Request by Martin Is Unfair to Others

I am disabled. My dream is to play professional baseball, but professional baseball won’t let me. You see, I can’t run, but I can hit. Therefore, I would like to have somebody run the bases for me. But baseball says no.

In other words, I am Casey Martin.

I am disabled. My dream is to play professional basketball, but professional basketball won’t let me. You see, I can’t run, but I can shoot. Therefore, I would like to remain by my basket, without running up and down the court. But basketball says no.

In other words, I am Casey Martin.

I am disabled. My dream is to play professional tennis, but professional tennis won’t let me. You see, I can’t run, but I can swing a racket. Therefore, I would like to play doubles, as long as I never have to leave the net. But tennis says no.

In other words, I am Casey Martin.

Martin, a professional golfer, is scheduled to appear in an Oregon courtroom next Monday, to ask that golf’s pro tour permit him to play with the use of an electric cart.

To date, Martin has gained the unconditional support of men and women who fight for the rights of the disabled and disadvantaged. It has been heartwarming. It has been understandable. It has been politically correct.

Yet, in this case, I believe, it has been just plain incorrect.

The only way I would permit Casey Martin to compete--without walking the course like everyone else--is to make his course longer. If Martin’s game is not to be affected by fatigue, as is that of his adversaries, then the PGA Tour can make the situation equitable only by adding distance to his round. Say, make him tee off from 10 yards farther back.

I’m sorry. You don’t let a motorcycle into a bicycle race.

Never, never, never in all my born days would I discourage an impaired individual from pursuing a goal. I appreciate the line between disabled and unable. I believe in equal opportunity, in increased access, in bending over backward for somebody who has difficulty in bending over, period.

Just how far do we bend, though?

Professional athletics has standards of achievement. For example, you wouldn’t ask Michael Johnson and Carl Lewis to run 100 meters against one another in a Summer Olympics for a gold medal and the title of “world’s fastest human,” but only if a runner with an impediment may run in the same race with a 50-meter head start.

Or would you?

One of my favorite athletes is Jim Abbott, a baseball pitcher born without a right hand. Jim didn’t ask that the mound be moved closer to the plate than 60 feet, 6 inches on the days he pitched. He didn’t demand to play in the American League, where pitchers do not have to bat.

All he said was: Don’t tell me I can’t play.

In the 1930s, when Monty Stratton lost a leg in a hunting accident, he attempted a comeback. Batters bunted on him. He couldn’t make the plays, so he couldn’t play.

His effort was heroic. Should baseball have made an exception, banning bunts on days when Stratton wanted to play? I have a feeling Stratton would have been the first player who objected.

Casey Martin doesn’t want equal treatment. He wants extraordinary treatment.

Top professionals--none of whom wish to come off as unfeeling Scrooges--do not support what, in theory, must seem a worthy cause. Jack Nicklaus and Fred Couples have pointed out that their own physical ailments would be eased greatly by the use of a cart, but that it would constitute an unfair advantage.

Suppose that the Masters golf tournament gave Arnold Palmer a cart, and he won? Arnie has cancer. Wouldn’t it cheapen a victory, in his mind, if Arnold Palmer couldn’t win a title so special without receiving so special a handicap? He wouldn’t feel like a pro. He would feel like an amateur, given a “gimme” on any putt shorter than three feet.

Were I truly disabled, I would wish to be treated the same as everybody else.

Let me work, yes. Make it easier for me to get to work, yes. Then please, let me do the work on my own.

Golf with a cart is like boxing with a helmet. It isn’t fair, unless everybody has one.