Ahillen: No need for an apology from Abbott

BEIJING — Athletes understand, and that’s what makes it so hard.

Monica Abbott pitched her heart out in these Olympics. She was simply the best pitcher here. Don’t take my word for it. Go to bocog.com and look up the stats. Of all of the pitchers on all of the teams, she had the best record (3-0) and the lowest earned run average (0.00). She finished with 33 strikeouts, just short of Cat Osterman’s 34. She also pitched 24 innings — the most on the U.S. staff.

Abbott hurled the second perfect game in Olympic history, and her strikeout to end the seventh inning in the semifinal win against Japan was one of the true golden moments of these Games.

Yet, in a press conference nearly a day after the U.S. had lost to Japan 3-1 in the last game of softball that will be played in the Olympics for at least eight years, the former University of Tennessee All-American was so despondent she could hardly speak through the tears. She barely made it through my interview and couldn’t get through a TV interview that followed.

When asked her most memorable moment of these Games, she answered: “I think walking in the Opening Ceremonies is probably the moment I’ll take with me the rest of my life.”

She said it in a whisper. Like a quiet apology. Didn’t they play a magnificent softball tournament here? Didn’t she pitch brilliantly? The Opening Ceremonies were magical, but attendance prizes are for card parties.

You can look at Abbott as another extremely disappointed athlete who tried her best but lost.

It occurred to me in that interview room that in her world it has to be this way.

Athletes at this level understand that losing is every bit as important as winning in sports, maybe more so. They don’t want a trophy when they lose. They want to feel bad, as bad as they possibly can. If it feels like pins under their finger nails, great. If it’s walking across hot coals, they’ll have a double.

“I wish it would have turned out differently but we got beat,” Abbott said. “We lost and that is the way athletics go.

“We try to seek perfection in ourselves and seek perfection in our sport. That’s why we still play. It (perfection) is impossible to actually find.”

Remember the story of former UT basketball star Chris Lofton throwing his all-tournament team trophy in a trash can after the Vols lost in New York last season? The U.S. women’s basketball team has the bronze medal it won at the World Championships hanging in the locker room here. Four-time Olympian Lisa Leslie keeps reminding them that they don’t want to experience that feeling of losing again, and she has hardly ever lost.

But, through it all, they understand that losing has to be there. It is the hard, cold axis on which the athlete’s world turns. Winning is simply worthless without it.

Abbott understood that during her losing battle to control her tears in that press conference. It might seem ridiculous to the average human — the concept that this has to be extremely miserable for her. She had to feel real pain that might linger for the rest of her life.

And the most weird and noble part of all?

She wouldn’t have it any other way.

Executive sports editor Steve Ahillen may be reached at ahillens@knoxnews.com.