Andre's right: He had to be 'Open'

I owe Andre Agassi an apology, not that Agassi needs to hear an apology from a sports journalist -- particularly from one he's never met and likely will never meet.

Still, I need to ask his forgiveness for questioning why he broached the subject of drug abuse in his soon-to-be-released book "Open." As he discussed the book Sunday on "60 Minutes," Agassi convinced me that had he kept his abuse of crystal meth out of his autobiography, he would have needed to re-title it, perhaps slapping the words "Half Open" on its cover.

For just as his candor about his violent father, his baldness and his thoughts about his marriage to movie star Brook Shields needed airing, so did the despair that drove Agassi to abuse drugs in the first place.

His interview was revealing beyond his explanation about why he included his drug problems in the autobiography. Certainly, he had to expect his saying he used drugs would be a titillating revelation; it's the kind of introspection that ensures bold headlines -- and criticism.

Agassi got both.

He talked about both of them as well, pointing out that he hoped his critics would understand that he turned to drugs at a nadir of his life in 1997. Agassi had lived most of that life in the spotlight, the prince of tennis, the game's heartthrob, the image of style and daring and beauty.

He had the world -- wealth, recognition and talent. Oh, did Andre Agassi have talent. He had worn the title of No. 1, which he fit him like an Ermenegildo Zegna sports coat. He could have modeled the garment himself and would have looked at home in it.

Wealth and fame doesn't come with a guarantee of happiness, and Agassi, 39, said he was unhappy playing a sport he never loved. It didn't matter to him that he was great at it -- better than almost anybody else of his era. What did matter was that he couldn't push himself to play it at a level he needed to play it, and he couldn't do that because he simply didn't love it. He never obsessed over his tennis the way his father, a domineering force in his life, wanted him to.

So Agassi, an eight-time Grand Slam winner, was left to find comfort in places where so many people go for it. He turned to illegal drugs.

His abuse of crystal meth didn't turn into tragedy, a sobering saga that we had seen before in the lives of men like Len Bias. Agassi would eventually settle into his fame and into his place in sports history.

I should have appreciated that history instead of condemning a man's public honesty. I should have thanked Agassi for showing the human side of a great athlete, a side that's becoming increasingly more difficult for journalists to see.

Image, as he once boasted in a TV ad, might be everything, but it isn't the only thing in an athlete's life. He has to live with all the good, the bad and the ugly

that comes from living in the public's eye -- or in that part of living he allows the public to see.

I can't rightly criticism him for that. I should salute him for reminding me -- and everyone else -- that even a golden boy doesn't necessarily live a perfect life. Agassi deserved the compassion from me that he asked from his peers in professional tennis.

No one asked, so why did Andre tell?

Honesty can be cathartic, but certain things in an athlete's life are better left unsaid. Has the term "no comment" been lost on these men?

I understand the difficulty some of them face when writing their autobiography, because they want its content to reflect who they are. So they turn their book into a tell-all, revealing the foibles in their life and everything else.

But do readers need to know everything? Are they really longing for yet-another Dr. Phil moment?

I pose these two questions because of the ongoing talk about Andre Agassi's soon-to-be-released autobiography "Open." In the book, Agassi discusses lying to the tennis federation in 1997 about his use of crystal meth, an illegal drug that has its appeal among a certain crowd.

I doubt he mentioned his use of crystal meth to show how cool he was. Remember, in the 1990s, Agassi was "Mr. Image Is Everything," and the cool factor attached to his name hadn't waned even as his mane of flowing blond locks had begun to give way to skin.

Agassi, who retired in 2006, has remained a popular athlete, an iconic figure for what he did on the tennis court and off it. He won more than his share, and he pulled his career from the bottom of the sport to its apex. Agassi was a powerful force in men's tennis for parts of two decades.

But his Grand Slam titles and other tennis exploits have gotten lost in the discussion of his drug use. It has become the talk of professional tennis, a sport crying for an American star to fill the void that he and Pete Sampras left when they retired.

