To the Sports Editor:

Toward the end of the article about Goran Ivanisevic ("Ivanisevic's 'Fight' for Croatia," The Times, Feb. 22) and highlighted in bold print by the words "Bang, Bang!", I read a description of Ivanisevic as he learned to shoot a machine gun. Here it is in his own words:

"They showed me how to shoot, just for fun. They let me shoot a machine gun. It was tough to control, but, oh, it was a nice feelking -- all the bullets coming out. I was thinking it would be nice to have some Serbs standing in front of me."

The key word here is "some." Some Serbs. Not any Serbs in particular, but some. Young or old, sick or healthy, men or women, innocent or guilty, it doesn't seem to matter to Ivanisevic. Have we not heard this inhuman call to murder, now reduced to recreational murder on a practice range, for too long? Do we really want to give encouragement to those in our own country who also think how nice it would be to kill "some" Jews, or "some" blacks, or "some" gays, or "some" cops, or "some" whites, or just "some" people, period? When any of us are relegated to unworthy victims whom it is all right to kill, then we all become "some" in somebody's eyes.

That such a sentiment expressed by a tennis player could appear in The New York Times is a chilling, mind-numbing example of the failure of standards of our time. Without the pursuit of truth, there can be no standards and calls to murder are seen as a sports story. STEVE TESICH New York The author is a screenwriter and playwright who was born and lived near Belgrade until 1957 when, at age 14, he emigrated to the United States.