It's a pretty common occurrence in the world of sports. Two teammates brought together by chance, bound together by their love for a game. But sometimes tragedy happens and the two are tied together for reasons that neither of them wants. That is the story of Johnathan Taylor and Zach Cone. Taylor was a star player for the University of Georgia who was paralyzed in an outfield collision with his teammate Zach Cone, who is also one of his best friends. Taylor is paralyzed from the waist down and though his doctors say he is making progress is probably never going to walk again, let alone ever play baseball. Cone, uninjured, kept himself focused and played well enough to be drafted number 37 overall in this weeks first year players draft by the Texas Rangers.
While this began as a sports story it now turns into just a feel good human story. In an unprecedented and classy move, those same Texas Rangers drafted Johnathan Taylor in the 33th round of the draft. Rangers director of amateur scouting Kip Fagg saying "He's a great kid and he's going through a terrible time in his life and we thought this would be something to uplift him, I've seen the kid play since high school, he was a great player at Georgia." You can read the entire story here http://sports.espn.go.com/dallas/mlb/news/story?id=6641490.
Quite often the subject matter of this blog will be something negative or controversial or even a huge breaking news story from the world of sports because that is what is drilled into our heads in this day of the 24 hours a day sports news cycle. But it is stories like this that remind us of the good that can come from sports. A good I'm sad to say that we, myself included, just don't seem to embrace enough.
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