Heroes Serena Williams and Sue Bird leave the stage together

It ended suddenly, almost at the same time. It was going to end soon no matter what, but still.

Serena Williams took a final twirl Friday night on Arthur Ashe Court and began her departure from the game of tennis. Four days later, Sue Bird played her final WNBA game in Seattle, where she’d won four titles over the past two decades and served as the face and voice of the sport. “Thank you, Sue!”

And just like that, less than a week apart, two of the giants of women’s sport finished, for all intents. It was inevitable, but still gutting. We all owe them so much.

Williams and Bird served as eloquent vanguards in the areas of gender equity, body image, LGBTQ rights, self-presentation, fashion, and strength. They did this by asserting their beliefs without regard for repercussion. They did this by doing what they believed was right and fair and just. By being themselves.

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And by being themselves, they encouraged a generation of people — not just women, or Black people, or gay people, but all people — to assert themselves as well. Between them, they amassed 54 significant titles, between Serena’s singles and doubles slams, Bird’s NCAA and pro championships, and their nine combined Olympic gold medals.

They won just as big off the courts.

In 2006, Aaron Rowand was invited to the ESPY awards after he broke his face on the Phillies’ center-field wall. The coolest part?

“I got to meet Serena,” he said. “Man!”

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Three years later, Williams was in New York to defend her U.S. Open title and threw out the first pitch during an August game at the new Yankee Stadium. Earlier that evening, she met a tennis geek named David Robertson, a 24-year-old relief pitcher.

“I’d been a big fan of hers since she broke on the scene, because I’d played tennis competitively as a kid, until I had to make a decision between tennis and baseball,” said Robertson, now a 37-year-old reliever for the Phillies. “She’s incredible. I watched her final match. Watched it all the way to the end. She’ll be missed.”

Perhaps more than any women of their generation, Serena and Sue made it cool to be strong and fierce and competitive and smart and different, without compromise.

Bird came out as a lesbian in 2017. A year later, she and her partner, professional soccer player Megan Rapinoe, were the first openly gay couple on the cover of The Body Issue of ESPN The Magazine. This came eight years after Serena posed nude for the inaugural edition.

Bird and Rapinoe were engaged on 2020; in March of 2021, GQ magazine put them on its cover with the headline, “Model Couple.” Note that same-sex marriages weren’t legalized in the state of Washington until 2012, they didn’t get federal protections until 2015, and technically still have not been legalized in 13 states. They are the most famous gay couple in sports, if not in all America.

Bird, who is white, also supported the Black Lives Matter and Say Her Name campaigns, but she has moved mountains for people who might be reluctant to just be themselves.

“The more people that come out, that’s where you get to the point where nobody has to come out,” she told Time magazine before the Olympics last year. “Where you can just live.”

Serena has insisted on doing that since she turned pro in 1995, at the age of 14, a year after her older sister, Venus. It has been a long 27 years.

Few modern athletes have had to endure the racism, misogyny, and body shaming Serena experienced. In 2001, a New York radio personality said she was an “animal” better suited to National Geographic magazine than Playboy. Former Russian Tennis Federation head Shamil Tarpischev in 2014 called Serena and her sister, Venus, “The Williams brothers,” and was suspended by the WTA for a year.

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She has been the constant victim of the vocabulary and taste limitations of journalists and their editors; her wardrobe has been panned, her body compared with a monster truck. Former world No. 1 player Caroline Wozniacki in 2012 took the court before an exhibition match against another player with her top and skirt stuffed, mocking Serena’s curves.

With measured grace and patience, they endured, and they thrived.

This is not an obituary. It is an appreciation. Serena and Sue aren’t disappearing. They’re recalibrating. Serena has a 5-year-old daughter and venture-capital firm. Bird owns part of a women’s pro soccer team, part of a media company, and will continue to pursue a career in broadcasting.

Nevertheless, the past week has been jarring.

Bird was eliminated in Game 4 of the WNBA semifinals, but if she’d won her fifth title, she wouldn’t have played past Sept. 20, and, as the No. 4 seed against the top-seeded Las Vegas Aces, that was unlikely. Serena could have lasted another eight days, and while a 24th Grand Slam singles title would have delivered storybook closure — it would have tied her with Margaret Court for the most — her stunning upset of No. 2 seed Anett Kontaveit as an unseeded entrant was always probably going to be the highlight of her exit.

If you don’t consider Sue’s exit equal to Serena’s, you and Aces coach Becky Hammon do not agree:

“It’s kind of like [being] the girl who beat Serena Williams,” Hammon said.

Sue is 41; Serena, 40. It’s all incredible that they’re suddenly old and suddenly gone, but somehow still relevant in sports that usually grind their participants to dust by the age of 30.

Relevant? Absolutely. Bird averaged 10.2 points and 7.7 assists in 35.6 minutes and started all six playoff games. Serena, at her end, was even better.

“I thought she was going to beat me,” said Ajla Tomljanovic, the woman to whom Hammon referred, who is 11 years younger and who lost the second set. “She’s the greatest of all time, period.”

Serena was the best female tennis player in history and the best female athlete of her age; maybe the best athlete of her age, and maybe the best female athlete in history.

Bird wasn’t the best WNBA player of her age, but she might be the most relatable. Her NCAA titles in 2000 and 2002 at UConn began the Huskies’ dynasty. The plucky Long Island point guard was the national player of the year in 2002, when she went No. 1 overall in the 2002 WNBA draft. The Storm was the league’s worst team. With Bird, it won four WNBA titles.

It was not — it is not — just female athletes whom Serena and Sue represent. It’s not just women, either.

It’s anyone who feels marginalized. Those who feel like they have to hide their true selves. Those who have been made to feel that their body type, or their sexual orientation, or the texture of their hair, or the hue of their skin might be considered less, or bad, or wrong.

With dignity and grace and sometimes a bit of fire, Serena and Sue pushed us a step closer toward inclusion. Now, as they enter the next phases of their lives, each knows that she did the best she could; that she did what she thought was right in the moment.

And they did it in the brightest possible spotlight at the highest possible level.

What male athlete faced similar challenges and can claim the same?

Really, how many among us can claim the same?