A sports columnist thought he met a weirdo, but he found a real winner.
A comment from a fan, Bill Plaski
This email has the same meaning as others I received in some respects. It lashed out at my comments on the Los Angeles Dodgers, thinking that I was completely wrong. However, this comment is different from other comments in at least two ways.
Different from the usual comment "You * * *", this comment contains more details. It contains the key data of team performance. The person who wrote this comment knows the Los Angeles Dodgers as well as I thought.
And this comment is signed. The author's name is sarah morris.
I was deeply moved, so I wrote back to her. Unexpectedly, this letter led to an unusual exchange.
May I ask you a question? I have been running my Dodgers website for two years. How did you become a baseball review columnist? This is my dream.
This is Sarah's second email, and its arrival is not unexpected at all. Every time I smile at someone, they ask me for a job. But another thing caught my attention. This is a spelling mistake in the last line of the letter, which is about "My Dream".
Maybe Sarah is a terrible typist. But maybe she's really looking for a target, but she hasn't found it yet.
It is worth writing to her again, so I asked her to explain.
I am 30 years old ... because of my disability, it took me five years to complete my junior college education and get my diploma ... During the baseball season, I spent an average of 55 hours a week writing reports, commenting, doing research, listening to or watching games.
Sarah calls her website "Dodge Land". I searched and found nothing. Later, I reread her email and found an address at the bottom: members.tripod/spunky/dodgers.
I clicked on the address. The website is not fancy, but she reported the team in detail with the writer's serious attitude. However, I still can't help but ask, is anyone watching?
No one has ever signed my guest book. I get a letter every month.
This is a physically disabled woman. She covers the Dodgers as widely as any American journalist, but she writes for an almost unknown website. The name of the website is very strange and difficult to remember. There are about two readers.
I think what she missed in that dream was far more than the spelling of the letter R.
I set up my own website, hoping to find a job, but I was unlucky. Because I type with a stick tied to my head, the highest typing speed is 8 words per minute, but what does it matter? Good brain, very focused work. This is the key to success.
Typing with a stick tied to your head?
I asked her how long it would take to write her usual 400-word article.
Three to four hours.
I did something I had never done with a stranger on the Internet.
I asked sarah morris to call me.
I have difficulty in speaking and I can't use the phone.
This proves my suspicion. This is obviously an elaborate scam. This so-called female writer is probably a 45-year-old male plumber.
I decided to end my correspondence with this person. But just then, I received another email.
My disability is cerebral palsy ... it affects the control of muscles and nerves ... When my brain tells my hands to hit the keys, I will move my legs to hit the table. In the process, I will hit the other six keys at the same time.
When my mother explained my disability, she told me that if I worked three times harder than others, I could achieve anything I wanted.
She wrote that when she grew up in Pasadena, she became a Dodgers fan. When she was a sophomore at Blair High School, the coach of a junior baseball team asked her to be a team statistician. She did it with a typewriter and a stick tied to her head.
She said that because of her relationship with baseball, she was able to stay at school, although her grades were poor, and her neck ached for several hours of homework every day.
Baseball has given me a hard goal … I can do things that other children can't … I want to do something for giving me so many baseballs.
Yes, that's how I believe her. A little bit. She said, in this case, who can report a baseball team without the best equipment and help? I was curious, so I asked her if I could drive to see her. She agreed and told me the situation on the road in detail, which mentioned the dirt roads and nameless streets in the country.
I drove east through the desolate area of Texas. I saw a house that looked like an old tool shed on a winding dirt road full of holes the size of small animals.
But this is not a tool shed, this is a house, a rotten hut, surrounded by tall weeds and waste.
Is this the right place?
A woman in an old T-shirt and skirt came out of the hut.
"I'm Sarah's mother," Roy Morris said, taking my smooth hand in her rough one. "She is waiting for you."
I walked in from the sun, opened a tattered screen door, and walked into the dark shed, with an 87-pound body curled up in a wheelchair.
Her limbs are twisted. Her head turned around. We can't hug or even shake hands. She can only look at me with wide eyes and smile at me.
But her smile is full of light! It penetrated the dark space surrounded by broken wooden floors, old recliners and cobweb-covered windows.
I couldn't bear to look at anything else, so I stared at her smile. It was so clear and confident that it even swept away most of my doubts. But I still have to ask, is this sarah morris?
She started rocking in her wheelchair and making noise. I thought she was coughing.
But in fact, she was talking. Her mother translated for her. "I want to show you something," said Sarah.
Roy pushed her to an old desk on a cinder block. There is a computer on the desk. Next to the computer is a TV. Her mother tied a small stick to her daughter's temple.
Lying on the computer, Sarah pulled up a report on Dodge's website with a stick tied to her head. She began to add words and sentences to the report.
She looked up at me and giggled. I looked down at her, full of surprise and shame.
This is really sarah morris. The great sarah morris.
When I contacted sarah morris a few months ago, I wanted to have a fight with her. Now, watching her struggling to write an article in this dark room, I understand what this battle is all about.
However, this battle is not with Sarah, but with myself. This battle is exactly the same as what sports are experiencing every day in today's cynical era. That is to believe that athletes can still be heroes.
In a place far away from this doubt, a sarah morris with a magical mind helped me regain my trust.