This story really made my day.
Welcome to the Straight Dope, gumpy3885. I’m going to move this to our sports and games section, The Game Room, and I’ve edited your thread title to give some more information.
I saw a short video spot on the morning news today about this, but the writer of that story has made it even more touching. What a fantastic story.
Read the full story here.
In a nutshell, two softball teams are playing each other with a playoff berth on the line. Unsung reserve player hits her first home run ever, but blows out her knee on her HR trot. By rule her teammates can’t touch her. Two players from the other team pick her up and carry her around the bases and to home plate.
Picture here.
Excuse me, I have something in my eye…
I’ve merged these two threads.
This is a really wonderful story, and without getting too misty… it’s always good to see people at their best in sports.
Don’t forget, the players carried across the plate the run that probably prevented them from winning the game. They weren’t by 10 runs, they were losing the game. When the dictionary is revised, this story needs to go in it under the entry for sportsmanship.
Aww shoot, now I got something in my eye too.
And it is for this reason that I will continue championing sport as a necessary and integral part of our culture.
Because for every overpaid ass that won’t sign a hat for a kid, there are eighteen players such as these.
I don’t mind telling you all I’m misty right now.
What a great story!
I’m with Happy Scrappy Hero Pup. It’s stories like this that remind me of the ideal that school sports should be shooting for.
Man, I’m not a sports fan, but that’s an amazing story. Well done, girls. That’s how the game is played.
That’s just awesome.
Those girls knew without even thinking that the competition sometimes is less important than the sportsmanship.
This is wonderful. 
I remember when Greg Norman blew a lead on the last round of the 2006 Masters golf and Nick Faldo overtook him.
Norman’s dignified and sporting response rightly won him world-wide admiration.
‘The fallout from the tournament was immediate, and unexpected. The fax machine in Norman’s office began humming. (An Australian newspaper had printed the number and encouraged readers to offer their support.) Letters poured in by the thousands. Overnight, golf’s most cocksure figure had become a lovable loser. Norman played at Hilton Head the week after the Masters and enjoyed numerous rousing ovations and a lot of heartfelt words from his fellow competitors, who were more accustomed to rolling their eyes at the Shark when he commuted to tournaments in his own helicopter.’
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/golf/specials/masters/2006/03/29/10years.after0404/index.html
That’s what baseball (or softball) is all about.
When I was a kid playing baseball, if the other team made a spectacular play, my father would clap and yell “Great play!” I asked him why he did that and he said “Son, they may be on the other team, but baseball is to be enjoyed, not fought. Good play should be appreciated.”
I always remembered that.
A couple of years ago my slo-pitch team broke into two factions, and created two new teams. There was some arguing over money. The first time we played each other after all that shit, my team went on a tear in the first inning and scored three runs, and had the bases loaded. I stepped up and prompty hit a monstrous grand slam over the left field fence. As I rounded the bases, every infielder said something like “Nice poke” or “Great hit, Rick.”
I’ll never forget that either.
When my kids play ball, they’ll be taught the same.
Well put.
I had a great big something when I read the story. Holy Cow, those kids are great!
:sniff:
:grabs tissue:
:hoooooooonk!:
Sorry, that was beeyootiful.
The Central Washington site now features this page, which documents the attention being paid this story. Links to other articles are included, and more are sure to be added in the coming days.
Nitpick: The story you linked was written in 2006 in observance of the tenth anniversary of Faldo’s come-from-behind triumph over Norman in 1996.
Yes, well done. That’s above and beyond the call of duty, certainly. Good on them. 
I disagree. This is not a friendly game. You supposed to try to win. This would no different than the Yankees throwing the World Series to Cubs because the Cubs haven’t won the World Series in 100 years. Should the Patriots have let LT run a few touchdowns in the playoffs last year because he was inured for the championship game?
These girls (not woman, they played like children) should made her take the single.
As a Brit I know little or nothing about softball but know a hell of a lot about sportsmanship which this was.
Incidentally, who pissed in your cornflakes today?
An inexact analogy. She’d already hit the ball over the fence and needed only complete the bases in her own time, and suffered a freak injury in doing so. You’d be closer if the opponents had given her an easy hit because she’d never hit a homer or she had come into the game with her leg in plaster.
I rate it more on a par with a soccer team kicking the ball out of play when an opponent is injured, and the corresponding convention that they be given the ball back from the resulting throw-in. No-one who knows dick about the game would argue “Well, you’re supposed to try to win. While the other side’s a man down, you’ve all the better chance to score”, nor “It’s our throw-in and our ball. Not to be ungrateful or anything, but we’re going to keep it”.