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by Pete Bodo
So this is what it's come to me with the Andre and the Crystal Meth saga: I read a Tufts University blog post this morning, and took it upon myself to reply via the Comments tab. Mine was the first and - so far - only comment posted today.
I was amazed that a student of philosophy (I guess "student" is the operative word) would have such a, well, crass take on the controversy, suggesting that Agassi confessed his experiment with meth because he wanted to sell more books. It's a theme repeated over and over at blogs, including in many of the comments left at my recent ESPN post on the same subject. Greed, like beauty, is often in the eye of the beholder, and sometimes it's a case of pure projection. Those inclined to cry "greed" most quickly often are, if not necessarily the most greedy, then those most hungry, jealous or covetous. That's been my experience, anyway.
But if you're shattered by Agassi's revelations, let me ask you this: Can you conceive of someone writing his or her autobiography under the premis that he wants to be utterly honest about himself and his life? Is that such a hard idea to swallow?
That's not only the first question to ask when you wonder why Agassi 'fessed up, it's the only one. Condemn Agassi all you want, but he respected you enough to tell the truth about himself and his time in the game.
There are three kinds of autobiographies: tell-nones, tell-somes, and tell-alls. I've learned not to assign a hierarchy of value to them, simply because books are like fingerprints. The kind of book a person chooses to write tells you a good deal about the author. And everyone is different, and has had different experiences and differing levels of comfort with revealing themselves. That's just how it is; every book is, in the sense, already a confession.
Most of you know that I collaborated with Pete Sampras on his recent autobiography, A Champion's Mind. We made the New York Times bestseller list for a few weeks, even though the book contained a conspicuous dearth of intensely personal information that was not directly related to Pete's career. That's the book we wrote because that's what Pete envisioned - a book that would address every aspect of his career and, basically, tell his own story through his own eyes. In that regard, I'm very comfortable saying it was a very honest book, in a very different way than Agassi's book is honest.
For our purposes here, Pete's book qualifies as a "tell-none," at least in terms of the most intimate and potentially surprising aspects of Sampras's private life. We stopped just short of putting a warning label on the book: Caution: This book may be hazardous to your health if you're interested in sex and drugs and rock and roll. Sampras is a certain kind of person, who wanted to write a certain kind of book. Trust me, we didn't need to roll six hours of tape and kill two bottles of Chianti talking about how Pete really feels about his father.
Nor did our approach have anything to do with how much money Pete was paid by the publisher, nor any real or imagined personal crises. What he experienced in that vein is in the book; this was a guy who never lost a match because his girlfriend stabbed him with the heel of a Manolo Blahnik pump. The book we wrote had everything to do with how Sampras lived his life, what he considered important and valuable for public consumption, and how he wanted to engage and, in his own way, even contribute to the world. He is no Bono; nor is he Andre Agassi.
Tell-some books are a little different, and they're usually the domain of subjects who just don't want to come fully clean - sometimes in order to protect others, sometimes because the challenge of introspection and asking uncomfortable questions of themselves is too much to ask. Sometimes, the narrative is potentially so gruesome and disappointing that telling all would simply be too ugly, or unspeakably embarrasssing.
Rock stars don't have to worry about that, because notoriety is their stock in trade. But it's a concern for those public figures who are expected to fit a type, or are described as "role models." I collaborated on a tell-some book with the former NFL All-Pro receiver and popular broadcaster, Ahmad Rashad (ne Bobby Moore). You can imagine my disappointment when, expecting that his conversion to Islam might be the centerpiece of the book (bur remember, this was pre-9/11), he chose to more or less skate over it quickly. I'm still not sure if Ahmad didn't really think through his conversion (it was in some ways a fashionable thing to do among athletes of the time), or if he thought going too deeply into the subject would hurt his conscious attempt to position himself as a role model. In any event, here was a guy who, unlike Sampras, really wanted to reveal himself - on his own term.
Agassi's book is a tell-all, and it's a good thing that, in the big picture, there isn't all that much that's shocking to tell. When it comes to the dominant controversy in the book, I'm going to admit that I've walked in similar shoes. Were I to write a autobiography, I would fee guilty ignoring the issue. I think every person who's recovered from an addiction, or dabbled at the fringes of one, would feel the same. I assume that Agassi tackled the nasty meth issue for the same reason that so many of us admit similar behaviors to our friends and spouses: because he thought it a sufficiently significant episode in his life - just as Sampras thought that losing that 1992 US Open final to Stefan Edberg was a formative experience in his life.
