This is the second installment of my series on the 25 most compelling encounters and happenings in my 25 years of publishing Inside Tennis.

THE RUN!:
Connors’ Delirious Dance
Through the Hors d’Oeuvres
15 It was inspired theater, an over-the-top operatic triumph, the most captivating run in tennis lore.

In 1991, James Scott Connors, 39 — the washed-up has-been with a triple-digit ranking; the punch-drunk brawler who had been given the (“what have you done for me lately?”) cold shoulder by tennis know-it-alls — swept deep into the U.S. Open with a glint-in-his-eye bravado only Muhammad Ali could match.

Sure, he had a sweet draw and played most of his matches in the evening cool. Still, the N.Y. Times noted that “the defending guardian of the tennis theater of the absurd, a beacon for all past-their-prime players and a mold breaking athlete made to measure for this most aggravating of the Grand Slams... used mirrors, night magic and his incredibly mean two-handed backhand to cut a defiant swath into the semifinals.”

This was vintage Jimbo. The irascible, tightly-wound rooster from the wrong side of the tracks, who had been long prodded by his fierce (“us against the world”) mother Gloria, now was yelling into the camera: “This is what they want, this what they’ll get.”

So there was Jimbo, barely surviving an after-midnight first-round match against Pat McEnroe. There was Jimbo, retrieving one more improbable overhead after another against a dazed Paul Haarhuis. There was Jimbo, tweaking the establishment, telling the ump, “You’re an abortion.” There was the swashbuckler, reducing Aaron Krickstein to mush. There was the no-holds-barred, shameless, macho, gladiator/showman charged by the greatest fighting heart in sports, with the toughest crowd (this side of a Philly football stadium) in his fist-pumping grasp.

“What was truly yuckable,” noted Curry Kirkpatrick, “is that tennis’ original crotch-clutching, gutter-mouthed rude boy had turned into an all-American hero...[now he] was Ted Kennedy at the Democratic Convention, Madonna at Cannes and, yeah, the king of them all, Elvis, alive and refusing to leave the building.”

To this day, I hear the roar of the captivated throng. To this day, I relish the greatest tour de force in Grand Slam history. And to this day, I chuckle at one of the best tennis quotes of the past 25 years.

“Connors,” wrote Robert Lipsyte, “reminds us how much we have given up by growing up. Lucky Jimmy. If only we could stop the party in the living room, make all the grownups applaud our naughty words, dance through the hors d’oeuvres, posture and preen and be a Terrible Two, the only time when a human being will be loved for conquering the world while crying.”

THE ANDRE TRANSFORMATION:
From Self Absorption to Self Realization
14 In a sport where they say making changes is like turning a battleship in a lagoon, no one has transformed himself quite like Agassi. Once a self-absorbed, some would say, mean-spirited, “Image-Is-Everything” twit without much of a moral compass, Andre slowly morphed himself into your basic saint ‘n sage jock: the most thoughtful, giving and reflective active player in the tennis galaxy. Remember, this was the guy who once came off court after a loss and blurted out, “Fire Fritz [his chaplain].” In ‘90, he prompted John McEnroe to assert, “He’s from Vegas. I think he’s funny. He should cut his hair and look like a human being...Hopefully, in 10 years, he’ll do that.”

These days, Andre emanates concern and backs it up as he donates more than twice as much to charity than any other athlete [Lance Armstrong is a distant second].

A caring mentor, he continually offers a nonstop string of feel-good profundities on life, love and the grind ‘n glory of sport. How’d he do it? Thoughtful handlers, empowering wives, adept therapists, wise counselors, life experiences? Has anyone grown into their stage role more adeptly?

I first saw Andre with his scruffy mullet on a Bollettieri practice court — teen-vanity incarnate. Little did I know that over the years, I would have numerous in-depth conversations with the man. Now when Andre plays, I watch. When he talks, I listen.

