Baseball players heroically save woman from burning car minutes before it explodes
When it comes to everyday heroes, a bus full of athletes is like a passing superhero; if they see someone in distress, get ready for some action-movie spectacle.
For the Port Angeles Lefties, a summer league team at the northern tip of Washington state’s peninsula across Puget Sound from Seattle, that opportunity came on a bus ride through British Columbia on their way to a game in Kelowna on Tuesday, WWL-TV in New Orleans reported. (Two of the players are from Louisiana.)
The bus happened across a car in a ditch that was on fire with its occupant, 67-year-old Linda Jack, stuck in the driver’s seat.
The players sprang into action, as the driver of the team bus slammed on the brakes, coach Darren Westergard and player Evan Pace assessed the situation, and then players Ronnie Rust, Trey Morgan and Kyle Schimpf joined the fray, first getting the woman to safety and then, for good measure, rescuing her belongings.
When it was all said and done, everyone got clear of the car.
Rust summed the situation up with a nearly spartan economy of words.
“If we hadn’t have gotten there, I think the outcome would have been much different,” he said.
Morgan added, “We were just trying to get everything we could out of the car before the back end caught on fire.”
And Pace described the good fortune in the timing of their arrival.
“Me and coach Darren finally got her out,” Pace said. “I kid you not maybe two, three minutes later the whole car just explodes, like the back windshield busts out. It’s just crazy because we actually missed two of the turns so we weren’t even supposed to be going that way.”
As if things couldn’t get even better, Jack was on her way to Kelowna herself, so the players, in light of the fact that Jack’s means of conveyance was a hunk of twisted metal and plastic and in no way suitable for driving, gave her a lift right to her destination.
“She was going to Kelowna as well so she loaded up with us,” Pace said.
“I just warned her that these guys sing and it could be good or could not be good so she’s just gonna have role with it,” Westergard said.
There was no word on the song chosen by the team, but “Tiny Dancer” seems an obvious choice on a team bus.
And Jack’s keen eye for the bright side left an impression on her benefactors.
“She said that she’s been really wanting to get a new electric car so she said now she has a reason to get one,” Schimpf said.
With the insurance payout on the totaled car, she should be able to swing it, but someone take up a collection and get her something nice.
The baseball gods, however, care not for good deeds and Hollywood happy endings, so the Lefties unfortunately lost their game that night 6-2.
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