Posted on 08/15/2009 8:57:21 AM PDT by rhema
The gift moved by wire and satellite, leaving a saltwater trail. It came from a field on the edge of the Cascade Mountains and traveled around the world. The gift was a story. It began with a hanging curveball and ended with a strange, slow procession. It gave gooseflesh to a phys-ed teacher in Pennsylvania, made a market researcher in Texas weak in the knees, put a lump in the throat of a crusty old man in Minnesota. It convinced a cynic in Connecticut that all was not lost.
At an office in the South, one woman tried to tell another woman the story but cried so much that the second woman had to find the details on the Internet, and then she cried too. At an office in the North, a 250-pound man was wiping his eyes when a colleague walked in, so he lied and said his contacts were bothering him. At a trucking company in the Midwest, a jaded executive cried the first time he read the story and then went back and read it again, because it made him feel so wonderful.
Yes, men cried. As much as women, maybe more: a retired cop in upstate New York, his body confused by conflicting orders from his nervous system; a fire-protection engineer in Washington State, his heart rate and blood pressure soaring and plunging; a biology professor in Montana, his breath coming in long sighs; a self-described redneck logger in Oregon, warm water running in rivulets down his cheeks. . . .
All it took was an improbable swing by a .153 hitter.
A broken strand of connective tissue.
A situation with no clear precedent.
And an astonishing proposal from a young woman named Mallory.
(Excerpt) Read more at sportsillustrated.cnn.com ...
Oh gawd. With that intro I am not reading further.
Is this an essay or a really bad “great-american” novel.... geesh
Turned me off as America is filled with heroes we never hear about.
I just thought the intro was way over the top, could have started “It was a dark and stormy night...”
‘Strewth! After all that build-up, whoever this “hero” is, he’d better have discovered a cure for cancer or saved a few lives or at very least adopted a few German Shepherds from the city pound before the mean ol’ Sheriff could euthanize them.
For anything less...
Of course plenty of heroes don't get the coverage, does this diminish what this young lady did?
This is SI, not The NY Times or Wall Street Journal, Fox or CNN.
We conservatives are desperate to overturn the pernicious effects of the left’s assault on character.
It is even tougher when those on our side belittle the results of those children who rise to our expectations.
Don't sweat a few jaded FReepers, LRoggy. The great unwashed public (even liberals, one presumes) voted these ladies a 2008 ESPY award:
• Best Moment: "Great Sportsmanship" (Central Washington University's Mallory Holtman and Liz Wallace, Western Oregon University's Sara Tucholsky)
CWU softball player Mallory Holtman, Western Oregon University player Sara Tucholsky and CWU's Liz Wallace pose with their ESPY awards.
I agree with the first five posters I’m not reading any further, just tell us what happened.
> Of course plenty of heroes don’t get the coverage, does this diminish what this young lady did?
I’d have no idea what this young lady did, but I’d guess that you have a nice, fast Internet connexion and didn’t find it too much of a chore wading thru all the hyperbole to get to the story, ay.
I’m on a slow dialup connexion in the Jungle; each page that displays takes long enough (no joke) to get up and make a cuppa tea.
I’m a sucker for “hero” stories, got hooked by the excerpt, went in, made a cuppa tea, and saw that the excerpt was merely a repeat of the first page.
Then I looked at the page counter, saw that this story was longer than a Charles Dickens novel, and determined that it would be the Second Coming before the whole story was known to my computer.
> It is even tougher when those on our side belittle the results of those children who rise to our expectations.
In this case the heroine of the story was badly let down by Sports Illustrated. I would never knowingly belittle any child’s achievements, and yet I have been tricked into doing so by a poorly-written story.
Will read later.
(In 2020.)
This is one error I found: "Mallory grew up in White Salmon, a no-stoplight town on the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon."
White Salmon is in the State of Washington.
Here's a video: Click it!
That is exactly what I was thinking. What flowery language for a sports writer.
Central Washington softball players Liz Wallace (left) and Mallory Holtman carry Western Oregon's Sara Tucholsky around the bases after she blew out her knee after hitting a home run Saturday April 29 2008 in Ellensburg, Wash.
It was Tucholsky only home run of her career, as a backup, and playing on a very bad knee that popped after she missed first on her home run walk.
The picture tells in one shot what the video does in 40 seconds and the writer says in 10,000 words.
Well done ladies.
Contrast this story with that about the University of Colorado football team and its coach, Bill McCartney, a few years ago.
Colorado has first and goal, needs a TD to win, time running out. First down, stopped; same for second, third and fourth downs. On fifth down...
Fifth down?
The officials lost count and awarded CU an extra down; the Buffaloes score and win the game.
McCartney knew the real down count and never said a word.
Heywood Hale Broun would similarly be busy ducking brickbats. Imagine a guy who'd write stuff like “He [Carl Yastrzemski] was not just hitting home runs but was in fact, accomplishing the ninth labor of Hercules, bringing a championship to Boston, a city whose previous baseball idol, Ted Williams, resembled that other Greek, Achilles, who fought a great fight but spent a lot of time sulking in his tent.”
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