RSSUnique show of sportsmanship
CWU's Holtman surprised at attention gesture has generatedYakima Herald-Republic
E-mail
Print
More 'Sports'
- Rams up to speed
- Star's illness doesn't stop Eisenhower
- Davis rallies for OT win
- Fajardo gets 31 points; Grandview tops Selah
- Wapato makes big lead stand behind Blodgett's 32-point effort
- Momentum swings for Yakima Valley
- Ellensburg second at Westberg Invite
YAKIMA -- Mallory Holtman was thinking several thoughts Saturday when a Central Washington fastpitch opponent hit a three-run homer.
The Wildcats, clinging precariously to fading playoff hopes, had already lost the first game of their doubleheader, and this blow would put them three runs down in the second game. So that wasn't good.
Then Holtman, CWU's first baseman and career long-ball leader, saw Western Oregon's Sara Tucholsky collapse after rounding the bag, and her thoughts turned abruptly from winning a game to helping the Western Oregon senior, which she eventually did.
But the last thing -- the most remote vision from Holtman's mind -- was becoming a celebrity.
Yet a celebrity she is, having submitted to perhaps 20 interviews and answered "a ton" of e-mails, and having been a focal point of a column in Wednesday's New York Times.
It's not over, either.
Today, the senior from White Salmon will appear on CBS' The Early Show as well as ESPN2's First Take. Both shows air at 7 a.m. Holtman will be joined by teammate Liz Wallace, who helped her assist Tucholsky.
"It's all been so surreal," Holtman said in yet another telephone conversation Wednesday. "I didn't expect everyone to make such a big fuss out of this."
It so happened that Tucholsky, a 5-foot-2 senior, had never before hit a homer -- to that point unbeknownst to Holtman. It also happened that in her excitement, Tucholsky missed first base and collapsed in a heap while attempting to return.
The problem was a severe knee injury, one bad enough to keep her from continuing her trip around the bases. Tucholsky's teammates couldn't help her, not could her coaches.
She'd be out if they did. And even though the runners ahead of her had scored, Tucholsky's homer would be stricken from the books. So the only option appeared to be replacing her at first with a pinch runner, but that would leave Tucholsky with only a single to her credit.
But Holtman intervened.
"Excuse me," she said. "Would it be OK if we carried her around and she touched each bag?"
The umpires agreed that rules would permit such action, so Holtman and shortstop Liz Wallace -- "she was the one who was closest to my height," Holtman said -- hoisted their fallen foe and embarked on an unorthodox and emotional home run trot, pausing at each base to allow Tucholsky to reach down with her healthy leg.
"No one really said anything," Holtman recalled, "but we all started laughing a little bit. It all seemed sort of funny and surreal, and we all just got the giggles."
The gesture was reported in Sunday's Yakima Herald-Republic as well as the CWU athletic Web site, and by Monday the phone calls began coming.
ESPN.com posted an account of it on Monday, and similar stories have since appeared in The Oregonian of Portland and the Statesman-Journal of Salem, Ore., plus The Associated Press, CNN and other news organizations.
Wednesday night's SportsCenter lauded a photo of Tucholsky being carried as its Freeze-Frame image of the week.
The New York Times item was penned by veteran columnist George Vecsey, who concluded, "Tucholsky was too immobile to join the handshake line at the end of the game Saturday, but her family has been in touch with Holtman, photographs have been exchanged, the two teams are wrapped in a bond of good feeling we can only wish did not seem so singular, so remarkable."
Holtman, meanwhile, remains proud of her thought and pleased with her deed, but somewhat perplexed at the amount of attention they have gotten.
"It's not annoying at all," she said, "and it's awesome for our school and our team. I think the moral of the story is just that winning isn't everything, and that you shouldn't put yourself first."
Holtman hopes to become a coach one day, and admitted that she'll use her story for inspiration -- with something of an asterisk.
"I probably will," she said. "But maybe I'll just take myself out of it and let them think it was someone else."
