Only in America?

Mike Agassi lived his life in America with the same heart and passion that he lost that fight, except that no one was keeping score save for himself and his family and if I were to ask them, I’ll bet they’d say he was a world champion husband, father and friend and, by the way, that’s all that matters to Mike. He won’t respond to queries about the hard, bad or down times of his life unless you’re as persevering and persistent as he had to be in order to succeed; he won’t brag about the triumphs, either, because he doesn’t have the time for it. Those were yesterday’s events; at 80, he is working on tomorrow’s, except when he stops occasionally to catch his breath.

Four years ago, the family went nuts because he climbed about 60 feet on a 75-foot-ladder to trim branches on one of the palm trees lining the perimeter of the regulation tennis court alongside his house that he designed and whose construction he supervised. He also invented many of the requirements necessary to keep it perfectly level, a drainage system to optimize the drying after a rainfall, and an ingeniously simple device to prevent birds from leaving droppings on the surface of the court, among other innovations. (He feeds the birds regularly out of simple kindness, not as a bribe to prevent the inevitable consequence of eating.)

The guy has led a successful, adventurous, productive, relatively anonymous, unglamorous life. That’s not easy, either, but he pulled it off, anyway. In America, it’s important to be successful because nowhere else is success rewarded so disproportionately or striving-but-failing so unappreciated. No one knows or cares who came in second, because they lost in the finals. The conundrum is, what is success? For Mike Agassi, it was to give his children the tools to achieve and succeed, to live and perform to the utmost of their ability and capability.

It’s what all of us want for our children but not many of us are willing to suffer the personal sacrifice necessary to achieve that goal. Maybe it requires aggressive-compulsive behavior. Whatever it took, he had it. When Andre and his siblings ran out of the requisite competition locally to constantly improve their game, their father would drive them to Los Angeles or Salt Lake City, hundreds of miles away, to compete against the best in their age categories and above. The kids loved and enjoyed it; Mike Agassi didn’t force it on them. He worked as many as three jobs a day to pay for the gas, the equipment and the car repairs. Mike’s devotion wasn’t what you’d call “exemplary.” If that’s all he had given, the kids wouldn’t have gotten where he wanted them to go. How did he do? What’s the measure of his success? Guess, but check out the children’s life histories before you decide. You’d be interested to see how well-adjusted and accomplished they are. I’ve mentioned the names of three of the kids so, just for fairness and balance, let me also mention Tami, chronologically the third child, because she’s the one who maintains fairness and balance in the family. When Mike Agassi or anyone else in the family gets out of line and none of the other members can reason with the wayward one, Tami does it, because no one says no to Tami.

I asked Mike about another non-celebrity, his wife, Betty, whom he met in June 1959 and married in August. (I’ll do the math for you; two months. Now, it’s 51 years later.) When I asked about her, he was constrained by his pigeon English, which happens to be the weakest language for him out of the five he speaks. Mike’s passionate and emotional, about everything, but particularly his family. Simple people usually are, and he’s a simple guy. He speaks from the heart and the route from the heart to the tongue isn’t complicated by nuance or innuendo or other contrived interference, as is the route from the brain to the tongue. It’s direct, clear and unconditional. In his eagerness and excitement to tell me about her, he stammered and struggled momentarily to find the words and I sensed he felt inadequate to express what he felt. The word he used was, “wonderful.” I think, if “World Champion” had occurred to him, he would have mouthed the words, but I’m guessing she may never have held a tennis racket in her hands in her life so the term in this context didn’t occur to him.  All the work she’s done has been outside the white lines.

A lot has been written about Mike Aggasi’s youngest child, Andre, even a book by the young man himself, and there has been a considerable amount of misunderstanding about the family’s dynamics. While reading lines of writing we, each of us, interprets the words in his own personal way, reading between the lines in the context of our own personal lives and prisms, not those of the principals, and nuance and innuendo can alter the perception. I know what Andre wrote about his father in his book; I saw the interview of Andre Agassi on “60 Minutes.” I’m telling you  this: there is at least every bit as much love and respect and trust among all the members of  the Agassi family, and happiness, as there is in yours and mine. The tough, simple guy did it. It was a lifetime of hard, intensive work and long hours, but it was a labor of love and it paid off. He isn’t a thoroughbred in his bloodline, but if you’re assessing character and dignity, he’s 100 percent.