Let's send April out with a feel-good sports story.

Earlier this week, Sara Tucholsky, a right fielder for Western Oregon in her fourth year of NCAA Div II Softball, hit her first home run ever in collegiate competition. On her way around, she missed first base and injured her knee. Constrained by the rule that players must circle the bases unassisted by their teammates, she crawled back to the base she had missed, but the pain was too great. She could do no more, and was about to watch her one and only home run dissolve into a single.

Then the magic happened:

Central Washington first baseman Mallory Holtman, the all-time home run leader in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference, asked the umpire if she and her teammates could carry Tucholsky around the bases.

The umpires said nothing in the rule book precluded help from the opposition.

Holtman and shortstop Liz Wallace lifted Tucholsky and resumed the home-run walk, stopping to let Tucholsky touch the bases with her good leg.

No doubt if they had been playing hardball, the opponents would have gone to where she lay writhing at first base and stomped on her other knee while shouting "Sparta". But this wasn't hardball. This was sportsmanship.

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