Haddonfield was down to its last out when Marco Rocco stepped to the plate Saturday night. The pitch came. Rocco blasted it over the left field fence with a full-circle crescendo to cap a week that brought this 12-year-old boy from the innocence of Little League baseball to a case study on sportsmanship and courtroom polarities.

We’re trying to cope with it,” Joe Rocco said after his son was suspended from one game in the New Jersey Little League finals. “I’ve tried to teach some life lessons from this.”