Please, Say It Ain’t So, Jim Murray

The thing about Jim Murray is, he sees pretty clearly for a guy who wears eyeglasses so thick they could have sunk the Titanic.

Mt. Wilson’s got nothing on these lenses. People talk about “Coke bottle” glasses. This guy has a case of empties balanced on his nose.

Now understand, dear reader, that these words are written as homage. If you don’t read The Times’ sports section, if you don’t know Murray’s work, let me put it this way: Babe Ruth is to baseball as Jim Murray is to sportswriting.

Murray’s readership has numbered in the millions. The scribes he has influenced number in the thousands. He was known as the best, period, long before Sports Illustrated dubbed him “King of the Sports Page” in 1984. His Pulitzer came later.

What got me thinking about Ol’ Four Eyes is Casey Martin, America’s newest sports hero. He, of course, is the disabled golfer who sued the Professional Golfers’ Assn. under the Americans With Disabilities Act and last week won the right to compete with the aid of a cart. Fate cursed Martin with a rare progressive circulatory condition that has rendered his right leg so weak and defective that he wakes up in pain every night. Someday, doctors say, it may snap, and the wisest medical course may be amputation.

Like most right-thinking Americans, I was rooting for Martin all along. So I was more than dismayed a couple of weeks back when Jim Murray, of all people, rose up and defended the PGA’s stubborn refusal to cut Martin some slack.

Say it ain’t so, Jim!

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“It’s so, kid. It’s so,” Murray more or less said the other day when I talked to him for the first time in my life. The court’s decision has only firmed Murray’s opinion.

Other Murray fans, I imagine, may have also felt a sense of betrayal as he argued that walking is essential to golf and that a cart would thus give Martin an unfair advantage. Murray, after all, usually comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable. Allow me to quote from one of his books, “The Jim Murray Collection.”

Let’s start light. Here’s Murray on Jan. 11, 1979, on the physical demands of golf:

“Bob Murphy is roughly in the same physical condition as an Irish bartender. He could match bellies with Jackie Gleason. . . . Here he is, the first day’s co-champion. . . .

“Pros in other sports get what Churchill promised the British--blood, sweat and tears. Pro golfers don’t even sweat. . . .”

More seriously now, here’s Murray on April 9, 1969, after 20 past Masters champions failed to vote an invitation for one eminently qualified competitor:

“The Masters golf tournament is as white as the Ku Klux Klan. Everybody in it can ride in the front of the bus. . . .

“Charlie Sifford is a golfer, an American, a gentleman. He is not, however, a Caucasian. Until 1961, this seriously interfered with his life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, to say nothing of his occupation--because golf was a ‘Members Only’ club til then. They didn’t publish the 14th Amendment in Golf Digest. . . . “

More relevant still, consider this from July 1, 1979:

“I lost an old friend the other day. He was blue-eyed, impish, he cried a lot with me, laughed a lot with me, saw a great many things with me. I don’t know why he left me. . . . “

The friend, as Murray fans may know, was the vision in his left eye. He had suffered a detached retina, and the surgery to repair it didn’t take. Meanwhile, a cataract in his right eye made noon look like dusk. He was legally blind and his vision was getting worse, not better.

“I know as well as anybody what it means to be handicapped,” he told me.

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John Scheibe used to work as Jim Murray’s eyes. John, who lives in Encino, is a colleague, friend and occasional golf partner of mine. For six months John would drive Murray to games and sit at his side, describing what he saw as Murray struggled to follow the action through a powerful little spyglass.

John told me how he would read for Murray and do just about anything required so that readers of The Times could once again read Murray’s prose. He said Murray was a great guy and gave me his number.

I introduced myself and told Murray what I was up to. And I told him that, like so many writers before, I’d probably try to mimic his style. “You oughta get one of your own,” he said. Murray’s words were always sharper than his eyesight, but at least his vision is much better now. The cataract was removed, and advances in laser eye surgery have enabled doctors to greatly enhance vision in Murray’s one good eye. He still needs corrective lenses, however, and he says he still can’t read the break on a putt.

The word corrective here is crucial. The anti-cart camp sees Casey Martin as another example of “political correctness” out of control. They say he is seeking a special advantage.

Whether Casey Martin wears contact lenses, I don’t know. But why should his bad leg count less than another golfer’s bad eyes? Seeing is essential to sports. But Martin’s disability is rare, while imperfect vision is common. Nobody would think of suggesting that athletes not be allowed to wear corrective lenses. Everybody would say that wouldn’t be fair.

When I advanced my argument to Murray, he didn’t exactly marvel at my insight. He figured I was mixing apples and Titlists. Murray, a student of history, pointed out that eyeglasses have been around since Caesar’s time.

No, Murray figures this issue is more slippery than a downhill putt at Augusta. “They’ll have to give carts to everybody,” he said. And Murray said he always hates it when lawyers and politicians muck around with sports. I didn’t bring up Charlie Sifford and the 14th Amendment.

Society changes, often for the better, and nobody forced the PGA to be obstinate. The custodians of a game that prides itself on gentlemanly etiquette could have demonstrated good manners, not to mention common sense. And maybe a dress-code exception could be made to allow Martin to play in shorts, if only to shut up the whiners.

Nope, life isn’t fair, a fact that Casey Martin and Jim Murray both know well. One difference is that while medical science saved Murray’s vision, and has allowed many athletes to continue their careers, it’s done nothing for Martin’s leg.

There’s a reason, however, that the phrase “a level playing field” comes from sports. When golfers confront a poorly designed, overly difficult and unforgiving course, they call it “unfair.” Casey Martin might be a better expert on unfairness--better even than Jim Murray.

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to him at The Times’ Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St. , Chatsworth, CA 91311, or via e-mail at scott.harris@latimes.com Please include a phone number.