All posts by Kemp

Sportsmanship is alive and well at Division II colleges Western Oregon and Central Washington.

I’ll let Jeff Gordon (not that one) at the St. Louis Post Dispatch take it from here…

Western Oregon senior Sara Tucholsky – a pint-sized, light-hitting outfielder — jacked a three-run homer against Central Washington. In her exuberance over the once-in-a-blue-moon blast, she blew out a knee near first base.

As she lay in a heap, her teammates and coaches faced an unhappy reality: She would have to crawl back to first base, downgrade her hit to a two-run single and leave the game for a pinch-runner.

Her teammates and/or coaches could not help her around the bases. They could not even touch her in the base paths without ending the play.

Then Central Washington star Mallory Holtman spoke up. What if she and a teammate carried Tucholsky around the bases? Wouldn’t she get her home run?

Yes, that was the rule. An opponent can touch the runner without killing the play. So Holtman and Liz Wallace picked her up and gingerly got her around the bases to a standing ovation.

“Honestly, it’s one of those things that I hope anyone would do it for me,” Holtman told ESPN.com. “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.”

Wow… I would write more, but I have some dust from the big, manly things I’m working on using power tools and my hands, in my eye…