The home team, trailing 5-1 in a recreational league kickball game for adults, had put runners on first and second with two outs in the bottom of the eighth inning.

There was a bang-bang play at the plate: Out was the call.

But there was nothing routine about the play or the base runner, the son of the mayor in Moncks Corner, S.C., a small town north of Charleston.

The umpire who made the pivotal call on Aug. 6, Graylnn Moran Jr., said that he was out of his part-time job two days later, and that it was an act of retribution by the mayor, Michael A. Lockliear, whom he sued on Friday.

The mayor plays second base and the police chief pitches for the team, named Recreational Hazard, according to Mr. Moran, who said in an interview on Friday that Mr. Lockliear had stormed out of the dugout and started haranguing him over the call against his son, Andrew Lockliear, who is in his 20s. The visiting team, the Toe Jammers, won.