Little League officials and umpires say that a few times each year, a parent heckles an umpire to the point of distraction — or even ejection.

More than two-thirds of the 36,000 U.S. sports officials who responded to a 2023 survey said sportsmanship is getting worse. Almost 40% consider parents the worst offenders.

Don’t want to embarrass your kid or yourself in front of his teammates and their parents? Heed these tips from Little League officials, umpires and experts:

1. Know the rules

A lot of the chirping that Cam Bernard, co-umpire-in-chief for New Hampshire District 1 Little League, hears from the bleachers stems from parents’ misunderstanding of or ignorance of the rules.

Rule misconceptions are so common that Little League Baseball has a page on its website for parents about frequently misunderstood rules, like whether a runner must slide into home plate (no), whether a batter must avoid being hit by a pitch (yes) and whether a player’s hands are part of the bat (no).

“I think most of it now is just parents that don’t know all of the rules at times, and it can cause controversy on the field,” Bernard said, “because they played a certain way or they have a myth of a rule and they think that’s the right ruling.”

“Unfortunately, when it gets down to the actual game and we call the correct rule ... that’s when the yelling kind of happens,” said Bernard, 23, a lifelong Bedford resident who primarily umpires the town’s Little League. He has umpired at the Little League state and regional tournament level and will officiate at the East Regional in Bristol, Connecticut, this summer.

“On the surface, it looks so simple, right?” said Vanessa Hayes, first-year administrator for New Hampshire Little League District 1.

But baseball is more complicated than it looks, and rules differ from league to league and age to age, said Hayes, who also is the president of Goffstown Junior Baseball and has three sons who play in the league.

2. Act like a parent

Parents are expected to know how to behave.

Still, Little League Baseball encourages its local leagues to consider creating a parent code of conduct. Many in New Hampshire have done that, said Kathie Lynch, the administrator for the state’s other Little League district, District 2.

A lot of leagues require parents to sign their code of conduct, and some post it at their fields, said District 1’s Hayes.

Peter Ulric Tse, chair of the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth College, said agreements like the code of conduct are effective at preventing misbehavior, especially if the consequences of noncompliance are clear.

“You do need a nuclear option,” Tse said. “If you can’t back up persuasion with some kind of enforcement that goes beyond persuasion, then you’re less persuasive.”

They don’t often need to, but leagues have that red button to press.

Lynch, who is in her sixth season as District 2 administrator and was president of Portsmouth Little League for 25 years, said parents can be ejected from games and, if necessary, expelled from their child’s league.

Lynch said she remembers only one game last season in which a parent was out of control.

Of the more than 130 games Bedford’s Bernard called last year, a spectator was ejected from the park in maybe two of them, he said.

Goffstown’s Hayes can recall two parent ejections since she joined the junior baseball board in 2018.

“And we will do it every time we have to to protect our players and the spectators who are handling themselves appropriately,” she said.

3. Show some appreciation

Maligned, misunderstood and mistreated, umpires are an endangered breed.

Little League officials are volunteers, and if they get treated badly all the time, eventually there won’t be any, said District 1 co-umpire-in-chief Rob Hall.

For reference, the National Federation of State High School Associations estimated 50,000 high school officials quit between 2018 and 2021. And they were getting paid.

Hall, a 60-year-old Derry resident, said he’s there for the kids.

“I’ve got a beach cottage. I could be at the beach all summer long,” said Hall, who has umpired for 25 years and worked the East Region final last summer.

Hall said he does his best, but as a human, he’s fallible.

“I’m going to make a bad call,” Hall said. “It’s unfortunate. Believe me, sometimes I’ll go home and feel bad about it.”

But Hall, who has never ejected a coach or parent, said he often gets compliments and grateful comments from players, parents and coaches.

Bernard said the thank-yous seem to have picked up the past few seasons.

“You don’t do this for yourself, and for somebody to come up to you and say, ‘Thank you,’ especially when it’s volunteer (work), I think that is what Little League is really about,” Bernard said. “It’s a huge piece of keeping confident in what you’re doing as an umpire and why you do it and why you want to bring more people to experience umpiring.”

4. Think about your kid

When a parent makes a scene at a game, it can embarrass and damage their child, said Dartmouth’s Tse.

Tse, who has three children who played sports growing up, said the goal of youth sports is to teach kids traits like sportsmanship, perseverance and work ethic. Parents who are so focused on winning that they scream from the stands impede that learning, he said.

“This kind of parent thinks the whole goal of this enterprise is to win,” Tse said, “but there’s a bigger win than winning the game. There’s winning character, there’s winning sportsmanship, there’s winning good values — and they’re actually undermining the bigger goal.”

5. Say something

When another parent is unruly, Tse said, a one-on-one conversation can be effective.

Hayes said she and her fellow Goffstown Junior Baseball board members make an effort to get to know players’ families early in the season.

Having that familiarity, Hayes said, helps deescalate situations when a board member talks to a worked-up parent about becoming a distraction. “I think it’s easier to argue with somebody who you don’t know,” she said.

Tse said people are conformists and act differently in groups than by themselves. The parent with the most extreme misbehavior defines the limit of what is tolerated and makes others feel OK about acting similarly, he said.

Instead of staying quiet, Tse said, it is better to speak to the problematic person. It has an effect, he said, when that person is told, “That’s not how we act around here.”

“Give people feedback,” Tse said. “If somebody becomes unhinged, if they don’t have feedback, they won’t stop, and then you’ll have a whole breakdown.”

ahall@unionleader.com