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Sports Watch
SOMETIMES, sports brings out the best and the worst in people. We've seen some unfortunate incidents recently. A rare feel-good
sports storyMajor League Baseball tops the list with its out-of-control batters charging the mound because of brush-back pitches.
The sooner baseball can clamp down on such senseless incidents the better.
Make it a mandatory five-game suspension if a batter rushes out after a pitcher. That will curb such nonsense.
Sure, the players association will whine. But it's about time baseball does something about curbing free-for-alls started because some batter thinks he's a human beanbag.
The National Hockey League, too, could adopt more punitive measures if a player uses his stick as a weapon instead of his fists.
Two other recent events weren't so endearing, either.
One involved the suspension of 19 Los Angeles Dodgers in the brawl with some Chicago Cubs fans at Wrigley Field.
It's bad enough the Dodgers were unfairly punished.
What's more galling is that the jerk of a fan arrested for disorderly conduct in the incident had the chutzpa to file suit against the players and Cubs organization, the latter for failing to provide adequate security.
Let's see if I get this right.
The Cubs organization was negligent in securing the stadium and protecting the visiting players from jerks like him. Worse yet, it couldn't protect him once the players got their hands on him.
THEN, there's that farcical caper of the University of Hawaii trying to hire a women's track coach.
Everybody thought it would be nice and neat. Turns out, former Rainbow star Gwen Loud-Johnson must have been playing hard to get.
She applies. UH offers her the job. She turns it down because the pay's not enough to move her family here.
Excuse me? Didn't she know about the cost of living in Hawaii?
It makes you wonder why she bothered to apply in the first place, knowing what was all involved.
The upshot of it is that it only embarrassed the university, which should also have done a better screening job.
All of the recent negatives, though, were saved by the most positive, feel-good story of sportsmanship, perhaps of this or any other year.
A young woman named Esther Kim, 20, gave up her Olympic dream, forfeiting the title match to her injured friend, Kay Poe, so that the latter could make the U.S. taekwondo team for the Summer Games in Sydney, Australia.
The No. 1 flyweight in the world, Poe hurt her left knee in the semifinals and was unable to fight the next day against Kim, a decided underdog.
Kim forfeited the match with a dramatic bow down, causing Poe to burst into tears at the gesture from her friend of 13 years. Both train under Jin Won Kim, Esther's father.
"I just started crying, because this was her chance just as much as it was mine. Really, it was the most heartfelt moment of my life," Poe said after the Olympic qualifying tournament in Colorado Springs.
Hawaii taekwondo master Dae Sung Lee attended the tournament at the U.S. Olympic Center and said it was such an emotional moment.
"Everyone was crying. It was a very emotional, very beautiful moment," said Lee.
"That can only happen in taekwondo. No other sport."
The story will be documented in a CBS "48 Hours" special, according to Lee.
Lee will be on the staff of the U.S.Olympic team at Sydney when taekwondo will be recognized as an official sport for the first time.
Bill Kwon has been writing about
sports for the Star-Bulletin since 1959.