Well, a mimic rarely gets the same satisfaction.
But, here's an article I think we haven't seen before.
The thing that struck Blanche Roddick, at home in Boca Raton, Fla., was how calm her son sounded. It was early Saturday morning in Rome, and Andy Roddick was standing on the balcony of his burning hotel, speaking into his cellphone and describing in a newsman's measured clip the chaos all around him.
Guests at the Grand Hotel Parco dei Principi were trying to escape the licking flames by jumping onto the wraparound balcony outside Roddick's sixth-floor suite. He heard screaming outside his door.
When Blanche, summoning the most soothing voice she could muster under the circumstances, suggested that Andy - in Rome to play in this week's Italian Open - wet some bathroom towels and stick them under his door, he corrected her.
"Mom," he said, "it's way beyond that."
Roddick, the reigning U.S. Open champion and the No. 2-ranked tennis player in the world, had awakened around 5 a.m. to an acrid smell. He padded to his front door, swung it open and was assaulted by billowy black smoke.
There were people in the hallway, groping for fresh air. Some of them were hysterical. Roddick, 21, pulled close to a dozen people into his spacious upgraded digs - the hotel management had insisted on opening its Royal Suite to him - and herded them onto the balcony.
There they huddled, awaiting help. Soot was falling from the sky. Bodies were landing like birds on Roddick's terrace.
Sjeng Schalken, a 6-foot-4 tennis player from the Netherlands, dropped like an albatross into Roddick's open arms. He had jumped from his room on the seventh floor.
Schalken's wife, Ricky, was another of the half-dozen people Roddick guided to a safe landing. In January at the Australian Open, the first Grand Slam event of the year, Roddick had faced Schalken in the quarterfinals and dispatched him in three breezy sets.
They had been fierce opponents then. But now Roddick and Schalken were comrades, banding together. As the heat grew more intense, the bodies on Roddick's balcony grew more dense. Roddick told his mother there were two dozen of them jumbled together, waiting to be rescued.
At one point, Roddick told his mother, "I have my head about me. It's amazing how calm I am."
Somebody had to be. A few people on the balcony grew more panicky with every passing minute. Roddick had to get in the faces of a couple of people who were easily twice his age and tell them in the nicest way possible to get a grip.
On the floor directly below Roddick, an American from Georgia had tied bedsheets together to make a rope. James Lawery, 58, tried to shimmy to safety from his balcony. He wouldn't make it. He fell to his death.
Bernice and Paul Busque, a Canadian couple in their 60s, were the other casualties of the blaze. They died of asphyxiation.
Roddick was still on the phone with his mother when the emergency vehicles screeched to a halt in front of the building and firefighters spilled out. She had to laugh at what she heard him say next.
"Hey," Roddick cried out. "You guys with the ladder. If you come over here, I'll buy you pizza!"
That's Blanche and Jerry's youngest son. Ever the entertainer, always playing to the crowd.
Before they hung up, Blanche Roddick could hear Andy delivering instructions to the people around him. Her heart swelled with pride when the voice she knows better than her own said, "I'll be the last one down."
And people wonder how Roddick kept his composure when he was down two sets and had a match point against him in his U.S. Open semifinal with David Nalbandian.
In time, Roddick made it to the ground floor of the property. Several people he recognized were already standing outside. The 200 guests who were evacuated included Mike and Bob Bryan, the No. 1-ranked U.S. doubles team. They were barefoot and dazed.
There was Max Mirnyi, a big server from Belarus. He was hard to miss. The 6-foot-5 player, clad only in shorts, was clutching a blanket around his shoulders.
Two young American female tourists were questioned by police over the origin of the blaze, which started in their room, gutting it and another.
The other guests were taken to the Austrian embassy, where they waited in a long snaking line for the privilege of using the restrooms and freshening themselves up. Later in the day, they were allowed back in the hotel to retrieve their belongings.
The rackets of Marat Safin, the 2000 U.S. Open champion, were reduced to piles of ash. Roddick's stuff survived the fire. Nobody had to tell him how fortunate he was.
Last month, Roddick wowed the Delray Beach Tennis Center crowd with his bravura, winning both his singles matches to lead the U.S. to a Davis Cup victory against Sweden.
On Saturday, Roddick's bravery was front and center.