The kids are all right
Posted: Sunday, August 26, 2007 8:28 PM
Sportsmanship isn’t dead, not by a long shot. And if you wanted to see it in its highest form, all you had to do was watch the championship game of the Little League World Series.
Warner Robins, Ga., beat Japan, 3-2 in extra innings in game that was just about as good as baseball gets at any level. Given the high level of pitching at that level of Little League, hits and runs are hard to come by. So you kind of knew after the sixth inning – the final inning of regulation – passed, it was going to be a home run that decided it.
That’s the way it worked out, too. Dalton Carriker took an outside pitch the other way over the right field fence to create one of those scenes of pure elation that makes us watch the games. As Carriker floated around the bases and was engulfed by his ecstatic teammates at the plate, the Japanese pitcher who gave up the homer was face-down on the ground crying as his coach told him it was all right and his teammates looked like you’d expect them to look – stunned.
And that’s when the scene went from beautiful to inspirational. A hand-shake line is traditional in Little League, from T-ball on up. Often, the handshakes include pats on the shoulder or head.
After this game, the handshake line turned into a hug line. Eight innings is a long game in Little League, the equivalent of a 12-inning game in the majors. The score had been tied at 2-2 for six of those innings. After that much time, neither team thought it was possible to lose.
There was a huge language barrier, but these kids knew each other pretty well by the time Carriker’s home run left the field. More than that, they had enormous respect for each other. It all came out at the end.
As happy as the Americans were, they understood how devastated their opponents were. So they hugged them, told them how great they’d played and how great the game had been. They really looked as if they cared about the kids they’d tried so hard to beat.
I’m not entirely comfortable in putting 12-year-olds on national television, and I’m really uncomfortable with letting kids that age throw curve balls and sliders – they aren’t good for developing arms. But once the game is on, I’m as wrapped up in it as anyone. The level of play from kids that age is simply astounding.
And the joy of victory and agony of defeat are as pure as those emotions get. No one’s playing for his contract or even a college scholarship. This week or next, they’ll be in middle school. None of them have ever been on a stage this big, and the emotions on both sides were unprecedented.
Most of the winners will never experience a comparable moment again. The same can be said of the losers. It’s like your first true love – and your first true break-up. You only experience it once.
Kids are self-absorbed by their very nature. And these kids were in the middle of a once-in-a-lifetime wash of emotion. And still the kids from Georgia had the presence and the empathy – hardly traits associated with pre-adolescents – to embrace as friends their former foes.
We’ve gone through a few weeks during which it’s seemed that everything about sports has been wrong. Sunday, it took a team of kids to remind us what makes sports great.
