The Cory Weissman story. You need to read this.

Some days you'd swear that John Prine was right:

"The world was angry; the world was mean.
Why the man down the street and the kid on the stoop
All agreed that life stank; all the world smelled like poop--
Baby poop that is, the worst kind."

But then, if you look hard enough, you can find the good people.

I should start this by saying that I learned about it first through Michael Smerconish's radio show.

And if this doesn't make you get a little misty, then you are a tougher bastard than me.

Cory Weissman is a senior on the Gettysburg College basketball team. He had a stroke his freshman year. Never scored even one point.

Cory worked his ass off to come back, and he finally did: by his senior year he was able to do layup drills.

But when "senior night" came around, the coach decided to start him, let him play for a few seconds as a tribute to his hard work, and then sub him out. And he did, and it was great. The players on the opposing team from Washington College cheered him as he got on the court.

And if the story ended there, it would still be pretty cool for Cory, but it gets better.

Fast forward to the closing seconds of the game. Gettysburg is way ahead and the coach puts Cory back in. Cool right? But that's *still* not the really good part.

The Washington coach calls time out and tells his players to foul Cory as fast as possible. They do and he heads for the free-throw line -- they were in the double bonus at that point -- and Cory hits the second free throw, scoring his first college point.

The word "awesome" is insufficient to describe everyone involved with this incident. That is just a credit to the human spirit in every way.

The full NPR story is here.

And this is the video: