"I just wanted to demonstrate, a point of advocacy," Lon L. Fuller, Carter Professor of General Jurisprudence, lamented recently about a heated debate his classroom remarks have initiated in, of all places, Sports Illustrated.

Two weeks ago, Sports Illustrated picked up Fuller's classroom discussions on the subject of subterfuge in sports. Fuller defended the baseball catcher's "ethically acceptable" act of pulling a pitch into the strike zone, but condemned the practice of feigning injuries in football contests.

These statements aroused the opposition of Yale Kamisar, professor of Law at Minnesota University. Kamisar sent a dissenting opinion to Sports Illustrated, and Fuller answered with a strong rebuttal. Repercussions around the country have loosed a flood of correspondence, though not all of it has been backed with such impressive credentials as Kasimar's.

Now, Fuller looks with a trace of unbelief on all that has happened. "I used the problem more seriously than the articles indicate," he says. Fuller was explaining the use of what he calls the "If one can do it, all can do it" test for certain actions, applying it first to the catcher's tactics and then to the stratagem of fake injuries.

Stringer Reports Remarks

Morten Lund, staff writer for S.I. and one of Fuller's students, reported the professor's remarks to the magazine, and the spirited controversy ensured.

Fuller likened the act of making close pitches look like strikes to a lawyer's advocacy--the catcher is simply "presenting a persuasive argument." But, he contended, a football player pretending to be hurt is committing a moral wrong, and engaging in "true deception."

With some feeling, Kamisar countered that the catchers' tactics may be compared only to an improper legal argument, not to a legitimate one. Furthermore, he said, the "If one can do it" principle can be used to condemn any act whatever.

Quoting as his authority "George (Specs) Torporcer, Baseball--From Back Yard to Big League, 1954, pages 55-57," Fuller repiled that there are "sound reasons (having nothing to do with deceiving the umpire)" for bringing a ball into the strike zone.

"What I really wanted to point out," he says now, "is that you have to start with a certain attitude in any game, including government. Enforcement of any rule depends on the moral attitude. As Frank Leahy once said, 'A rule that can't be enforced is not a rule.'"