No, she doesn't deserve it. For a home run to count, the batter has to do one important thing: complete the trip around the bases. An infield home run, for example, counts just as much as a ball hit over the fence. But both involve a trip around the bases.
Is this story touching? Absolutely not. It would have been touching, though, had the girl gritted it out and crawled (if that's what it took) to get around the bases. It would have been a great life lesson in fortitude and willpower too. But she was denied this by a bunch of emotional do-gooders who just had to carry her around the bases. I find nothing admirable in it.
Oh yeah. It would have really been terrific if she further injured her knee crawling around the bases. In fact, what a great life lesson it would be if the injury were aggravated so badly that her leg had to be amputated at the knee.
(Do I really need a </sarcasm> tag? If you forgot to put one on your post, my apologies. I'm presuming that your post was serious.)
As I expected some would do, you missed the whole point. You help make the writers point that simple sportsmanship is lost. Let the girl have her glory, and let the girls who helped her have theirs.
This was a small college softball game, for crying out loud, not the world series. The batter is a senior, has a career batting average of .153, hit her very first home run, and she messed up her knee going back to touch first base.
The two runs already scored won the game. Why not help her complete what could only have been a dream come true?
Is this story touching? Absolutely not.
_____
LOL. Sometimes it’s worthwhile to see something for just what it is. It was the spontaneous reaction of a group of athletes who chose to go out of their way for one of their own (athlete, not team mate).
Sure, we can put it (negatively) in the larger context of dumbing down, everybody is equal, everybody gets a trophy, everybody wins, so on and so on, but why? That’s not what happened here; it doesn’t fit the facts. There was no committee. This wasn’t mandated. The league commissar wasn’t involved. Just a group of athletes doing what they do.
I guess I have a different perspective, having a daughter who played Div 1 lacrosse. For a good percentage of them, it is still the playing of the game well that matters, not the grinding into dust of your opponent.
Another one is the intentional walk. Just put 'em on first and be done with it.
Another one is the intentional walk. Just put 'em on first and be done with it.
I agree with you. Nothing “sportsman” like in this hollow victory at all. Whatever are we coming to when even games have nothing to lose or win about them.
Not quite, Flycatcher. I am quite late on this story, but I knew my freeper friends would be up on it. In an earlier thread, an actual softball umpire chimed in and informed us that, in fact, if a player is INJURED when he is running to a base he is entitled too (home run, ball bounces out of the field of play, hit batter, etc), then a pinch runner can be called in as a substitute. The umpires at this game were wrong. A great story, but I do understand what you were alluding to.