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Little League is effectively organized chaos: one kid’s crying, another’s picking daises, but somehow- the game goes on. It’s less a sport than a live-action experiment in keeping order.

Do you think you could handle being a Little League umpire? One guy recently shared a cringey anecdote about this thankless job with Reddit. Here’s what happened.

AITA for ejecting a pitcher from a Little League game?

I umpire for my nephew’s little league team sometimes.

They’re all around 10 years old, they pitch, hit, and catch themselves, but they’re all still not very good.

Lot of bases being loaded from 12 ground-balls in a row and most hits being fouls or only going about 10 feet.

Sounds like a riveting watch.

That said, kids get hit by pitches regularly.

At least once per game a kid gets hit, if he’s not bleeding or anything he takes a base, and we move on.

However, yesterday during a game, this one kid who was pitching on my nephew’s team throws really fast, but not really accurate.

Oof, well he’s halfway there.

In the course of the game, every batter he pitched at either got hit or nearly got hit.

He hit one kid in the leg, no big deal, he took a base.

Then a few batters and multiple close calls later, he hit another kid, this time in the shoulder, almost drilling him in the face.

Yikes, that has lawsuit written all over it.

I made a comment to the pitcher, asking the kid to “Please try to be more careful”.

The coach came over and shamed me for it, telling me “You’re gonna me him feel bad, he’s trying his best”.

I’m aware that these are all children and none of them are trying to hurt each other, but still.

Safety does become a concern at a certain point.

Next batter, everything is fine, he gets a base after 2 strikes and 4 balls.

Then the batter after him, we get one pitch right down the middle, and the next pitch hit the kid hard.

Batter saw it coming at him, he turned away and it hit him square in the back.

That makes you cringe just thinking about it.

It made a cringe-inducing thud, and he dropped to a knee and started crying immediately.

I stood up and told the coach “You gotta put in a new pitcher”.

Coach immediately bows up at me like “I don’t need to do anything! He’s just trying to throw strikes! He’s not doing it on purpose!” I don’t care if it’s an accident.

That’s really beside the point.

He’s hit 3 kids in this game alone, and almost hit every other batter so far.

I have to think about their physical wellbeing, not just the one kids feelings.

We argued for a couple minutes, and I eventually said I’d just disqualify them if they refused to switch pitchers and he gave in and switched the pitcher out.

He had to pull out the big guns.

I felt bad because the kid started crying, he sat out the rest of the game, and I know he wasn’t doing it in purpose, but clearly he needs more practice before he knocks someone’s teeth out, or just don’t have him pitch.

The coach yelled at me, the kid’s dad called me a jerk, one guy in the crowd was calling me an jerk, and even one of the parents on the other team told me maybe I should have just let it go.

So AITA? I don’t think I am, but maybe I was over-exaggerating since it’s just a little league game.

It sounds like he did the right thing, even if it was the wildly unpopular opinion. Let’s see how the Reddit jury’s verdict landed.

The comments pretty unanimously agreed on the outcome.

One person felt the situation should have been escalated further.

Another put the whole matter into perspective.

If you enjoyed this post, check out this story about neighbors who intentionally tank an open house sale because they want to buy the property themselves.

Someone else shared an anecdote from her own experience.

But one baseball mom summed it all up perfectly.

They wanted a batter, but what they got was this.