Remember That Time Navratilova Called Clemens A Meth Addict?
It’s hard to tell if I’m arguing against the masses or with them on this one. Mostly because as far as the Andre Agassi autobio meth / wig / daddy issues bombshells goes … well, it’s unclear who’s even paying attention.
Once you strip away the people that will buy the book from whence all this hubbub sprang, simply because hubbub sprung from it, it will be interesting to see what repercussions Agassi’s admittances will have. And because the statute of limitations states that Agassi can’t be touched for drug use and lies from over a decade ago, the repercussions will have to come from the court of public opinion.
The question for the public will inevitably be “should we care?”
And this is where it gets interesting.
Martina Navratilova thinks we should care. Thinks Agassi should have a few titles taken away. Thinks he’s a cheater and a liar.
“Shocking,” Navratilova said Thursday. “Not as much shock that he did it as shock he lied about it and didn’t own up to it. He’s up there with Roger Clemens, as far as I’m concerned.”
Way to swing wild there, Tina. Navratilova is one of the most respected athletes in her field and has long been an ambassador to tennis, which is why it’s surprising that she’d take such a hard-line stance on a colleague who very likely has done more good for tennis than she has. Comparing Agassi to Clemens is wrong. Not only has Agassi owned up to his misdeeds, but he did it while being under no pressure to do so. No one made these claims against Agassi. No one sat him in front of a grand jury. No one put him under a microscope.
Navratilova went on to imply that “owning up” to his lies in an autobiography somehow doesn’t count.
“He owned up to it [in the book],” Navratilova said. “but it doesn’t help now.”
Would getting suspended for meth by a tribunal in 1998 have helped? Who would it have helped? How?
Do I condone drug use? Or lying? Or profiting from those lies? Or cheating? No. Not in a vacuum. We’re not in one though. But like it or not, we live in a world full of gray and sometimes yes or no answers just aren’t accurate.
By positioning Roger Clemens alongside Agassi, Navratilova (and the countless others who likely feel the same way she does) marked Agassi a cheater who used drugs to enhance his performance. But c’mon. Stop it. Hyperactivity may be a reaction from meth use, but so is shortness of breath, loss of coordination, dizziness, decreased appetite and numbness. Agassi started 1997 (the year he said he used methamphetamines) ranked No. 8 in the world. Throughout the season he dropped to as low as No. 141.
Worst enhanced performance ever.
So maybe it isn’t the performance enhancement, so much as the lying in 1998 at which the public should aim their negative opinions. Lying isn’t good. In the end, Agassi shouldn’t have done it. He should have taken his lumps. Hell, he might even be more beloved today had he gone through with his suspension publicly. Then again, the public wasn’t as jaded against public scandal 11 years ago as it is now. Maybe it wouldn’t have gone so well. And Navratilova seems not to have taken that last bit into consideration, or not care about the possibility that Agassi’s career seriously risked being finished.
So the ATP tribunal owed Agassi a suspension. But what would they have been suspending him for, really? Cheating? He didn’t cheat. He used a banned substance that hurt him and his performance. For compromising the image of the ATP? He didn’t. He blamed his struggles on a sore wrist and some of the closest people to him were unaware of his drug use.
“Maybe it was me being naïve, but I had no clue,” Brad Gilbert, Agassi’s longtime coach, said in a telephone interview with the New York Times on Friday.
Would the suspension have been for Agassi’s fans who (unknowingly) watched him suffer through a horrific 1997? Well, if we’re looking out for the fans, it should be noted that he would have been suspended in 1998 for his positive test in ’97. By 1998, according to Agassi, he’d quit doing meth and mounted an astounding climb from No. 122 in January to No. 6 in December. The fans? They wouldn’t have seen that.
Agassi was the only victim of his meth use in 1997. Why punish him twice?
Back to an earlier point: There’s plenty of precedent that tennis didn’t owe Agassi a suspension in the first place. Eight cases of positive steroid tests were exonerated in 2003 after a similar-but-stricter tribunal than the one Agassi faced found that none of the players intended to enhance their performance with the substance. Earlier this year the Austrian Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) dismissed the WTA’s Tamira Paszek for illegally re-injecting blood that had been transfused, purified and then put back into her body. She wasn’t aware of its illegality and therefore, NADA exonerated her on the grounds that she didn’t intend to cheat.
No one’s accusing Agassi of using meth with the intention of enhancing his athletic ability.
Then there’s the profit aspect.
It’s possible and, in fact, likely that Agassi lied in 1998 so as not to lose his endorsements. It’s also possible and likely that we’re talking about Agassi’s addiction now because he’s got a book to sell next week. But he didn’t dabble in crank so that he could add to his bank account a decade later.
And if you think he did, then the irrational cynicism from which you suffer is non-refundable. Ain’t no comin’ back now.
Yeah. All this chatter will help push product. Should we hope our favorite celebrities write books filled with old anecdotes that we’ve all heard? If everything in his book is true, I don’t fault him for telling his story.
But that’s coming from someone who believes this to be the first time Agassi came out ahead from any of his past transgressions.
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Photos courtesy of Yahoo! Sports via Getty Images
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