Last modified: Wednesday, May 14, 2008 2:51 PM CDT Sportsmanship is so unsportsmanlike today By Tim Kalich I first saw the news buried deep in the sports section of USA Today, right next to the minutiae of baseball transactions and National Lacrosse League results. Then a reader sent me a copy of the full version of the wire story as well as a 29-second clip that had been aired on a national morning news show. “This is a sports story your readers would appreciate,” he wrote. Indeed it is, but it’s more than that, too. First the story. Last weekend, in a women’s softball game pitting two little-known colleges in the Pacific Northwest, the players set aside their competitive juices and did something downright (what’s the word?) human. Sara Tucholsky of Western Oregon University had just pulled a feat she had never done before, not even in high school. She hit a home run, a three-run shot over the center-field fence, against Central Washington University in a game the latter needed in order to keep its chances alive for a playoff berth. Tucholsky, in her excitement, missed tagging first base as she began her home-run jaunt on the opponent’s field. On the way back to the bag, she apparently tore a ligament and collapsed in pain. She crawled back to first but could go no farther. At that point, her coaches tried to figure out what to do. If her teammates tried to help her, she would be called out. She could be substituted for a pinch-runner, but the homer would have to be downgraded to a single. To the surprise of Tucholsky and the home team’s fans, Central Washington’s own home-run slugger, Mallory Holtman, asked the umpire if she and her teammates could help their injured opponent. The umpire told them there was no rule against it. So Holtman and a teammate carried Tucholsky around the bases, stopping gently at each one to let Tucholsky touch it with her good leg. The score propelled Western Oregon to a 4-2 win and ended Central Washington’s last shot at the postseason. It was a tear-jerking display of sportsmanship, one that the losing coach described as “unbelievable.” Why does it seem so unusual? Because it is. In this win-at-all-costs world, fair play and empathy are usually drilled out of us before we finish T-ball. The opponent, we are taught, is the enemy. Though we might not go as far as knee-capping a fellow competitor, as U.S. figure skater Tonya Harding notoriously helped plot years ago, we might not shed too many tears if the other team’s star comes down with the flu. Bad breaks for the other side are good breaks for us. If an umpire calls a ball a strike when the opposition is batting, we’re happy to accept the undeserved generosity. If the opponent has a weakness, we exploit it. If he has a strength, we minimize it. Intentional walk, anyone? Not just on the ball fields, but in many other less benign endeavors, being compassionate to the other side is considered a weakness. Take this year’s political skirmish between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. Obama, after being so close to nailing the Democratic nomination, is having a rough go these days thanks to the racial rantings of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. There’s no evidence that Clinton injected Wright into this campaign — although, to match the preacher’s own paranoia, I wouldn’t put anything past the former first lady in her all-consuming quest to return to the White House. Clinton, though, certainly is enjoying it as she watches Obama squirm. She understands that the only thing that can derail Obama from the nomination, at this late juncture, would be the conclusion of party elders that the country is not ready for a black president with a Muslim-sounding name. Clinton knows Obama’s not a closet Muslim. She knows that he has no control over the loose cannon that Wright has become. But think she’ll go out of her way to squelch the religious and racial bigotry that could hand her the nomination instead? Not a chance. That would require an act of sportsmanship of truly unbelievable proportions. Tim Kalich is publisher and editor of the Greenwood Commonwealth.