No crying in softbal......

Every morning my dear husband wakes up, gets his breakfast, and sits down with a couple buddies while he eats. The buddies are Mike & Mike of Mike & Mike In the Morning on ESPN Radio. Today was no different. As you might guess after viewing the photo on their homepage (one of the Mike's stuffing a mutilated hot dog into his trapper), I usually have little interest in what they have to say. However, today after dear husband finished his cereal, he related a story he had heard from the Mikes and, turns out, I was interested (very interested since I'm sharing it with you so I guess I'll excuse the poor table manners).

Apparently the NCAA Softball Tournament is currently in progress (as you can tell I don't follow softball) and when Central Washington played Western Oregon, a really cool thing happened. One of the seniors on Western Oregon's team, Sara Tucholsky, hit the first homerun of her career in this game. As she was running the bases, she ran past first base and missed touching it with her foot. When she turned around to go back, her knee gave out and she fell to the ground, unable to get up.

"Umpires confirmed that the only option available under the rules was to replace Tucholsky at first base with a pinch runner and have the hit recorded as a two-run single instead of a three-run home run. Any assistance from coaches or trainers while she was an active runner would result in an out. So without any choice, Knox prepared to make the substitution, taking both the run and the memory from Tucholsky."

Then, (here comes the good part), someone asked "Can we carry her around the bases?" The someone (someones actually) was a player from the OPPOSING team. One of them knew that according to the rules they could touch her w/o negating the homerun. So what did her and a teammate do? They each grabbed an arm, lifted her up and took her to home plate, touching her foot (on the uninjured leg) to each of the bases on the way.

In today's world of sports where we have parents beating up little league coaches when their kids don't get enough playing time and professional sports "heroes" who throw temper tantrums to the referees when things don't go their way, it was nice to see that good sportsmanship does still exist. These girls of Central Washington essentially helped the other team score, during a playoff game. And as the story points out, there wasn't even a Hollywood ending, Central Washington lost the game. But, the player who suggested carrying the girl had this to say:

"Honestly, it's one of those things that I hope anyone would do it for me," Holtman said. "She hit the ball over her fence. She's a senior; it's her last year. … I don't know, it's just one of those things I guess that maybe because compared to everyone on the field at the time, I had been playing longer and knew we could touch her, it was my idea first. But I think anyone who knew that we could touch her would have offered to do it, just because it's the right thing to do. She was obviously in agony."

They later found out that the rule had been misinterpreted and I'm glad that it was. Turns out one of her teammates could have substituted for her and taken the homerun lap for her. But isn't the way it happened so much better? I think so. In a couple years, nobody will remember the score of this game but I bet Sara remembers her homerun and the two girls who helped her keep it.

When I told my brother-in-law the story his response was "That's the difference between mens sports and womens sports. Men would never do that." If that's really the case, I'm sure proud to be a woman!