game.
What happened next was unprecedented in youth sports. Marco’s father, Joe Rocco, a commercial real estate and land use attorney and a partner at Campbell Rocco Law, decided to take the league to court. After a hearing in July, Judge Robert G. Malestein of the Gloucester County Superior Court of New Jersey Chancery Division ruled in Rocco’s favor, reversing the umpire’s call and allowing Marco to play in the next game.
“He didn’t understand what rule he’d violated,” Rocco says of his son. “When we drove home in the car, he kept saying to me: ‘Dad, if I knew there was a rule against bat-flipping, I would have never done it.’”
The case generated a substantial amount of media attention—especially in an era when unruly parents in youth sports have led to a decline in the number of people willing to volunteer as umpires.
And as the World Series begins later this month, MLB players and fans alike certainly will be watching for and weighing in on controversial umpire calls.
In response to the ruling, Little League International said in a statement that “Little League is extremely disappointed that time, energy, and attention were diverted away from our volunteers and communities who are creating positive experiences for all players and families. … Little League maintains that tournament rules serve as the guide for any determination regarding conduct, of which falls distinctly under the discretion of the umpire,” the statement says.
For Rocco and his son, the issue was that Little League has no rule against bat-flipping—and, he argued, if the league doesn’t want to encourage bat flips, why does it celebrate them on its website and on social media?
Bat-flipping and emotional displays on the field
Bat flips are a fairly recent phenomenon in baseball. For much of baseball’s history, emotional displays after big plays were discouraged: After hitting a home run, a player was expected to stoically run the bases. But players in South Korea and Latin America have enthusiastically embraced post-home run celebrations, and in an effort to attract young fans, Major League Baseball has begun to encourage them too.
MLB’s website gushed about a bat flip by Yankees player Jazz Chisholm Jr. in a playoff game in October, and an article celebrating José Bautista’s epic bat flip after a home run in the 2015 American League Division Series.
With the help of Fox Rothschild, Rocco drafted a letter to the league appealing the umpire’s call and the decision to suspend Marco. After the league declined to reverse the decision, Rocco and his attorneys went to court to reverse a disputed umpire’s call.
Brian Berkley, an attorney with Fox Rothschild, said the case had to move quickly. Marco had been ejected July 16, and the next game in the tournament was July 24. The team put together a complaint within 24 hours.
According to Rocco, Little League admitted that its rules don’t prohibit bat flips. Instead, the league argued in court that his son’s actions violated a “no-horseplay rule” and were also unsportsmanlike and unsafe.
Rocco took issue. “My belief, which the court agreed with, was that he didn’t do anything wrong,” he says. “If he had violated a rule, I would have told him to accept the punishment and learn a lesson.”
Central to the plaintiffs’ argument in Rocco v. Little League Baseball Inc. was that Little League International actively promotes bat flips. Berkley’s team showed Malestein a video posted on Little League’s website of a player during a 2022 Little League World Series game joyfully tossing his bat after hitting a home run and an announcer marveling at the height of the bat flip.
One additional legal rub was that Rocco’s attorneys needed to establish that there was an implied contract with Little League International and that by not following its own rules, the league had breached that contract.
“In my experience as a contract litigator for 20 years,” Berkley says, “it’s really, really hard to establish an implied contract between parties for obvious reasons. It makes common sense that for you to have a contract with someone, you have to sign a paper.”
Berkley’s team found an existing precedent in an Illinois case that established standing by connecting participation in smaller leagues to Little League International. In exchange for accepting parents’ dues, the league agreed to abide by Little League rules. Since there are no express rules against bat flipping, ejecting Marco was a breach of contract, they argued.
They also contended that the league enforced its rules “arbitrarily, unreasonably, and/or capriciously.”
The defense countered that overturning the call would lead to a decline in volunteer umpires and that the case would be a slippery slope that would open a floodgate of lawsuits by aggrieved parents.
Father and son in Philadelphia after Game 5 of the 2022 National League Championship Series when the Philadelphia Phillies beat the San Diego Padres to clinch a World Series berth. (Photo courtesy of Joe Rocco)Judge calls it as he sees it
Malestein disagreed and ruled in favor of Marco returning to play—just hours before the playoff game was scheduled to start.
Marco was watching court proceedings live on video when the judge reversed the call and lifted his suspension. “He was ecstatic that he’d get to play in the game,” his father said. “That reaction was worth every penny that I spent and every ounce of effort that I put into it.”
He’s sympathetic to the concern that the ruling could encourage parents to head to court to challenge an umpire’s call. But Rocco believes the circumstances in this case are unique, and that is wasn’t merely a dispute over balls and strikes.
Jeremy Evans, an attorney and CEO of the firm California Sports Lawyer, says courts have been extremely reluctant to intervene in decisions by umpires or referees, whether in professional or amateur sports.
“You can definitely sue, but almost never are they going to overturn an outcome,” Evans says.
“I think the judge overstepped,” Evans says of this case. “For umpires, that’s their domain. Their job is to make those calls. … Courts have said: ‘Wait a second, the umpire has to have the discretion to choose what happens.’”
In Major League Baseball, calls can be challenged and even overturned. (In a bizarre incident during a 2012 game between the Washington Nationals and the St. Louis Cardinals, a hit by the Nationals’ Michael Morse was reversed from an out to a grand slam home run. Umpires had Morse return to home plate and re-enact his swing without a bat and then run the bases behind three of his other teammates.)
The MLB players’ current contract includes procedures for players to appeal suspensions and provisions and involve an arbitrator if the parties can’t come to an agreement—so the ruling likely won’t have much effect on the big leagues.
“I mean, I’m glad the kid got to play,” Evans concedes. “But going forward, it sets a bad precedent that judges can come in and determine the outcomes of games. And I think you can make an argument, and a strong one, that this kid was demonstrating unsportsmanlike conduct.”
Perhaps flipping a bat when you’re leading the opposing team 8-0 is bad form, but technically, it’s still playing by the rules. Though ABA Journal reached out for comment to several retired umpires associated with the Little League World Series Umpire Alumni International, none of them were willing to go on record about the case.
Marco went on to play with his team in the playoffs, where they were eliminated after one win and two losses. That didn’t matter as much as getting to play that one critical game with his friends, Joe Rocco says. “This team was very important to him. They’re a very close group of friends, very tight-knit.”
Rocco feels the case taught his son a valuable lesson.
“Just about everyone was saying to us that you’re never going to win. You can’t win. This is a waste of time,” he says. “But you can’t listen to people saying you can’t do something. If you believe you’re right, you take matters into your own hands and find a way to get it done.”
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