good sportsmanship

I think we have all heard the story of the young disabled boy named Shay, who wanted to join a game of baseball played by a bunch of kids. They let him play. Of course, the story turns out that Shay comes up to bat with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth and the winning run is on base. They do not replace Shay with a regular player, but let him bat. He hits the ball weakly and, in an amazing display of sportsmanship and sensitivity to Shay, the opposing team throws the ball around intentionally, allowing Shay to knock in the winning run as he completed his "grand slam".

The story is very inspiring...

Last night I was witness to a similar display of good sportsmanship (albeit not quite as emotional).

My softball team was playing the Dawgs last night. Our center fielder was stealing second base and somehow pulled a muscle as he pulled into second. He could hardly move, yet we could not replace him. We only had nine players. Taking him out of the game meant a forfeit (and this game was going to be a fairly easy win - we ended up winning something like 16-7).

He stayed in the game. We just figured he would be an easy out and on defense would move over to first base and I would move over to Center Field (and I had a great game in center with 4 catches).

So, he is on second and the next batter is on first. The next batter comes up to bat. He hits a long double. The crippled guy should easily have been able to score, but he could not move. He was limping around third base as the throw came in to the first baseman from the outfield.

He could have easily thrown the cripple out at home. But he held onto the ball and let him score.

That was a display of great sportsmanship.

The irony was that we had an opportunity to reciprocate.

Later on the game, the opposing first baseman hurt himself legging out a single. He stayed in the game thinking he could play. He got caught off first base on a long fly ball that was caught. We could have easily thrown him out while he hobbled back to first. We held onto the ball and let him hobble back. He then came out of the game and was replaced by somebody else, as they had an extra player.