Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Touch 'em all

Great story.As the ESPN announcer notes, under NCAA rules she would have been credited with the HR anyway. But the players didn't know that.

We forget, what with the hype and the money and the nonsense associated with it now, that the ideal of sport was that it helped us reach for something bigger than ourselves. Every once in a while it still happens.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

By the way, Stephen Colbert "opined" in his own special way that this story is the ultimate sign that women shouldn't be allowed to play competitive sports. Men would have seen their opponent writhing in pain and piled on with a few swift kicks to the snarglies. (Snarglies is my word, not Colbert's.)

FDChief said...

Stephen, for heaven's sakes...

That was my point with this post. Sports are just that - sports. Entertainment, diversion, exercise, an outlet for our striving for physical greatness. There are times when they present us with the opportunity to do more than "win" - they present us with the opportunity to defeat ourselves and become greater as a person.

Musashi said that the greatest victory a duelist could win was to conquer without fighting; to conquer his (or her) own doubts, fears and weaknesses.

Anyway, you're right about Colbert; I've heard this from other places. Which just reinforces my conviction that sports, like politics, is the ultimate mirror. You come to it an asshole, you get more asshole out of it.

Snarglies. Hurts just to say the word...