A wonderful story

[fpb]

Some sports have, above and beyond the matter of winning or losing, certain and special kinds of achievement which can be quite unique; never, perhaps, to be held even by confirmed champions, and yet accessible, with a little bit of luck, to any player. They are lifetime achievements, whom the player is allowed - indeed, expected - to dine out on and bore his/her friends silly for the rest of his/her life: my hole-in-one, the hundred-pound salmon I landed, the time I took a world champion ten rounds and lost on points.

Not all sports have such achievements, which is why I am explaining the point. Now in baseball (and softball, which is its female version), the special achievement is the home run: to strike the ball so high and so hard that, by the time the opponents have recovered it, you have had the time to touch all three bases and score a full point (a run). If you are feeling particularly showy, you can do it at a canter or a walk, just to underline your confidence. Every child who knows baseball dreams of a home run.

A day or two ago, the Central Washington University ("Wildcats") softball team was playing Western Oregon University in Ellensburg, Wash., for a local league. The Wildcats were one game behind their opponents, with a chance to reach the playoffs. Western won the first game 8-1, extending its winning streak to 10 games. The Wildcats desperately needed the second game.

Western Oregon's 5-foot-2-inch right fielder came up to bat with two runners on base in the second inning. Sara Tucholsky's game was off to a rough start. A group of about eight guys sitting behind the right field fence had been heckling her. She tried to concentrate and ignore them. She took strike one. And then the senior did something she had never done before -- even in batting practice: shesmashed the next pitch over the center field fence for an apparent home run. With two players already on base, that was worth three points and an almost certain victory - not to mention shattering the Wildcats' hopes.

She started running. As she was about to touch first base, she looked up to watch the ball clear the fence and missed touching it with her foot (as the rules require). Six feet past the bag, she stopped abruptly to return and touch it. But something gave in her right knee, and she collapsed.

"I was in a lot of pain," she told the local newspaper. "Our first-base coach was telling me I had to crawl back to first base. 'I can't touch you,' she said, 'or you'll be out. I can't help you.' "

Tucholsky, to the horror of teammates and spectators, crawled through the dirt and the pain back to first.

Western coach Pam Knox rushed onto the field and talked to the umpires near the pitcher's mound. The umpires said Knox could place a substitute runner at first. Tucholsky would be credited with a single and two RBIs (points scored by others on her hit), but her home run would be erased.

At that point, Mallory Holtman stepped in. Mallory Holtman is the Wildcat's star player, and as a rule opponents are not happy when they see her. However, what she had to say stopped their breath: could they, the Wildcats, the opponents, help Tucholsky complete her home run?

The umpires scratched their heads and decided that they could think of no rule against it. And so began one of the most beautiful scenes in the history of sports. Mallory Holtman, the Wilcats' star, made a chairlift together with teammate Liz Wallace, picked up Tucholsky, and resumed the home-run walk, pausing at each base to allow Tucholsky to touch the bag with her uninjured leg.

"We started laughing when we touched second base," Holtman said. "I said, 'I wonder what this must look like to other people.' "

Holtman got her answer when they arrived at home plate. She looked up and saw the entire Western Oregon team in tears.

"My whole team was crying," Tucholsky said. "Everybody in the stands was crying. My coach was crying. It touched a lot of people."

Even the hecklers in right field quieted for a half-inning before resuming their tirade at the outfielder who replaced Tucholsky.

Western Oregon won 4-2, putting an end to Central Washington's playoff hopes. But as far as any one of us who values certain things is concerned, Central Washington had won a lot more than playoffs. And I hope that any time any of us feel cynical or angry at the human race, we can stop and remember two girls carrying another, in a different colour uniform, so that she could be certified the score she had deserved.

Comments

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Madame, it was my pleasure.

[cheyinka]

Wow. That's amazing. Thank you for posting that!

[lametiger.livejournal.com]

I thank you too. I had heard the TV news headline about this, but hadn't heard how it came about. All I have to say is "Wow."

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Exactly. I wanted to put it on record, and also to explain to all those who do not understand baseball just why this is no less than a knightly gesture.

[guarani]

I'm speechless... but being usually quiet, this should not be a surprise :)

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

Sometimes, kids amaze me.

Sportsmanlike conduct

[norwyn.livejournal.com]

Thank you for sharing that...I generally do not appreciate organized sports...as a public schoolteacher watching millions of education dollars drained by athletic departments, observing the tragedy of young children suffering injuries by pushing their bodies beyond appropriate limits...not to mention the general above-the-law behavior of many student atheletes, coaching staff...I suppose I should stop before I get in trouble here, right?

It is very nice to see some kids demopnstrate WHY we have sports...what a beautiful gesture of sportsmanship and just plain decent behavior. I will be sharing this with my ball players in class Monday morning!!

Re: Sportsmanlike conduct

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Yes. On the whole, I am not a supporter of the overwhelming and, especially in universities, near-professional role of sports in American education. It seems to me to have got far away from its actual educational role and focused on such criminal dicta as "winning is not everything, it's the only thing" - which explains why, for instance, American athletics became riddled with drug abuse to an extent that is still not wholly realized. I love sports, but I think it is wrong to focus children on success for its own sake; it would be better to teach them that a good person may toil patiently for little reward their whole life long, or even end up the victim of blatant injustice like Jesus and Socrates, and still be a good person. That is a message children desperately need.

