Showboating Vs. Sportsmanship

Monday night, during the Mets - Nationals game, the Nationals bench was apparently doing little chants and cheers that got under the skin of the Mets' journeyman starter Nelson Figueroa. Figueroa said the Nationals were "cheerleading in the dugout like a bunch of softball girls...Truly unprofessional. That's why they are who they are."

So is this unprofessional? Is there a difference between playful exuberance and classless showboating? I suppose it depends on the situation. I didn't get to watch the game so I don't know exactly in what spirit that chanting was. Apparently it was loudest in the third inning after Figueroa walked in a run. Perhaps Figueroa was a bit sensitive in his press conference after the game since he'd blown three leads in the first four innings.

These controversies seem to be following the Mets over the past few years. Jose Reyes was bush for giving too many high-fives. Lastings Milledge was bush for giving fans high-fives after his first career home run (among other things). Carlos Delgado was bush for not taking a curtain call. Is it possible that we are looking at these guys a little too closely?

No, the Nationals should not be taunting the opposing pitcher, especially being that they are a last place team. But Figueroa should probably keep his yap shut and just have John Maine put one in Nick Johnson's back (the guy hitting at the time) and let it be done. Now it will live on in the press for the rest of the season.

Sure Reyes and Milledge were being a little over the top, but they were young and how offensive are high-fives really? Ozzie Smith used to do running cartwheels and back-flips when he took the field!

As for Delgado, he was absolutely right to not take a curtain call. He is having a terrible year following the worst year of his career. He booed constantly by his own fans for months. So he has one big game and they fall in love again and expect him to thank them for cheering for him? Screw those fans! The only thing they are entitled to from Delgado is effort because they pay his salary. He doesn't have to crawl around under the table and be thankful for scraps of cheers leftover after David Wright leaves! Delgado didn't give them the finger. He didn't say anything in the media. He just didn't stand up one time. If he wakes up, starts hitting and carries the team to the postseason, then maybe he will feel he has done something worthy of a curtain call.

Joba Chamberlain is in the news for acting like an imbecile on the mound, but he is bringing that on himself. The guy is a middle reliever who celebrates every strikeout like he just won the World Series. What if a hitter did that arm-pump at first base every time he got a single or a walk. He'd get plunked every other at bat.

There is nothing wrong with being excitable and getting excited. We all get on players who don't seem to play with any joy (Jeff Kent, Garret Anderson, Andruw Jones, Gary Sheffield, etc.) but then we can't stand players who play with too much! I guess it is a fine line, and maybe the fans and media are a bit overcritical. It seems like Baseball takes care of this kind of stuff better than other sports though. If some guy gets too high on his horse and shows someone up, there is no need to whine to the press about it - just go tell your pitching staff to take care of it.

The Slowest Home Run Trot In History

Sometimes being a sports fan can start to make you turn somewhat cynical. I used to think that you needed to be pretty fluent in the language of sports, but it often seems you need a criminal law degree to understand SportsCenter. Most of the problems in sports today have been around for decades; some are only really finding their strides of late.

-The player who refuses to play for the team with whom he signed a contract. He will either sit out or just not try until they trade him.
-Performance enhancing drugs.
-Self promotion being more important then winning.
-Winning being more important than respecting opponents, fans, officials or other players.
-Daily DUI arrests, domestic abuse, parole violations, being on parole in the first place, shootings, brawls, drug use, rape, and the list goes on and on.

Sports and criminal behavior seem so intertwined that we are shocked when athletes don't act like the inmates have taken over the asylum. It is funny though, because in the midst of all the big money, big egos and big federal investigations, you can still find the great stories that made you fall in love with playing and rooting for sports in the first place.

Western Oregon softball player Sara Tuchalski was a senior playing in one of her last games. Her team trailed by 1 game going into a double-header at first place Central Washington. Of course Western Oregon won game one so the two faced off in the second game, now tied for the conference lead, with both schools' first ever NCAA Division II playoff berth perhaps on the line.

This game would not be remembered by anyone but the girls involved, but it would be the most important game of their lives. The stage was set for a typical hero and a typical goat to emerge. In the second inning, the score was 0-0 and the typical hero stepped up to the plate - rarely used Tuchalski, mired in a season-long 3-34 slump, standing at just 5'2", her bat nearly as tall as she is.

Of course, Tuchalski hit a bomb to dead center field, driving in three runs. Of course it was her first career home run, hit with only four games left in her career. Of course the hero had emerged. Of course she never made it to second base - not on her own at least.

Tuchalski was so excited as she rounded first that she missed the bag. She stopped to go bag, but her knee gave out and she feel to the ground after tearing her ACL.

If a teammate, coach or trainer assisted her to stand and run the bases, she would be disqualified and the play would go down as a 2-run single, since that was what base she got to before the play ended. The umpires mistakenly ruled that a pinch-runner could be put in, but the result would be the same.

So there was nothing anyone could do. Tuchalski needed a stretcher and an ambulance. Western Oregon needed a pinch-runner and the game was 2-0. Flashing forward to the bottom of the inning, Central Washington scored twice, so Tuchalski's run would have been the one to hang onto the lead, had she been able to score it.

Now here's where the story gets good: Mallory Holtman was a four-year starter for Central Washington at first base. This was her last home game and the conference title was on the line, so you can imagine what it meant to her to win it. Holtman holds nearly every offensive record her school has, but she probably remembers what hitting your first homer feels like. As she stood over her fallen foe and listened to coaches and umpires quickly run through the possible outcomes of this play, Holtman stepped up with her own solution.

She and shortstop Liz Wallace picked Tuchalski up and carried her around the bases, stopping to lower Tuchalski and allow her to touch each base with her foot. Of course they didn't know that when they lower her onto home plate (just before they lowered her onto a stretcher), that that would wind up being the winning run that completed the sweep and knocked them out of first place. But you get the impression that they would have done it anyway.

But that is not the best part of the story either. The best part is that Holtman doesn't understand why she is getting national attention. She doesn't see why this morning she had appearances on CBS' and ESPN's morning shows. When it seems like the only instinct you see in sports anymore is the same one a 2-year old displays when you show him a toy, Holtman acted instinctively in a completely selfless way.

"She hit the ball over her fence. She's a senior; it's her last year. … I don't know, it's just one of those things I guess that maybe because compared to everyone on the field at the time, I had been playing longer and knew we could touch her, it was my idea first. But I think anyone who knew that we could touch her would have offered to do it, just because it's the right thing to do. She was obviously in agony."