PARIS -- The old Mets. The new Lions. Susan Lucci at the Emmys. Joe Blsptfk in the cartoons. Vince Spadea. Vince Spadea? Yeah, well, when you're talkin' losers and you're talkin' Vinny, you've said it all.

	It took him two days, but American Vincent Spadea won another big match as he defeated Cedric Pioline on his home turf.

Who can forget those long, lonely days at the end of 1999 when Vinny played Mariano Zabaleta -- and lost. Younes ElAynaoui -- and lost. Jeff Tarango -- and lost. And the beginning of 2000 when he played Alberto Martin in Adelaide, Australia -- and lost; served for the match in Sydney against Adrian Voinea -- and lost; had Voinea two sets to one down in the Australian Open -- and lost. Or five months later, when Vinny took on the clay-court specialist Sebastien Grosjean at a grass court tournament at Nottingham, England -- and lost.

Or when, over all that time in between, Vinny became not just Cousin Vinny to all the Spadeas but a cousin to The Entire Universe, meaning (in the old baseball sense of that term) he would get his butt absolutely kicked by anybody at any time. Because that's what Vinny did get, of course, 21 straight matches worth of whuppins' -- keeping Vinny so low, it looked like up to him; sending him into such a losing motif, Vinny didn't even realize what was happening.

"You've just broken the record," some media hound breathlessly exclaimed to him after that Grosjean defeat.

"Say what?" Vinny replied. Or something like that.

"I didn't even know," Spadea said here on Wednesday. "Like, I knew I had lost several matches in a row. But I had won a couple early in the year, made the semis in an exo (an exhibition) tournament in Houston. But they didn't count those. Then they turned around and did count the World Team Cup matches in Germany -- you don't even get points for that competition -- so that gave me three extra losses! Technicalities. Whatever. It was humiliating. But I didn't think it was that fair to broadcast my streak like they did."

But they did -- Vinny even transcending his sport, which finally made it to the talk shows where all the geniuses made fun of the losing streak. Jeez, couldn't he go down to the challenger circuit? Couldn't he pick out some grade school kid on the playground and bust him up? What about squash, handball, platform, pingpong, wheelchair tennis? Hey, get a win somewhere!

Well, Vinny got his win that summer all right. Beat Greg Rusedski at Wimbledon -- yeah, the same monster-serving, lawn-lord Rusedski who is one of the annual favorites at the All England Club. And sure enough, Vinny got another win -- another shockingly enormous win -- in the first round of this year's French Open on Wednesday, beating former Wimbledon and U.S. Open finalist Cedric Pioline, a veteran homeboy who has won as many clay-court matches as any active French player.

"I'm not, like, shocked or just absolutely overwhelmed, but I'm satisfied with the progress that's been happening," said Spadea (who'll turn 28 next month) after his rain-delayed, bitterly fought-over-two-days 4-6, 6-4, 6-4, 3-6, 6-4 victory, which he pulled off despite a couple of double faults in a game late in the fifth set. "To be in the second round of one of the biggest tournaments in the world is a great step forward for me. I haven't been in this position for very long."

Surviving the first round is a position some other relatively familiar American tennis saviors such as Pete Sampras and Andy Roddick (beaten by the famous name-killer Wayne Arthurs) couldn't manage. Along with Vinny, as it happens, Andre Agassi, James Blake and Cecil Mamiit are the only other US of A men left in the draw. But what Vinny actually meant was he hasn't been anywhere for a very long time. In fact, the last occasion on which he captured a Grand Slam win was that stunner over Rusedski two years ago.