OF WAR...
13 For 25 years I’ve covered the battlefields of sport. Yet, for some inexplicable reason, I’ve been drawn to the sites of war. In Japan, I made a pilgrimage to Hiroshima, a haunting recollection for any American. Here, on a warm summer morning in 1945, hundreds of thousands saw fire in the sky: darkness descended and flames silenced the plaintive calls for help. To end a wretched war, a Faustian deal had been struck. At last, the nuclear genie danced with glee. In seconds, mass annihilation was unleashed: 200,000 would die. The war was over, but the fear of self-destruction would shadow us — now and forever — and the Peace Park at Hiroshima would become a kind of brave and elegant ground zero for those eager to still the threat of nuclear armaments.

On the tail end of another journey — a tennis trip to Germany — I ventured to Hitler’s Bavarian mountain headquarters, where I was directed to a village graveyard. There, I was stunned when I came upon the tombstone of a lieutenant in Hitler’s air force, a man who was named Gustl Simon, who died in mid April 1945. Well, my great-grandfather’s name was Gustave Simon, my father’s name was Gus Simons, and my name is William Gustave Simons. Plus, I was born in mid-April 1945. Go figure, what a curious, if troubling, coincidence!

Finally, one year during the French Open, I traveled to Omaha Beach and was on Normandy’s storied sands at sunrise to reflect on the ferocious truths of an historic morning. I wrote this remembrance on D-Day.

Touch the sand, a hard cold plain.
Gentle waves break easy, muffling a distant echo within this sea — dark, foreboding.
Lazy lagoons capture still water. A gull swirls free, the sparrow offers a morning song above cruel hills. Murky waters, unrevealing, cling to their secrets by this flat, too wide beach where a mighty tide was turned.
The surly crimson pools are unseen, still the knowing grains harbor a bitter truth, beyond our grasp — a jaded imagination.
This morning, steel clouds hide a horizon like no other; a horizon that wrought a gray armada for the ages; a vast surge — 5,423 ships, one goal.
On that day someone dubbed “The Longest Day” boys from Moline and Mobile, the sons of Brooklyn and Burbank, Phoenix and Philly — huddled cold in shivering clusters.
Wide-eyed, bone-wet, tossed woozy by the uncaring sea — they puffed their last soggy smokes and whispered muted prayers — the final invocations before destiny’s dawn.
What unforgiving fear did they feel? What gut-wrenching terror shook their souls before they strode forth — each to meet his fate?
Some never reached shore. Packed heavy with battle gear, they sank, a fatal stone descending — an unsparing death.
Some managed just a single step, dropping to that cold hard beach. Others scaled storied cliffs, subdued blazing bunkers or trudged on to wage war in the hedgerow maze, emerging to tell tales — a generation’s pride.
Today, the morning wind is cool. But nothing like the chill of horror that gripped the boys of Omaha on that wide, too wide, beach below cruel hills. Wretched little rises turned imposing peaks; impenetrable bastions raining fire, a fierce explosion, tearing flesh —
a sea runs red.
Such agony — dreams and destinies ripped asunder — a shout of death heard by a distant steeple. The mourning dove flees — the world ablaze — chaotic flames tell of the madman’s fury, a potent poison.
So step by terrible step the battle is fought. Step by terrible step the beach is won. Step by step a continent is conquered. Step by step an unfathomable evil — the Nazi knot — is undone and we wake from a twisted dream to again grip that elusive thread, life’s fragile gift.

…AND PEACE
12 Tennis is an international racket played in every corner of this planet. After all, any tournament worth its salt has a players lounge with a rich multicultural U.N. sensibility and enough languages to crowd a Berlitz catalogue. And remember, it was racket sports (well, Ping-Pong) that President Nixon adeptly called on to crack the Chinese door; Mikhail Gorbachev’s wife Raisa told Chris Evert, “Tennis will bring our countries together,” and sure enough, soon after, American Pam Shriver teamed with the Soviet Union’s Natasha Zvereva in dubs. So, does tennis help a bit to crumble barriers?

