Sure, the WNBA brawl Tuesday was at the Palace in Auburn Hills, Mich.,
evoking memories of a kindred league's low point.  And no one really
wants to watch Candace Parker and Lisa Leslie mix it up regularly, nor
see Cheryl Ford injured.  But all things considered - or at least
considered by several columnists - the brawl between the Los Angeles
Sparks and Detroit Shock wasn't so bad.

"It was, in the classic sense, one of those things that occasionally
happens when highly competitive people want the same thing and one
can't have it, " Ray Ratto writes.  "Plus, actual hands were thrown, as
opposed to those grab-someone-and-stand-still moments which are
baseball's specialties.  And given that this was either the first brawl
in WNBA history or damned close to it, we can also see it as the
aberration that it was.  It was the stuff of stuff-happens, and to get
one's Under Armour in a bunch over it is exactly the wrong
overreaction.  But it was also a gender-neutral nostalgia-fest, a more
ground-bound Lakers-Pistons battle from the late '80s when the Lakers
were winding down and the Pistons were trying to overthrow the
established order.  It is, in fact, touching in a weird way that the
coaches were Bill Laimbeer and Michael Cooper."

Los Angeles Times columnist Helene Elliott focuses on the female
combatants and the marketing slogans they overturned.  "It forces us to
think about the ways we perceive female athletes - and the way female
athletes perceive themselves, " Ms. Elliott writes.  "The WNBA came of
age this week, during its 12th season, when the Sparks and Shock
displayed the raw passion that's usually ascribed only to men.  Give me
that emotion and drive any day, not the supposed ‘purity' and teamwork
the WNBA has promoted as its strong points."

USA Today's Christine Brennan cites Danica Patrick's fiery post race
comportment and fierce tennis serves as further evidence that the
daughters of Title IX play just as fearlessly as their brothers.
"Toughness truly knows no gender anymore, " Ms. Brennan writes.  "When
a soccer star shatters both bones in the lower leg in a violent
collision with a defender, you'd expect the player to writhe in agony,
at least for a few minutes.  There would have to be some tears, too,
male or female, right ?  Not necessarily.  Abby Wambach, the nation's
best player, calmly lay on the field after her gruesome injury last
week, helping the trainer and doctors while telling a teammate before
she was carted off to score the winning goal.  Never has an injured
athlete lost more - a trip to the Olympics - while looking more in
control.  Of course her teammate did exactly as told."