Posted by CatTales
on 8/2/2009, 1:42 am
24.210.46.244
JOCKS BEHAVING BADLY
Sportsmanship Doesn’t Have Rulebooks
Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Motion states that “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”
Let’s test it out. Remember that memorable example of sportsmanship two years ago in women’s softball when a player hit the winning home run but injured her knee touching first and couldn’t run it out?
Because the rules state your teammates can’t touch or help you on the basepath, the outcome of the game hovered in the balance as the player lay on the ground writhing in pain. The matter was settled when members of the opposing team picked her up (perfectly legal) and carried her around the bases.
If Newton was correct, that incident should generate an equal and opposite reaction.
Fast-forward to last May. In Minnesota’s College Athletic Conference women’s softball state tournament, Central Lakes College was playing Rochester Community and Technical College. The game was scoreless in the bottom of the seventh (last) inning. Central Lakes was up. If they scored, they would not only win but their pitcher, who’d pitched seven no-hit innings, would record her first no-no.
First baseman Ashly Erickson didn’t let her down. She smacked a pitch out of the park for a walk-off home run. Pandemonium. Exuberant teammates high-fived her as she rounded third.
Jean Musgjerd, Rochester’s coach since 1994, calmly went out and reminded the umpire of the rule prohibiting teammates from touching a batter or baserunner running the bases.
Having no choice, the ump nodded and said, “Batter’s out.”
Rochester won 4-0 in extra innings. Afterward, Musgjerd told the Star Tribune, “You don’t want to win in that way, but you have to play by the rules.”
Others had a different opinion.
Of the walk-off-walk-back-on homer, ESPN.com’s Rick Reilly called it the first game ever lost by congratulations.
“I hate this kind of crap,” he wrote. “There’s nothing cheaper than using some tiny, unconnected technicality to rob somebody. My e-mail box fills up with these kinds of stories all the time: ‘I lost the pine box derby because a den master said I didn’t fill out the form right'…'They said the goal didn’t count because my jersey was out.’”
Central Lakes’ interim coach Heidi Rogge told him, “I can’t imagine a coach thinking that way. I couldn’t be that petty. How can someone feel good calling that?”
What we allow, we encourage.
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