• Former Secretary of State Richard Hollbroke played tennis with Croatian strongman Franco Tudjman before working out the Dayton Peace Accords.
• There was a “rackets not rockets” tennis circuit in the Middle East, and Moroccan Karim Alami became the first Muslim to play the Israel Open.
• Jordan’s King Abdullah shook hands with Israeli Davis Cup players, and the Israeli Tennis Association opened a facilty in an Arab village.

Of course, the best example came in ‘02 when Pakistani Muslim Asiam Qureshi asserted, “Islam teaches us to be tolerant,” and then brushed aside the greatest enmity of our times by joining Israeli Jew Amir Hadad to reach the third round of the Wimbledon doubles. Hadad poignantly noted, “It’s always sad to see people getting killed for nothing. If we can help change things, we’re going to.” So on occasion, can (“why can’t we just get along?”) athletes put to shame the intransigent muddle that plagues contemporary political thought? Again this year, we may see another example when and if Muslim Sonia Mirza — a lighting-rod figure in her native India — again teams to play doubles with Israeli Shahar Peer.

IN SEARCH OF THE MEANING OF MAC
11 More than any other, I’ve tracked one figure — John Patrick McEnroe: the inexplicable icon of unending ventures.

From when I first saw him as a player at the Transamerica Open in San Francisco in ‘81 to his Super Saturday triumph over Connors at the ‘83 U.S. Open; to interviewing him at his gritty Tribecca art gallery where he displayed his photo collection and invited me onto his BMW motorcycle, the meaning of Mac has always been a compelling mystery book I couldn’t put down.

I fondly recall being in the players lounge after his last great U.S. Open victory in ‘90 when he tossed his adoring toddler Sean into the air with a celebratory ecstasy. I was stunned at the Riviera Club in L.A. when, during a seniors match, he viscously imploded: vintage Mac with a tad of racism, no less. And afterwards, when I asked, “Why?” he snapped back again and again, “As long as I am on this planet, don’t ask me that question.”

I was impressed in Zimbabwe when he drew on all of his inspirational powers to bring our Davis Cup team back from the brink of an ignominious defeat. And I chatted with him at Buckingham Palace when he played a match against Borg and hobnobbed with Royals, an incongruous scene which prompted Pat Cash to note that “the terrorists always end up being invited to tea with the Queen.”

One night, he interrupted me when I was interviewing Jimmy Connors in an Atlanta locker room and, years later, I interrupted him, asking a softball question during a meet ‘n greet session with President Clinton at the U.S. Open.

I endured his final (and truly wretched) installment as our Davis Cup Captain when our rudderless team all but disintegrated on Spanish clay. Like others, I shuddered when the snarliest kid on the block pleaded from the TV booth: “I wish [Jim] Courier would smile.” Then, when one after another of his ill-conceived efforts (art gallery impresario, rock ‘n roller, TV host AND talk show personality) all fizzled, I wondered if this guy was on a losing streak.

But no way. Not only did he eventually dominate the senior circuit, but in just the last nine months, he’s won the French Open doubles with Yannick Noah, his team won the World Team Championships and he came back (at age 47 and very gray) to be embraced by throngs in San Jose where he won the dubs title with Jonas Bjorkman. There, when he finally flashed his fiery temper, one fan quipped, “The ump probably thought he got rid of this stiff years ago.” Another said, “Great. He’s flipping out. Now I’ve seen the real John McEnroe.”

Still, after 25 years, I wonder who’s the real John McEnroe? The inspired shotmaker with a feathery touch and nasty corkscrew serve who’s entertained millions? A screwy (“you can’t be serious”) narcissist who’s helped unglue Western Civ? A generous charity worker and caring patriarch? A self-absorbed know-it-all? An unafraid risk-taker? A best-selling author and gifted commentator who can turn the most drab match into must-see TV or a (where’s the kindness?), self-destructive New Yorker who doesn’t know much about boundaries? A self-indulgent, still spoiled-after-all-these years brat? Or an intriguing and singular modern figure of layered enigmas?