Well, I took my time and read through all the comments at my Andre Agassi post of yesterday, and cherry-picked some of the questions raised there in hopes of laying to rest this issue. Because one thing I'm convinced of is that this isn't any bigger an issue than you choose to make of it. As is often the case, it took on a life of its own because the facts are familiar and simple, and the moral implications clear and well-defined. Isn't it ironic.
So let's start with this: Upon hearing that Agassi had sold his book for a $5 million advance, David Hirshey, a friend and well-known editor at HarperCollins, remarked: Wow, that's President money!"
True enough. In order to get a contract of such magnitude, Andre was certainly obliged to reveal - confidentially, of course - what kind of material the book would contain. This is how it's done in publishing; nobody in his right mind is going to give an author a 5 million-dollar advance (which is paid back from the author's royalties before the author sees another dime; it works the same way for a book that gets a modest advance of, say, $10,000) and not have a good idea of what he or she is going to get. Did that condition the size of the advance? Probably. Was that a happy side-effect (for Agassi) of Agassi wanting to write a truthful book? I think your answer to that will depend on how you view Agassi. I come down on his side.
Once an author pays back the advance from his royalties, he begins to earn per-book royalties. That way, even if you had a low advance, your earning power is, theoretically, unlimited. Author and publisher also negotiate paperback, film, television and serial rights. That's how it works.
One comment poster wondered who chooses the pre-publication excerpts. It's the editors of whatever publication secures the "first serial" rights. With a book like Agassi's, a number of big players (including Time Inc., which publishes both People and Sports Illustrated, where excerpts have already been published) presumably bought the exclusive, North American first-serial rights. And you can bet they paid dearly. Their editors then had carte blanche to select the limited amount of "exclusive" material they were entitled to publish. Naturally, the were looking for the most bang for the buck.
I've read that Agassi will be the subject of an interview on Sixty Minutes on the eve of the official publication date of the book. Yes, it seems like the public relations/marketing folks at the publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, have been right on top of things - after all, they're the ones who have to dig themselves out of the $5 million debt they incurred by buying the book. Authors of "minor" books often are left out of the loop on whatever PR effort is made to publicize their work (usually, it begins and ends with the publisher sending out some free books to reviewers), but the bigger the investment, the more inclined a publisher is to promote the product. You can bet that Knopf co-ordinated its efforts with Agassi, and actively sought his participation in them, perhaps even on a contractual basis - just like Nike or any other sponsor requires its top endorsers to give X-number days to the effort to promote the product.
All in all, the most resonant criticism I found in the comments was the accusation that Andre let the sport take a hit in the interest of advancing his own cause. There's some truth in that, I suppose; Federer, Nadal, Murray et al now have to take a position and defend the sport. But this is a tricky question: what's more important "protecting" the image of the sport, or being truthful in a book the promises candor?
What if Agassi's impulse to honesty came up against his desire to promote his sport - to which desire would you give precedence, presuming your conscience is in good working order? And finally, if the premis that Agassi is really being open about the critical events that shaped his life and career, isn't he stealing money from everyone who buys the book if he consciously withholds information that his own conscience or view of his life and career deems significant?
I read a very wise observation in a novel, I think it was The Kite Runner. There is only one sin or crime: the crime of theft. Did Agassi "steal" the integrity of the sport, much like he would have stolen money from all those book-buyers? I don't think so; if Agassi did meth and got away with it, the sport, by definition, isn't clean. What Agassi did was expose a truth about the sport in the course of telling the truth about himself.
Now, about those lies, and the way Agassi ducked punishment for his positive drug test.
I've lied enough times in my life to know that in Agassi's shoes, I would have done the same thing. That's especially so when you consider the age factor (he was 26 at the time). I don't generally hammer people, especially young people, for lying when they've really screwed up, there's no other way out, and there's no victim in any meaningful sense - either to their action or the lie told to cover it up.
I also know it's "wrong" to lie, even that way. I just don't have it in my heart to generate any moral fury over it. Actually, I lied as recently as seven minutes ago, when I told an unwanted caller on the phone that I was "very busy" when all I was doing was eating a bowl of cereal with bananas.
