Sara Tucholsky

It's amazing how some things can just make you feel great to be alive.
Sara Tucholsky was a senior in her final game as a softball player at the end of the 2008 season. Western Oregon was playing Central Washington State and Tucholsky hit her only home run, but in running to first, she missed the bag and when told to turn around, she injured her knee, immediately falling in pain.
Her team mates weren't allowed to run for her, let alone touch her, so the only logical option was the most illogical of all - the opponent's star home run hitter, Mallory Holtman, offered to carry her around the bases with the assistance of another opponent, Liz Wallace.
Today is the 2 year anniversary of that incident.
Often times, sports stars get publicized for the bad things that they do - going into the stands to fight the fans, chasing down the opponent with a baseball bat, sliding headfirst to not destroy the vials of cocaine in their back pockets... it's all too commonly all in a day's work.
But here it was different.
Here, it was the 2-run difference between Central Washington win or lose.
Yet here, it went yard and definitively created a moment that none of those players who were there will ever forget it.
And when I watch this, I can't help but well up with emotion. This is one of the greatest moments in baseball and one of the defining images of sportsmanship.
Maybe you've seen it on billboards or on ESPN.
If you haven't, you should watch it because it's what life is all about. In a world where so many people travel through their daily existence angry, hostile, frustrated or simply dead without being told that they're devoid of all life force, it's nice to know that Mallory Holtman and Liz Wallace have class beyond their years.
I'd like to thank them for making me happy to be alive, which I do when I offer this out to students as a journal opportunity in my college English class.