A Precautionary Tale

A Precautionary Tale

The news last week that Wewahitchka High School's outstanding softball player Samantha Rich had injured her shoulder in PE class and would not pitch again for the Lady Gators should provide an opportunity for pause for all county athletes.

In the pantheon of local standouts of the playing fields, Rich took a backseat to few if any or her peers.

Twice the player of the year in Wewahitchka's classification, three times all-state, holder of the career mark in home runs and an indomitable pitcher, Rich was headed toward great things on the diamond.

But a shoulder injury will put her on the shelf for much of the approaching softball season and when she does return, pitching from the circle in the middle of the diamond may never happen again for Rich.

The injury was an immense blow to Rich and her team and her head is likely spinning right now about what the future might hold.

Here is where a lesson is learned.

Rich did not put all her hopes and dreams in the middle of a chalk circle.

As her high school coach said the day she signed a NCAA Division I scholarship, her signing was the result of countless hours of work, sweat and dedication.

As her senior year approached, Rich didn't suddenly decide that college softball had an allure. She didn't wake up one day and decide her sometimes otherworldly talents on the diamond were sufficient to navigate the path to a college degree.

And therein is a moral that every young athlete should soak in.

Rich not only excelled on the mound, she was a tremendous hitter, as dangerous as most any this county has seen. While the shoulder injury might silence the grunts of a fastball leaving her fingers, it will likely not silence the sting of her bat, even at the next level.

And her work ethic will carry her far, no matter on the diamond or not.

Further, Rich is by all accounts an outstanding student, a presence most every nine weeks on the high school honor roll - which can be seen in the B section of this edition of this newspaper - and is an engaged student beyond the diamond.

She is, in short, a well-rounded young lady who has the brains, the family foundation, the work ethic and the inner constitution to overcome her shoulder injury.

Even if that shoulder injury means she has played her last softball games, everything Rich represents as a young lady seems sure to carry her far in life.

Jacksonville University should be honored to have her, whether or not her injured right wing ever allows her to let the softball fly to the plate.

Economics? Yes

While the city of Port St. Joe was wrestling with the issue of Sunday sales of alcohol there were many opponents who scoffed about the economic argument that brought the issue forward.

There were many who stood at the podium in the commission meeting room and pronounced that assisting small businesses was, paraphrasing here, something of a smoke screen, an argument being tossed around to erode the character of the city.

One commissioner went so far as to assert that if a business couldn't make it with the six days they could sell alcohol, a seventh day sure wasn't going to make a difference.

A glance at the agenda packet for this week's meeting of the Board of County Commissioners should silence that argument.

Commissioners are set to move forward with an amended alcohol sales ordinance that allows sales in the county on a basis that pretty much mirrors that in Port St. Joe.

The ordinance was brought forward after commissioners heard from small businesses in the county believing they were at a disadvantage with Port St. Joe's decision to change the rules.

Those few extra hours were the difference, the argument went, between competing or not, with maintaining certain revenue streams or losing them.

With the county's unemployment rate spiking last month at a percentage greater than any county in the state, and reaching levels not seen since the paper mill permanently closed, every dime counts for every business in the county.

And the argument that government should provide any assistance possible to spur business, to assist struggling small businesses, outside of playing plain favorites, gains more traction by the day.

Closing Thoughts

Last week in this space I wondered how far we have come as a community, as a county, in terms of judging folks by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin.

The specifics, the names, the actions, were not as important as the question, a rhetorical one which certainly generated plenty of discussion in the community.

The week prior, this space was devoted to snippets of one of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s most famous essays about the measure of a man.

The two columns were of one cloth.

For Martin Luther King, Jr. believed that economic and racial injustice represented conjoined twins.

And to make the case that race and money are not factors in our community, that they do not serve to divide on issues of fair and equal treatment, that they are not weights that tip the scales, whether of access to and response from some elected officials or simple justice and fairness in the eyes of the law, is to deny reality.

Elected and appointed officials can protest ad nauseum, but they are shouting at the wind.