You may not like that, but it's Agassi's call, not ours. What was that line from that old Jack Nicolson movie: You want the truth? You can't handle the truth! That's exactly what I want to say to the legions of Agassi critics who have come out of the woodwork. Would this be a better or worse, a more or less important book, if Agassi chose to leave that out?
And there's been a surprising lack of credit given to Agassi for getting over that drug experiment as successfully as he did. Like it or not, certain people at certain times in their lives are susceptible to the lure of drugs. Nobody is glorifying it, but anybody who's taken a walk on the dark side and come back out into the sunshine is lucky - and he never, ever forgets. If you scan the comments at my ESPN Agassi post, you'll see one about crystal meth from a guy in Montana. It's harsh, but it frames the awful power of meth addiction pretty accurately.
Granted, Agassi had a Pulitzer-prize winning novelist (JR Moehringer, author of The Tender Bar). But I still found the description of the "vast sadness" he felt as soon as he'd ingested the drug (and before it kicked in) touching and true-to-life. And I liked that Agassi doesn't glorify his mistake, throw it out there and then immediately run away from it, nor descend into moralizing about it, to earn sympathy or vindicate himself. The guy just told the truth about himself; the subtext is: Judge me as you will.
I'll leave consideration of the failed drug test, Agassi's letter, and the ATP's subsequent actions for another time.
Thinking about these things yesterday, I called my friend Liz Nevin, who's always got an interesting, and often different, take on things. She had no problem with the confession but was really suprised by how little support Agassi received from his fellow champions. It underscored - rightly, I thought - how competitive and self-oriented the profession can be. We're not talking about over-wrought exclamations here, like Oh, thank God he's still alive!, but simple sympathy and empathy: It's a sad thing, but thank God he pulled himself together. Or, That's a shocker, but it happens in the best of families. . .
Speaking of which: wasn't it Martina Navratilova who once ran around in a t-shirt proclaiming just that message: It Happens in the Best of Families? And here's Martina, comparing Agassi to Roger Clemens. That's just plain wrong; you'd think someone who's always crowing about perceived "injustice" would recognize the difference between performance-enhancing and destructive, debilitating drugs that can only be called "recreational" in the most ironic way. That's why I was so happy this morning to see the Andy Murray item on the BBC website. Is it pure coincidence that Murray is Scottish, and council-housing blocks in his own nation have been notorious for the ghastly toll taken there by heroin addiction?
A few years ago, I collaborated on an extensive Q and A interview with Steffi Graf. Wanting to shape the best possible piece, I suggested to an apprehensive Steffi - er, Stefanie - that I would happily share the final manuscript with her, to give her a chance to correct or amend anything that she may have misstated, or that I misconstrued. It's a good thing to do with a non-interpretive piece.
Well, it turned out that Graf got cold feet when she read the transcript, especially when it came to certain bits about her felon dad, Peter Graf. She wanted me to kill the entire piece. We had a series of long telephone conversations about it and I stood firm, telling her that she'd agreed to do the interview, it was all on tape, and while I would make corrections or additions that could be justified, the piece had to run. And I knew there was nothing in the text that could have been called a new or potentially embarrassing revelation. I just had everything in Graf's own words, on tape.
A few months later, at the Key Biscayne tournament, I saw Agassi and Graf (this was shortly after their relationship became public). She was still sore at me and, exasperated, I finally appealed to Andre. I asked him if he'd read the piece, and how he felt about the material. He laughed, and told he he thought it was a good, strong piece.
Although I didn't make the connection at the time, I think Andre got a kick out of seeing his wife-to-be come clean about certain potentially embarrassing or even painful episodes and facts of her life. He knew that letting things come out into the open for air is a good thing, and that there's no real down-side to honesty - not once you get past the uncomfortable feeling that you've allowed to world to see a part of you of which you may not be particularly proud, and which doesn't necessarily show you or your loved ones in the best light.
That's an experience everyone can benefit from, because it ultimately teaches you that there's a lot more to be afraid of in your own mind than out there in the world, or in your past. At least that's so if you're someone like Andre Agassi, or maybe even Steffi Graf.