	“	The streak) is going to be talked about no matter how well I do or how poorly I do from now on. But I don't feel I'm that far off in my actual game from when I was in the top twenty. It's going to take a long process and a little bit of luck. ”
		— Vincent Spadea

Spadea attributes much of his infamous losing streak ("10 or 12 or 15 losses") to a serious back problem -- and "my mind being in a whirlwind" because a therapist was urging him to go ahead and play even while Vinny was tentative and afraid to hit out. "It was just a period where I chose to play through times when I was injured, some times when I wasn't really clear on what I wanted to do," Vinny says. "Things can snowball. That can happen, even in teamwork. The Toronto Raptors lost, what, 14-15 in a row. You have to maybe step back and reassess. It obviously wasn't a highlight of my career. "

After he broke the dread streak at that Wimbledon 2000, more health problems ensued. At the Swiss Open, Vinny was obliged to play two estimable Spaniards, Sergi Bruguera and Alex Corretja on the same day. "I didn't have to work out in the gym that day," he laughs. Summoned to Santander, Spain, by Captain John McEnroe to help out the Davis Cup team, Vinny lost a dead rubber to Juan Carlos Ferrero, became dehydrated and was rushed to a hospital.

"The dehydration was so severe," Vinny said, "I had to see specialists in Los Angeles -- heart doctors, the works -- who advised me to withdraw from several tournaments." Which he did. "It was a debacle in my career. Just when I was getting my rhythm back, trying to recover from this travesty of a losing streak, I had to keep dropping out of tournaments." Even the ones he dropped in on, he dropped out of quickly. At the U.S. Open, Vinny lost in the first round to Todd Martin. At the Olympics, he lost in the first round to Pat Rafter. "In October I looked up and my ranking had dropped from 20 in the world (at the end of 1999) to 240."

It says something for the Chicago native -- and no, not that Vinny's completely whacko -- that he kept the faith, persevered and fought back. "Well, I was 26 years old. I needed to find a job ... to find a life ... to find a passion. I felt like I had 20 years of a head start in one department and possibly zero years in another. So I felt like 'you know what? I'm going to go out and search for a way to get into the mix.' I was still ranked in the top 250, which is not something to brag about, but in terms of the real world, it was an upper hand on at least getting a start in a big business."

Vinny's route back into the mix was, sure enough, through the tanktown jungle of the challengers tour (basically tennis' minor leagues) where he's positively rolled to 34-15 and 20-6 match win records -- shades of Steve Balboni smoking the fences -- over the past two seasons. In 2001, Vinny -- who has played out of Boca Raton, Fla., ever since he put together one of the terrific junior careers -- played in only three ATP tournaments, winning but a single match. This year prior to Paris, he played in three more ATP events -- Acapulco, Rome and St. Polten (Austria) -- and came out of them not only winless but totally set-less. Uh oh, not another streak!

Still, on April 15 Vinny broke back into the rankings of the top 100 players in the world (at No. 88), and when he upset the bewildered Pioline at Roland Garros -- "Feeling sorry (for him)? I don't know," said the Frenchman. "It's strange when some players with good tennis lose so many times in a row." -- Vinny broke back into the spotlight.

"(The streak) is going to be talked about no matter how well I do or how poorly I do from now on," Spadea says. "But I don't feel I'm that far off in my actual game from when I was in the top twenty. It's going to take a long process and a little bit of luck. I'm a quarter of the way there from when I started. There's greatness in me. I just have to get it out."

What goes around, though. Next up in Paris for Vinny is one Adrian Voinea who, if he sounds familiar from the streak ...

Hey, they're all familiar to Vinny.

*****

	Serena Williams resembled a cross between Paul Hornung in his old Notre Dame togs and The Green Hornet.

"Isn't it wonderful how tennis evolves," said the man from the International Herald Tribune. He was speaking of Serena Williams' second-round fashion statement in which the younger of the Sisters Sledge honored the Cameroon World Cup team by showing up in a green dress and matching shoes, yellow knee-length socks (no shin guards, we don't think) and neon red bicycle shorts. In other words, Serena resembled a cross between Paul Hornung in his old Notre Dame togs and The Green Hornet. "I mean, us Americans aren't really into -- we call it soccer," Serena explained. "But lately I've been watching a lot of the football or soccer ... A lot of people have this love for Cameroon because they're always fighting so much.

"I don't know any of the Cameroon players ... but, you know, I'm American so obviously I would like to see them (the U.S. team) do well. But I don't know. Is Kobe Johnson still playing for the Americans?"

Thankfully, nobody alerted Serena that, yeah, he is. Right alongside Shaq (The Big Cleat) Jones.

Curry Kirkpatrick is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at curry.kirkpatrick@espnmag.com.