This time Shalom means goodbye

Wanted to take a moment to mention the retirement of Andre Agassi, not that there has been a lack of media coverage about his swan song in Flushing, but even across the globe his retirement has been getting a lot of press and has been on peoples mind.

Realizing I’m not a sports writer, or even a writer, I hesitate to use the blog as a form to wax nostalgically about Andre (I’ll save that for sermons), but thinking back on it for sports fans of my generation, no other athlete brought so many different things for such a long period of time. While he wasn’t the best Tennis player of his time (Sampras, more recently Federer) he was always fun to watch, always exciting and, even as he got older, always hip.

I remember seeing him at and getting his autograph, I must have been 11 years old, at LaGuardia Airport when he was in his long crazy hair days. He signed his autograph Andre – no last name, just Andre. How many other athletes of my generation could do that? Michael, Magic, Tiger, Pedro?, Mariano, Barry (Sanders or Bonds or neither) Lance, Wayne, maybe a few others. And Andre was never as dominating as any of them.

I also had the honor of being at the classic Agassi/Blake quarterfinal match at last years US Open. Agassi won in Epic fashion – similar to his Baghdatis match this year - and it was remarkable to see him grit out an amazing win. Leaving Queens that night (more accurately, the next morning) it felt as if I had played. The crowd soaked up every moment of Andre (I did too and I was rooting for Blake) and not only did he play tennis, but he performed tennis.

So Andre, thanks for playing tennis. Thanks for not being an aging punk like Connors and McEnroe. Thanks for not having a perfect game and being predictable like Sampras or Becker. Thanks for winning tournaments in weird, wild ways. Thanks for losing as the 1 seed and winning out of the blue.

No kid played tennis wanting to be Courier, Sampras, Edberg, Rafter, Chang, Martin, Washington or Sampras – we wanted to be Andre.