by Randy Kindred, Pantagraph columnist
Wednesday, August 27, 2003
Pete Sampras said goodbye Monday night. Makes you wish we'd taken time to say hello, maybe even "glad to have you."
Instead, we took his quiet brilliance for granted, acknowledging his incredible consistency with little more than a thumbs up.
He was the Cal Ripken Jr. of tennis, a guy so good, so modest and so vanilla for so long, we shrugged and said, "So what?"
Only in looking back is there true appreciation, the realization that -- as with Ripken -- we may never see his likes again.
Most players never reach 14 Grand Slam finals. Sampras won that many, a record-setting achievement requiring talent, desire, health, longevity and mental toughness.
A lot of millionaires on the professional tennis circuit have two, three, four of those ingredients.
Few have all five.
Even Andre Agassi, foil for many of Sampras' greatest battles, has been a yo-yo during his long career, disappearing from sight, and the top 10, for months at a time.
Agassi has won each of the four Grand Slam tournaments, something Sampras failed to accomplish.
Yet, Agassi also has vanished from the radar screen on occasion, the result of injuries or disinterest or both.
Sampras played on and on, manning his position on center court the way Ripken did on the infield.
Time at the top
He played often enough and well enough to be ranked No. 1 in the world for 286 weeks, a record which could stand longer than his 14 Grand Slam titles.
It is the most revealing and impressive statistic on Sampras' resume -- a total of 5 1/2 years atop the rankings.
At the least, that's a car loan, a college career, three Jennifer Lopez marriages.
Ultimately, Sampras did struggle, going more than two years without a title before winning last year's U.S. Open.
Ironically, only then did we take notice, embracing his return to the top far more than the lengthy reign which preceded it.
We treated Sampras' stay at No. 1 as if we had it coming, like somehow he owed us.
Perhaps subconsciously we considered it payment for years of conformity and clich?s.
Sampras rarely showed emotion, never cursed an umpire, was painfully non-committal at a microphone.
He spoke without saying anything, at least not much. He won without bravado, soared without ruffling feathers.
No shame in that.
But when you succeed John McEnroe/Jimmy Connors to the throne of American tennis, winning with honor and dignity is seen as ... well, dull and boring.
No frills
Connors and McEnroe were taunts, tirades, pumped fists and roaring crowds.
Sampras was the guy next door, only with a 120 mph serve.
He seemed to go out of his way to deflect attention, content to let poise and precision be his calling card, his identity.
Sampras even dressed the part, wearing all white, the way Rod Laver did, and Jack Kramer, Fred Perry and Don Budge before him.
He was old-fashioned at heart, going so far as to become a husband first, then a father.
The bottom line?
He could never play in the NBA.
But beyond that, Sampras was the superstar we never knew, a guy who ruled tennis with the charisma of a Wimbledon line judge.
He dominated his sport for a decade in relative silence, raising the bar yet never straying from "even keel."
Ripken used the same approach while playing in more than 2,600 consecutive baseball games, a record of consistency and longevity unparalleled in all of sports.
We celebrated with him on an emotional night in September, 1995, when he surpassed Lou Gehrig's "unbreakable" 2,130 games.
Monday night was for saluting Sampras, whose tears were the first we'd seen from him.
Of course, we weren't always looking.