I would have preferred not to know about Agassi's drug abuse. I'm not certain his autobiography, brutally honest as he claims it is, would have been less compelling without the mention of meth, but to bring the topic up puts his squeaky-clean public life under a different microscope. He sullied his imagine of the all-American boy, even though his revelation was about what he did a decade ago.

In my mind, Agassi, 39, didn't do his image a favor by opening all of his past for public scrutiny. He could have mesmerized readers with insights into his marriage to Brooke Shields, with stories about his struggles to rebuild his flagging tennis career, with stories about his life with tennis great Steffi Graf and with stories about his charitable initiatives on behalf of educating society's have-nots.

I care as much about his using crystal meth as I do about whether he drinks Crystal Light, Tang or Kool-Aid.

Tell me about his rivalry with Sampras. Let me into what drove you to the top of the sport. Share with me your memories of the exotic places tennis took you. Walk me through the reasoning behind your decision to put your money behind educating people.

I find those stories relevant to what Agassi has become as a man. I prefer more of that, and less of tabloid tales of drugs or sex. I didn't like it when LeBron James revealed in his memoir that he had used marijuana in high school, and I don't like what Agassi did in talking about his use of crystal meth.

For the story of a flawed character is trite. I think the public is better served in viewing Agassi as a genuine hero without warts, not as the second coming of Levi Johnston. Agassi wouldn't be lying; he would just be holding on to a side of his private life that wasn't necessary to reveal.

To my knowledge, no one asked Andre Agassi about a drug problem. So what was his reason to tell?

No justice in Plaxico's prison sentence

He looks like the portrait of injustice. That’s about all you can say about Plaxico Burress as he walked into a New York courthouse Tuesday and prepared to begin his sentence of two years in state prison.

Yeah, Burress broke the law, but if his punishment reflects the best of American justice, I prefer something else.

I guess if I hadn’t seen lesser crimes than his earn a “perp” probation, I wouldn’t feel as I do about this sentence. I also know that if I liked Burress more, I might even be more outraged about it.

But he’s hardly a player whose behavior engenders warm feelings. Burress exudes a cockiness this is off-putting, and he doesn’t help his public profile when he lets his appetite for high style trump substance. He often displays a smug callousness that borders on self-righteous, although he’s hardly the lone athlete who does so.

Yet athletes who flaunt their wealthy lifestyles win few popularity contests. Fans yearn to see a star's profile packaged with humility, the sort of image they extol in Peyton Manning, Kurt Warner, Roger Federer, Tiger Woods, CC Sabathia and Derek Jeter: classic cool instead of hip-hop crass.

Image is everything, isn’t that what Andre Agassi told us a decade or so ago? Agassi had it right, but when that image carries a hard, urban edginess to it, it isn’t much of an image in some people’s minds.

That image never sits well with the larger public, and when that image is that of a black athlete like Burress … well, that’s an altogether different discussion.

In some ways, I suspect what happened to Burress, the New York Giants star, had less to do with his skin color and more to do with bad law. I do understand New York City’s interest in getting unlicensed handguns off the street; I applaud the city’s efforts. Laws should be in place to punish people who run afoul of that effort; the remedy, however, should be a sentence that reflects all circumstances.

The law should have some bend to it, all things considered.

For if it did, I doubt anybody would find two years in prison an appropriate punishment for a man who shot himself in the leg – an unlicensed .40-caliber Glock or not. The person that Burress hurt was Burress.

I know others might argue that he could have hurt someone else. His Glock went off inside a Manhattan nightclub, and a gun that goes off in such intimate surroundings threatens more than the gun’s owner. The bullet could easily have ricocheted and taken a bystander’s life.

Had the bullet killed or injured another person, New York City has laws to address the taking of a life. Nobody, athlete or not, could expect a free pass, not even a man with Burress’ access to the best lawyers.

But when the law itself has no bend -- gives no consideration to an extraordinary set of circumstances -- it becomes a law that needs to be changed. For no man deserves two years in jail for shooting himself.

Punishment should always fit the crime, but the crime of stupidity, which Plaxico Burress pleads guilty to, shouldn’t put a man behind bars for two years. I see no justice in that.

( Photo of Plaxico Burress by sholmes10191's photostream)