A Showcase for Sportswomanship

"Sportsmanship, next to the church,

is the greatest teacher of morals."

-Herbert Hoover

Sportmanship can be defined in many intangible ways but this video may be the purest display of it on film. It won a 2008 ESPY Award for Sportsmanship although I dare say that it seems a misnomer to interject the word "man" in the middle of the word sportsmanship if one of its greatest examples does not involve a single man but two teams compromising females.

This sports moment is about teamwork but not in the known sense of the clanish word. It is about two teams suspending competition against each other to come together at a single pivitol moment on a baseball diamond where exalted compassion conquers to blur the lines between winners and losers. Although the play ended a season and a player's career, the thrill of victory got erased by the agony of injury until the opposition decided that the outcome of the game itself mattered secondary.

Without further adieu, I take you to women's collegiete softball where the losing team eliminated itself from the playoffs by carrying out an uncommon act. After Sara Tucholsky of Western Oregon hits her first career homerun, she tears a ligament in her right leg rounding first base. She is unable to move on her own accord to finish her requisite homerun trot around the bases. If her teammates come to her aid and merely touch her she will be declared out by umpire rules. If a pinchrunner is used, the scorekeeper records the three-run homer as a two-run single. Members of Central Washington, the opposing team, swiftly decide to carry Sara around the bases touching each bag with the non-injured leg thereby completing the homerun.

While this may not be the fastest two minutes in sports, the timeout here from the mechanistic avarice of sports is so refreshing that it celebrates the human spirit with punch-drunk tears and ovation.