DISABILITIES WEEK 142

By Daniel J. Vance

I first featured Sarah Morris in an April 2003 column after reading about her in Reader's Digest.

Now, two years later, the person I called then “The Great” Sarah Morris, is still clacking away on her computer keyboard on the road to becoming the nation's best sports writer.

Sarah was born with cerebral palsy, which in her case means her umbilical cord was wrapped around her at birth and blocked oxygen flow to the brain, thus short-circuiting her brain-to-muscles connection. She can't talk clearly, walk, brush her teeth or even use her hands. But Sarah Morris has a razor-sharp mind. And the 34-year-old resident of Anderson, Texas, adores her Los Angeles Dodgers.

She types her sports columns at eight words per minute onto a keyboard by using a pointer extending from a device strapped to her forehead. You can read her in-depth Dodgers coverage at www.dodgerplace.com

Baseball hooked her permanently when she served as team statistician for her California high school team. Now she works at her chosen profession 55 hours weekly.

“One of my favorite sports writers is T. J. Simmers (Los Angeles Times) because he makes me laugh,” Morris wrote recently in an email interview. “I don't like his style, but he makes his point well. (I like) Bill Plaschke (Los Angeles Times) because he has the best literary style in sports and Peter Gammons (ESPN.com) because of his unmatched baseball knowledge. Rob Neyer (ESPN.com) uses statistics effectively.”

She receives nearly all her Dodgers information from television broadcasts and the Internet.

Here is her summary of the 2005 Dodgers: “The bullpen is definitely their strength. No team has a better combination than Yhency Brazoban and Eric Gagne. They have Cesar Izturis, arguably the best defensive shortstop in the league. But the Dodgers don't have a real third baseman, and they don't have speed.”

So who is baseball's classiest player?

She said, “Personally, I can't name the classiest. But Albert Pujols, Sean Casey, Curt Schilling, Shawn Green and Mike Piazza are classy players. They do much charity work. And when speaking to the media, they usually think before they speak.”

Who will win the 2005 World Series?

“I'm no fortune teller,” she wrote. “Nobody knows who will be in the World Series. Baseball is unpredictable. If I knew who would win, I wouldn't watch the games.”

For more, see www.danieljvance.com