Monica Seles: Courage, Dignity

It’s been a tough summer if you’ve been searching for some sports heroes to admire.

Mickey Mantle, though he used the last year of his life to promote sobriety and organ donation, admitted before he died that he’d squandered most of his baseball talent on booze.

Warren Moon, the Minnesota Vikings quarterback, nearly choked his wife to death.

And Mike Tyson, convicted rapist, made a fool of pay-per-view fans in an 89-second boxing comeback.

But don’t give up the search. One sports figure quietly, and with much dignity, provides hope that not all our sports champions are deeply flawed human beings.

Her name is Monica Seles. On Sunday, the tennis champ won the Canadian Open. It was her comeback, too. But instead of coming back from prison like Tyson, she rallied from a tragedy not of her own making.

More than two years ago, when Seles was the No. 1 player in the world, a man climbed out of the stands at a tournament in Hamburg, Germany, and stabbed Seles in the back with a kitchen knife. Seles’ physical wound was serious enough, but wounds of the soul were piled on top of it.

Her attacker never spent time in prison. A German court gave him a suspended two-year sentence. That’s it.

Meanwhile, the world of women’s tennis went on without her. Out of sight, out of mind. Some predicted Seles could never return.

A writer once called illness “God’s reset button.” The same can be said of any extraordinary event. A death, a tragedy, a criminal conviction. These “resets” either make people better - or they don’t.

Tyson never has expressed remorse for the rape despite three years of time in prison to think about it. He just waited to get out of prison and fight some more. He made $25 million for less than two minutes’ worth of work. But we predict he’ll face trouble again. That often happens when you don’t learn from the lessons handed to you.

Seles could have brooded at home for the past two years, grown bitter and out-of-shape. Given up. Become distrustful of most people. Played the blame game.

Instead, she healed, physically and emotionally, and got in even better shape than she was before the stabbing. Then she returned to the game she loves. Imagine how frightened Seles must have felt during the tournament when she sat down between sets, her back to the crowd.

Her recovery skills - and her courage - will endure long after her tennis career ends.

Welcome back, Monica. We need you.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Rebecca Nappi/For the editorial board