She Has Head Start on Fame, Fortune

Things older than Jennifer Capriati:

My tennis racket.

The baking soda in my refrigerator.

Gary Coleman.

The bicentennial celebration.

My neighbor’s cat.

Paul McCartney’s second band.

Pocket calculators.

Mary Lou Retton.

Hank Aaron’s 715th.

Three Mile Island.

Disco.

Mary Lou Retton’s cat.

Almost everybody’s baking soda.

Almost everybody. (Sigh)

She’s 14 years old.

A girl who could be playing with stuffed animals will be playing with Steffi Graf today in the U.S. Open, and so wow, do you feel old now or what?

I mean, here I am, a man old enough to remember when Martina Navratilova was overweight, and what am I doing? I’m traveling 3,000 miles from home just to write about Tennis the Menace.

These are Jennifer Capriati’s wonder years. At 14, she’s the boomingest baby and the teeniest bopper in professional sports. She’s so young, she barely remembers wood rackets. Heck, she’s so young, not only can she barely remember Vietnam, she can barely remember movies made about Vietnam.

Heck, she’s so young, she barely remembers the word heck.

And yet, when Jennifer wore earrings--yes, she’s old enough for those--to the Open the other day, they featured peace symbols.

“What’s with these? You don’t remember the ‘60s,” said CBS-TV’s Lesley Visser, who does. (Sorry, Lesley.)

“Yeah, well, it’s more of a fashion statement,” Jennifer explained.

Yeah, well.

That chill I just felt is affecting my typing fingers.

Frankly, friends, I freak out a little when I have to cover athletes who were born just before the Jimmy Carter Administration.

Like, I just found out that Jennifer’s favorite singer is somebody named M.C. Hammer. I thought M.C. Hammer was the company that made baking soda.

What am I going to ask her if she wins the U.S. Open?

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

“Read any good books lately?”

“ Color any good books lately?”

We are talking about somebody here who is still such a kid, I’m pretty sure she addresses Steffi Graf as “ma’am.”

Not only is Jennifer a fine tennis player for her age, but she is going to be a whiz at keeping score, soon as she passes arithmetic.

When Jennifer’s not in tennies, she is a ninth-grader at St. Andrew’s academy in Boca Raton, Fla., or at least will be whenever she gets around to attending class. The school term actually started last Monday. Jennifer just didn’t know it.

She occupies an altogether different world. Jennifer’s friends are playing with Barbie. Jennifer’s playing with Steffi. Jennifer’s friends are watching MTV. Jennifer is on CBS. Jennifer’s friends are buying clothes at the mall. Jennifer’s endorsing products at the mall.

The girl just signed a rich, rich deal to be a spokesperson for--are you ready?--Oil of Olay.

Now, I can think of a lot of oils Jennifer might use--olive, suntan, 3-in-1, paints for art class--but Oil of Olay is a skin product. And Jennifer’s skin is about as parched as pudding. Jennifer needs face stuff like she needs prunes. She has to show ID just to buy Johnson & Johnson Baby Powder. If her Mom ever sent her to the store to buy cold cream, Jennifer would probably come back with Cool Whip.

“No, it’s like never too early to start taking care of your skin!” Jennifer said. “You want to be careful not to be, you know, whatever . . . old-looking!”

Cute. The kid is a real cutie-pie, the kind who’d be nice to be your niece. She has a sweet, endearing disposition and an open, pleasant, innocent manner. Somebody ought to sell the film rights to Ally Sheedy. Rate it G and pitch it to Disney.

Her father, Stefano, was a Hollywood stuntman and extra. His daughter is a leading lady. At home, she hangs around with her little brother and her little doggy. Away from home, she hangs around TV interviewers and shoe manufacturers and strangers older than her who want her to sign their slips of paper.

And plays Steffi Graf.

“I just gotta hang in there with her,” Jennifer said. “You have to get it in your mind that you can beat anybody.”

Too much pressure for someone 14?

“Well, no, hey, she’s the one who’s got all the pressure. Nobody expects me to beat her. All I gotta do is do my best and have fun!”

And, you know, maybe go out later to the malt shop!

And before you know it, seven years will go by, and Jennifer can even legally order a beer.

By then she’ll be the Wimbledon champion and the U.S. Open champion and will own most of Florida, and, far more important, her skin will look great.

The rest of us, I guess we’ll just be dead or something.