On the other hand, I love sports for what they should be - the modern version of the chivalrous tourneament, a display of physical and mental courage, observance of rules, and unyelding perseverance. And this sort of behaviour, the Mallory Hartman behaviour, is not only not alien to sport, it is - as you say by calling it "sportsmanlike" - the very kind of mind that sports ought to foster: respect for achievement for its own sake, fairness to an opponent, obedience to the rules, mutual loyalty. That was one reason why I published it. I found myself thinking that Miss Hartman must surely have been the female equivalent of that much-despised subspecies, the school jock, of which even I in distant Europe have heard all the possible evil. If such a person comes out of such an environment, there is hope for us all. And she claimed in the interview that she felt that sports had made her a better person, and that she intended to give something back by becoming a professional coach. I hope that is the case, and that she becomes the kind of coach that children need.

Re: Sportsmanlike conduct

[norwyn.livejournal.com]

I grew to hate sports in general at a tender age because of the abuse heaped upon those less gifted with the bouncy orange ball, of which group I certainly was a member. When I was in college, I would occasionally enjoy the smell of overpriced hot dogs, the donning of my team's colors, the delight of a crisp fall afternoon, (bringing along a paperback if the game just doesn't keep my attention), and going to a game once in awhile, but I honestly haven't done that in years. Perhaps this fall I'll get my kids to a volleyball game, since we go to church with some of the players, and I know they will enjoy it.

But yes, the god-like status conferred upon student athletes has created a steriod-induced monster. The sports field, court, etc., is a wonderful place to learn about teamwork, rules, respect, courage IF PEOPLE WOULD GET A GRIP AND LET THE KIDS PLAY!! Sports is not about winning, it is about personal growth and participation in a group activity. My son would probably benefit from playing, but there is no way I would throw him to the lions like that. He has PDD/NOS (autistic disorder), and would need some patience and a bit of help from a coach...but that might interfere with the goal of the game: winning. I would love to see him play and enjoy, but he likely won't get the chance, in this environment, which is a shame. Thankfully, we have a dance studio where both of my kids take lessons. Watching my precious kids, especially my son with his challenges, learn the love of dance, is a sight that brings me untold joy. You just have not lived until you see a kid with ASD tap dancing and LOVING IT.

Re: Sportsmanlike conduct

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Well, dancing is another thing I love, actually. As with sports, there is no chance of my being light or graceful enough to perform it, but I simply love watching those who can. I even wrote a fic about it, which I think you might enjoy: http://www.fictionalley.org/authors/fabio_p_barbieri/PAATDM01a.html. See if you can guess who the protagonists are from their description. (Sorry about the self-plug, but that fic really does embody my feeling about the art of the dance.)

Re: Sportsmanlike conduct

[norwyn.livejournal.com]

I LOVED it!! Very original, very well done, I did enjoy it. Fred Astaire, I got...but Francis Gumm, I knew was not Ginger Rodgers. I finally resorted to Google, and made a very nice slapping sound with *facepalm* over not bringing up Judy Garland?

Yes, Even Sev was brightened by the magic of the dance...I know I smile every time I see my little people dance...they do seem to quite enjoy it. Of course Sis enjoys the costumes and stage makeup, being a frou-frou little girl, but they both enjoy being on stage. I have always enjoyed dance, albeit with my limited grace and talent, I do not practice this art publicly! As you, I do enjoy watching those who can, and am amazed by the talent in the company of students at the dance studio my children attend. I do wish my dad were here to see them...he would love the tapping, a favorite of his.

Thanks again for the story!

Re: Sportsmanlike conduct

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, my experience as a child suggests that you don't have to use all the psychological warfare I saw described in American fiction, CALVIN AND HOBBES, and so on, to get children, especially boys, to play team sports. Nobody told us to; we just naturally threw ourselves into it, during breaks at school, after school in the streets and in the parks, in the courtyards of high-rise blocks of flats, and in any open space we could find. You just had to give us any kind of ball - we would spot the goalposts with little piles of our outer clothing, and off we were. It was not always soccer, either; soccer for choice, but I remember playing voleyball, basketball, or challenging each other to races down the street. Other children played tennis or swam (I was always hopeless at both, as I lacked the sense of point needed to make the racket connect with the ball, and I hated to get my head into the water with my eyes open). The only place where you would find sports being organized and coached would be local sports associations and the oratorio or Sunday school, where the local priests, after an hour of catechism and some discussion, would troop the children down to dusty little playing fields and break them up into teams. (An amazing amount of Italy's finest soccer players were trained in the Oratorii, by priests with big feet, black shoes and carrying voices. And the Oratorio was also as often as not the home of the local Scout troop.) As for the physical education hour, it was unpopular but not very demanding, and really most children who went into sports did so outside it. I was a bookish child, and anything but popular, but I never remember being turned out of a game - or not wanting to play. Children will all do these things by themselves, and motivate each other to, if you do not make them odious to them. In this area, rather than in the main area of study and education, the modernist theory of education really is correct - children will naturally play games, and teachers, including coaches, ought to be facilitators rather than master-sergeants.

Re: Sportsmanlike conduct

[norwyn.livejournal.com]

We did the same...my parents put up a ball goal in the backyard (or a kid magnet, as mom called it) when my brother & I were kids. We had so much unorganized fun with it. We were always doing something active...I preferred running and racing, since I actually was good at it, since it required only speed: grace and talent optional :D

We did sports after church class on Sunday and Wednesday nights, and the youth leaders were more than ready to sort us and let us play football or volleyball. We would go to the local school gym and play volleyball indoors when it was too cold to play outside. All this after our weekly doses of scripture and directives to be chaste, truthful, respectful, etc.