Andre Agassi ruined himself; ruined his legacy, his reputation, and even some of his dignity just by releasing a tell all book.  Some would say that.  I don't.  I don't believe you can lose legacies, you can only grow upon them.  Good or bad he will be remembered for many things.  Whether it be his exceptional tenniss play, his "Image is Everything" commercials, or his tell all book, Agassi hasn't lost his legacy.  I'm not an Andre Agassi know it all or even much of a fan for that matter, but I haven't seen so many people so upset with an athlete since the Michael Vick saga.  We have athletes that kill innocent human beings in a hit and run or who are involved in drug busts and people don't come down on them like they do Agassi.  Maybe people really believe he wrote the book for the money.  I don't.  Maybe people just hate the fact that this American tennis legend is not the pure athlete that we once loved.  It doesn't really matter to me what he says in his book because there's so many worse things going on in the world or sports world to be upset over than the fact that Andre Agassi did crystal meth and he wore a wig because he was balding so much.  What I don't like are all the harsh criticizing towards Agassi over a stupid book.  Whatever the reason it is he wrote the book doesn't matter.  If it's for money, so be it, people have done much worse for money.  If it's really to help the less fortunate who could be in a similar situation, so be it also, I don't really care.  It just seems that when a person tells the truth than he's chastised, but when the truth comes out and he admits it than he's a saint.

That's my real gripe with this whole situation; someone tells the truth and they're the worst person in the world.  Look at Michael Vick, look at A-Rod; both these athletes got caught, one caught cheating the game and the other got brutally abusing animals.  There was an uproar, there was criticism, but after they gave their apologies and told the truth people began to forget.  America is the land of second chances.  When someone does something wrong they can right it and we accept them for it.  I guess we don't give second chances for telling the truth.  That's the America we live in now though.  We don't like when people tell the truth, we like when people tell us what we want to hear.  We hate the tattle tale and love the comeback kid.  So let's put the whole story into perspective.  We have a star athlete from over a decade ago who writes a book about past drug use and not loving the game.  That's the entire perspective; simple and easy.  So before we get into a tizzy more than we already are let's realize that Andre Agassi wasn't harming anyone but himself.  He wasn't cheating the game, just cheating his career.  So maybe it doesn't seem like the smartest way to go, usually telling the truth when it's hard isn't, but at least he did it, for whatever reason, and Agassi's legacy shouldn't be punished just for telling the truth.

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