In a heartwarming show of sportsmanship, a Little League batter embraced the pitcher who threw a baseball that hit him in the head.
Kaiden Shelton, a pitcher for Texas East, faced Isaiah Jarvis, a batter for a team from Tulsa, Oklahoma, when he lost control of his pitch, sending the ball flying into Isaiah’s helmet. Isaiah ended up recovering from the scary incident, but when he saw Kaiden was visibly shaken on the pitcher's mound, he took him into a big hug.
“I wanted to make sure he was all right,” Isaiah told NBC News' host and correspondent Gadi Schwartz. “And I wanted to make sure he knew that I was all right.”
The moment at the Little League Southwest Regional Playoff final on Tuesday began to circulate in a video shared by ESPN. The clip begins with showing the pitch that resulted in Isaiah falling to the ground and clutching his head as coaches ran to his side.
"I was shaken up because I’ve never been hit a ball that hard," Isaiah told NBC's Gadi Schwartz.
After a few moments, Isaiah got up and went to his base, but Kaiden was in clear distress on the mound. Isaiah then walked over to Kaiden and gave him a big embrace.
"Hey, you’re doing just great. Let’s go," Isaiah told Kaiden in the viral video, which now has more than 2.9 million views, as other teammates and coaches began gathering around the duo.
"We felt bad for each other. I felt bad for hurting him and he felt bad for when I was crying and he came and hugged me and made me feel better," Kaiden told NBC News.
The hug drew a standing ovation from the crowd at the stadium in Waco, Texas, and brought tears to the eyes of some coaches and fans.
"It's a high stakes game, and obviously it’s win or go home, and in that moment, that that was what came out of him, was to be a good person," Austin Jarvis, Isaiah's father, told NBC News. "I'm just overwhelmed with pride for for him."
Melody Shelton, Kaiden's mother, told NBC News that she was initially sick to her stomach after the pitch. But the sportsmanship and compassion shown on the field soothed her fears.
"The things that [Isaiah] said to Kaiden and the way that he hugged him, and the way that his teammates came up to him and tried to get him to feel better," she said. "And after he went into the dugout, they just kept trying to get him to feel better. Isaiah, you are great kid."
East Texas went on to defeat the Oklahoma team, and they are headed to the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, next week. But the pair told NBC News they think their newfound friendship will last beyond any tournament.
