We don't get goose bumps enough.
It's easy to forget about the good, the substantive and the classy when we're inundated with their opposites.
And we're entering the season during which parents show up to a ballfield and become poster children for birth control.
So we forget that not all college athletes are self-involved, nor do all teens live maturity-free by their cell phone. Every so often, we get examples of the adults being behind the youngsters when it comes to class and sportsmanship.
When we see these displays, it's mighty inspiring.
This has been a good spring for that.
In a Division III softball game across the country in April, Western Oregon senior Sara Tucholsky hit her first career home run against rival Central Washington in a big conference game.
She missed first base and remarkably tore her anterior cruciate ligament going back to touch it. If she couldn't round the bases, it was thought, the run wouldn't count. Nobody from her team could touch her, and using a pinch-runner would drop the three-run homer to a two-run single.
So Central Washington first baseman Mallory Holtman asked the umpire if the homer would stay intact if the opposition carried Tucholsky around the bases and let her touch each one.
She was told that was allowable, so Holtman and shortstop Liz Wallace carried Tucholsky around the bases for her first and only college home run.
ESPN's story featured several minutes of mesmerizing video, topped off by an almost "what's the big deal?" reaction from Holtman.
Just a few weeks ago, Nicole Cochran thought she had won the Washington high school state 3,200 meters for the second straight year.
Minutes after crossing the finish line, meet officials ruled that she had taken too many steps on the inside line on the penultimate lap and disqualified her. An appeal failed.
The new winner was Andrea Nelson, and the order of finish changed. So Nelson and those who finished behind her got with Cochran, gave her the first-place medal and exchanged the other medals appropriately. Nelson gave up No. 1.
Early last month, Dan Patrick skipped talk of baseball, pro football's draft and the NBA playoffs, thanks to a story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about an 18-year-old high school baseball player who has liver cancer.
All John Challis wanted, after not playing baseball for a few years, was one more visit between the lines when it mattered, one more visit before his short time was up.
Keep the hankie nearby if you read the story, full of high school kids turning to another for inspiration, for a message, for clarity, the tale of a teen facing his final months with more strength than the adults who surround him.
Challis found out about his cancer almost two years ago, and doctors gave him only a few months back then. Having proven them wrong, he continued to progress, and we fast-forward to mid-April.
It was just a game, Freedom High facing Aliquippa. Called on to pinch-hit, Challis reached the plate and saw that the opposing catcher had Challis' number and initials on his mask.
Challis was worried that he'd get a simple walk or an easy pitch. Instead, in came a fastball, and out went that fastball to right field for a solid and legit single.
Sports' modus operandi is too filled with scowls and greed and contracts and tantrums and threats and sometimes violence, on all levels, and it's tiring.
We need more sniffles every now and then.
Contact Michael A. Lough at 744-4626 or mlough@macon.com
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