Soccer legend Abby Wambach says she's okay with being forgotten on 'Wild Card'

Transcript

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

Each week, a well-known guest draws a card from our Wild Card deck and answers a big question about their life. Today we hear from one of the all-time great Olympic athletes. Abby Wambach helped the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team bring home two gold medals in 2004 and 2012. She's also the top all-time goal scorer for that team. She now hosts a podcast with her wife, author Glennon Doyle, called "We Can Do Hard Things," and she spoke with Wild Card host Rachel Martin.

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RACHEL MARTIN: One, two or three. Pick a card.

ABBY WAMBACH: Two.

MARTIN: Two. So are you comfortable with being forgotten?

WAMBACH: I am. I am. And this is not a plug by any means. I'm just trying to give a better context to the story. But when I retired, my agent called me and said that Gatorade had - they wanted to pitch me on a possible commercial shoot that they wanted to do for my retirement game. And as I was reading through the storyboards, I just started to, like, weep because there was something about my body and my heart that all of it just kind of came together in this moment.

And the idea of this commercial was forget me. Because if I am forgotten, then I know that the game has grown, and the game is better. If I am forgotten, then somebody else has taken my place. And that is the natural order of the world. I believe that records are meant to be broken. I believe that growth, especially 10 years ago, where we were with women's soccer, was required, was necessary, was not just possible but inevitable.

MARTIN: Yeah.

WAMBACH: And so I think that we all should live a life like that. I think we should all, like, lay our cards out, leave it on the field, whatever you want to say. And then in the end, if you are forgotten, to me, it means that you have done the right kind of work here to make the world a little bit better by having existed. And, boy, you know, the funniest thing about this is this rec league team that I was coaching five years ago, six years ago with my kid, we were warming up for the championship game. And one of her teammates, I was telling them about, you know, well, when I retired, when I retired from playing soccer, and she said, wait, you played soccer?

MARTIN: (Laughter).

WAMBACH: And I said, yes. She said, oh, who did you play for? And I said, the United States of America. And she said, oh. Do you know Alex Morgan? And I was like...

MARTIN: (Laughter).

WAMBACH: ...Oh, sheesh, we need to be careful what we wish for here, peeps. So yeah. Forget me. That's the point, right?

KELLY: That is Abby Wambach talking with NPR's Rachel Martin. For more, including Abby's thoughts on why you have to be a narcissist to be a professional athlete, you can follow the Wild Card podcast.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.