NEW YORK -- How often do we get to see an athlete play out a career and say without hesitation, this was the best there ever was? We saw Martina Navratilova, and she was the best there ever was.


She was bold and she was smart and she dared to do things the others before and since could only imagine. She won more tennis matches and more tournaments than any other woman. She won more money. And that was hardly the stuff and substance of the person who played the game before our eyes for 22 years.


"It's been a hell of a run," she said Tuesday night, and that was no exaggeration.


She went out the way she always played the game, challenging her opponent, herself and the court, charging the net. She was a step slower and her best shot was a foot shorter, but she was herself. She was the player who made herself, and then the mold was lost.


She's 37 years old. "I will miss this game," she said, "but I'm ready for my new life." And she wept. As dynamic a player as she was, she was always vulnerable, always with her emotions near the surface. She lived and played with attitude, as the late Ted Tinling put it, that "ranged from arrogance to panic with nothing in between."


What she did was take the boundaries and limitations of women's tennis and shove them higher and wider. She discovered she could be more athletic than any women's tennis player and she discovered she could make herself stronger and better conditioned than anyone before her. There had never been a better athlete or a more aggressive player in women's tennis. To say she transformed tennis is a misstatement. Unlike champions in other sports who pull all the copycats along in their wake, Martina stood virtually alone to the end.


"Obviously I didn't change the game, because everybody is staying on the baseline," she reflected recently. "So what's my legacy?"


Good question. The others are still out there on the baseline where it's safe, hitting the ball back and forth and advancing on the failing of the others.


Nancy Lieberman, the basketball player, pushed and pulled her to a new level. There was Mike Estep, the male coach, challenging her, and a nutritionist and the others of Team Navratilova. And together they dominated the game. It's hard to play the kind of game she did. Her legacy is she showed it was possible.


What impresses me more than anything is the way she made herself an American. Athletes come to this country and use it as a tool for their careers. Martina learned American geography and history and literature and pop culture. Remember how she stepped forward at the U.S. Open, this wide-eyed 18-year-old from Czechoslovakia, and said she wanted to stay. The story at the time was the Czechoslovakian sports federation had been tipped by the secret police that she was planning to defect. So they denied permission for her to leave for the U.S. Open. Jan Kodes, the Czech ace, talked the authorities into granting the visa, saying she might win and it would be good for Czech tennis.


She was 18 and she recalls she wasn't planning defection. It would mean she wouldn't see her family again. "But when I learned about the report, I knew I'd better leave for good if I ever got the chance," she said.


It wasn't long after that she appeared wearing a T-shirt proclaiming, "and on the eighth day He created the Dallas Cowboys." It was the Americanization of Martina in leaps and bounds. She wore a necklace bearing a checkmark with a canceling slash through the tail. She was an "Ex-Czech." She read books in English. She quotes from American politics and Mark Twain and makes comparisons to the NFL.


Maybe that's her greater legacy. In 1989 the Soviet domination of Czechoslovakia was ended. She didn't end it, but she played her part. While she played tennis, Czechoslovakians strained to get a glimpse of her wherever they could. They would read between the lines. Wimbledon is the colossal event all across Europe. The Czech press would be there and the people would look to see how she did. After a while the newspapers would write about everything but Martina's matches. And when she was winning Wimbledon nine times the papers had to dance around that, and the people knew. They would drive to the corner of the country where they could pick up German television.


She didn't change the politics but she embarrassed the politicians. The people at home knew there was something more out there beyond the barriers. Life could never be the same.


She had dared. She dared to defect and she dared the game with her style, and she dared to live her life her way. And she paid a price. Athletes who dominate the game reap fortunes in endorsement money. Martina got next to none because, first, she was widely rumored to be a lesbian, and then she had the self-confidence to confirm it and became an advocate for gay rights. She took up other causes. She was an athlete, but first she was a person.


She was a great tennis player. Her long-running rivalry and friendship with Chris Evert was a joy. Martina's success on the court was stunning. From 1982 through 1986 she played 441 matches and lost 14.


She could hang around and beat almost all of the others, but that's not what she wants. She's ready to go. How can we know there will be another like her?