Okay, I'm lying about that (about the caller part, anyway; I was, however, eating a bowl of cereal. That's the honest to God truth).
See what I mean?
Also, I know from experience that sometimes, telling the truth is a really, really stupid idea. I don't think it was in this case; in fact, I think Agassi could have told the truth and I'm pretty sure the Lords of Tennis would have found a way to keep that Top Tennis Star is Meth Addict headline out of the newspapers. They certainly would have tried, given the standards of the day (more about that later).
Don't for a moment think I'm not serious about that: Imagine Agassi coming clean and throwing himself at the mercy of the ATP - what do you think the organization would have done, given the nature and specifics of the offense? I say they would have frozen up and hustled Agassi off into rehab - for the good of the sport.
I believe that the ATP bought into a pretty transparent lie because it wanted desperately to believe it, and I imagine everyone thought it would better for everyone involved if the officials did believe it. I'm a pretty black-and-white guy, and some of you are as well. But we inhabit a world of gray and navigate it as best we can.
I suppose one reason I feel this way is because of the awful bind the ATP has put itself in with these suspensions for so-called "recreational" drug use. It's a hideous kind of posturing the ATP (and other agencies) are engaging in with these authoritarian displays, and it's dehumanizing. I can't think of a justifiable reason for why an athlete should be held to any higher standard than am I in the workplace - except when it comes to the use of performance-enhancing drugs (I'm sure many managers love to see their workers ingesting performance-enhancing substances, like coffee, which is one difference between the office and the playing field).
If you look at Agassi's playing record during that meth period, you can see that if he were suspended for anything, it ought to have been for using a performance-inhibiting substance. And that's very different from what we saw in the case of those who tested positive for performance-enhancing substances, like former French Open finalist, Mariano Puerta.
But the ATP laws didn't, and still don't (which is the graver error) distinguish between PE and "recreational" drugs, so in an constructionist sense my case is down the toilet. So be it. Throw the book at Agassi if you wish, but leave me out of it. Few lies I can think of have produced more agreeable results (including Agassi's great awakening), and I can live with the implied contradiction.
My advice to the ATP would be to drop the Big Brother grandstanding and re-think the approach to drugs that don't qualify as performance-enhancing; if you test for them, do it discreetly - not for policing purposes, per se, because we know what different drugs do in terms of performance enhancement. Do it in order to be able to intervene when some crazy 21-year old show signs of going off the rails. The US Army, as Jon Wertheim has noted, has less stringent baselines for recreational drug use than do the tennis folks. I guess you can be proud of that, if having utterly "clean" athletes is your over-arching goal. I'd prefer them to be clean by choice and am willing to cut slack to those who haven't gotten there yet - so long as it doesn't give them an edge in competition.
When it comes to calls for an investigation into a "cover-up," the futility of that impulse seems to me to be beyond easy description. This Agassi episode happened a dozen years ago, at a time when self-policing by the ATP and WTA was the norm. How could you not expect a certain amount of hanky-panky? The WADA protocols that have since been adopted (WADA was formed in 1999) may be Draconian, but they're definitely unambiguous, and designed to be more-or-less foolproof. Tennis has thrown in its lot with the Olympic movement (hence, WADA), and that goes a long way to explaining these positions.
This process has been evolutionary, part of the growth of the game. And if you insist on looking for a silver lining, think of it this way: the history of the Agassi case shows just how far the ATP has come in terms of creating a drug-free sports environment and a sport as well-regulated by the standards of the day as any. I've seen players tank. I've seen them defaulted and re-instated, I've seen them intentionally scuff out clay-court ball marks before an official can look at them, and I've seen players verbally abuse and intimidate opponents - all things unlikely to occur in today's game. Evolution is a ragged journey with plenty of loose ends (we're still born with appendixes, and a taste for Quentin Tarrantino movies, right?).
Moreover, I think this quote from an ITF official, appearing in a piece that ran on the DNA website (sheer serendipity, I assure you), puts the issue in context:
"Not only is the case outside the statute of limitations due to the eight-year bar, we cannot put someone on trial - who has since retired - based on laws which were not even formed when the supposed offense took place."
Evolution. What a long, strange trip it's been.