Washington Post columnist Michael Wilbon called soccer star Mia Hamm, 'Perhaps the most important athlete of the last 15 years.' This may sell her a bit short. Ms. Hamm, with little fanfare, retired this past week at the age of 32. She and her bobbing signature ponytail walked away from the US National team that signed her up at the age of 15. Ms. Hamm departs as the all time leading goal scorer, male or female, in the history of international soccer competition, with 158 scores. She also leaves the field of play with the one name stature accorded a select few: Magic, Peyton, Michael, Larry, Mia.
Mia Hamm's retirement should have been Sports Illustrated cover material. We should be able to wallpaper the halls of congress with tributes to her greatness. Instead, the broad media silence that greeted her departure – beyond the ghettoes of soccer sports writing – was deafening.
It tempts the spirit to say that Ms. Hamm, always quiet, always humble, never the one to rip off her shirt after a goal or criticize teammates who did, left with the same reserved dignity that defined her play. It would be tempting, but as Samuel L. Jackson said in Pulp Fiction, 'That sh*t just aint the truth.'
The yipping testosterone-addled heads of sports talk always moan and groan about the lack of role models, difference makers, and dignity in sports. Yet when faced with the opportunity to highlight a career defined by these ideals, they looked the other way. Instead, we had another week about what Barry Bonds was or was not ingesting, who Ron Artest did or did not punch, and what Ricky Williams is or is not smoking.
This stands as yet another example of women's place on the back of the athletic bus. Call it the 'Kournikova effect,' (named after Anna Kournikova who made it to the cover of Sports Illustrated without having won a single tournament.) It's not enough for a woman to have blistering athletic talent. She also has to date cheesy celebrities, strip to her skivvies, and basically become Paris Hilton with muscle tone to generate any attention. If Mia Hamm was shtupping Justin Timberlake, or had appeared in Playboy's 'Women of the Olympics issue, her retirement may have generated some more immediate coverage. Good thing she married fading shortstop Nomar Garciaparra, a fact that forced its way into every story written about her this week.
The shame of it is that – even absent paparazzi puke – Hamm's story justifies thorough examination. At 32, she is roughly the same age as Title IX, the law that guarantees equal funding for men and women's sports. A product of the women's movement of the 1960's, Title IX has radically changed the lives of millions throughout the U.S. According to the Women's Sports Foundation, one in twenty-seven high school girls played sports 25 years ago; one in three do today.
Before Title IX, fewer than 32,000 women participated in college sports; today that number exceeds 150,000. Young girls who play sports are less likely to suffer from eating disorders, be involved in abusive relationships, or drop out of high school. Despite this record of achievement it's subject to constant attack. Like all of the 1960s reforms that improved the lives of women, people of color, and the poor, Title IX has been subject to a well-organized and well-funded backlash. Mia Hamm, who can be painfully shy, has carried through her play, the symbolic weight of everything about Title IX that is indomitable and will not be turned back.
She bears this burden because of all athletic programs affected by Title IX, the most profound impact has been on soccer. Women's soccer is now offered on nearly 88 percent of college campuses compared to only 2.8 percent in 1977. Through these openings denied women of previous generations, Ms. Hamm dazzled and became the first team superstar that U.S. women's sports ever produced. She was the focal point for the national team that beat China in the historic 1999 World Cup final that drew a crowd of 90,000 to the Rose Bowl and attracted a television audience of 40 million. She also starred for the U.S. team that won the 1991 World Cup championships and Olympic gold medals last summer and in 1996. Throughout her brilliant career, in the words of one writer, Hamm 'undoubtedly inspired more girls to step onto a playing surface than all other female athletes combined.'
In honoring the retiring Hamm, along with teammates Julie Foudy and Joy Fawcett, U.S. national team coach April Heinrichs said, 'Think of it this way: Imagine that Magic, Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, Shaq, Kobe and LeBron were all on one team for 15 years. That's what we have had with our women's national team.'
Their play was so inspired, and the attention they received so profound, they were harnessed with the ultimate 'compliment' when Bill Clinton joined the players' husbands and partners in a special stadium box for that game against China. Women were perhaps for the first time deemed a worthy vehicle for the ugly side of international competition that breeds the kind of nationalism and saber rattling usually reserved for men's contests. The success against China spawned a Women's Professional Soccer League, the WUSA. The league went under in recent years, as women athletes saw the limits of corporate sponsorship and fan frenzy when not playing the evil Chinese.
The failure of the WUSA undoubtedly dimmed the light on Mia Hamm in recent years, but her last game was a fitting athletic epitaph. Hamm racked up two stellar assists that defy description. On the first assist, Hamm took a pass in the right corner of the box, started dribbling to her left, then to her right, faked back to her left, then raced around an off-balance defender. With goalkeeper Pamela Tajonar sliding to her left to cut off the angle, Hamm rolled a well-paced pass across the center of the box, and a hard charging teammate crushed a shot into the net. Hamm recorded another assist on a corner kick, when her curling kick sailed just over the goalie's outstretched hands and into the center of the box, where a teammate headed the ball into the net. 'Scoring is fun,' she said. 'But it's also fun to watch your teammates enjoying the game.'
Hamm made a point of going to the stands to sign autographs, with some of the young fans lingering for more than an hour after the game. This is par for the course for an athlete who never shirked from the responsibility to tirelessly promote her sport, or personifying the athletic hopes and dreams of a generation of young girls. Mia Hamm earned this place by showing through her everyday play that women could equal or exceed a man's blood, sweat, and tears. She exhibited in practice that men do not own exclusive rights to the wicked dynamism that is athletic greatness.
As Heinrichs said when the retirement celebration drew to a close, 'They had an impact on America's consciousness, on women's sports, on women's voices.' Having an 'impact on women's voices' won't get you in People Magazine, but it means a legacy for Mia Hamm that is richer and more resonant than yesterday's tabloids. Her legacy is one that will echo in our demands for women's equality in the generations to come.
--Get Dave Zirin's column Edge of Sports every week by sending an e-mail to edgeofsports-subscribe@zirin.com. Contact the author at editor@pgpost.com.
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