Kids Showing Sportsmanship Still Counts [J. Mark English]

Marc Edelman from the Sports Law Blog reminds us that 14 year olds demonstrate the purity and goodness that exists in competition. During a summer that has shown nothing but the dark side of pro athletes, kids have a way of reminding us of why we love sports in the first place:

Yesterday afternoon, at the finals of the Little League World Series, grace and innocence was personified by 12-year old Dalton Carriker, who hit his opposite field, game-winning home run to help his team from Georgia to defeat a group of boys from Tokyo, Japan. When interviewed after the game, Carriker gave the kind of quote that only a teenage boy could give after one of the greatest moments of his life. Unabashedly he admitted, "[m]y adrenaline was about to go crazy ... My legs were about to fall off. I really thought I was flying, like Peter Pan."

Moments like this remind me of the "child" like behavior of someone like Carlton Fisk hitting a game winning home run in the World Series. What is even more touching is what the American team did after they had defeated Japan. This is written by Foy Evans of the Houston Home Journal:

After the victory by the Warner Robins team there was jubilation. Our players and their parents shed some tears of joy. The Japanese players were devastated. They cried in anguish and so did their parents. The most touching thing about the game was when Warner Robins players hugged their Japanese rivals and attempted to console them.

That was drama of the finest kind and it brought tears to my eyes, too. Even in victory the Warner Robins world champions consoled the players they had defeated. I was as proud of this display of compassion as the victory itself.