Mia Hamm had a most bully pulpit when she and her fellow pioneers of U.S. women’s soccer played their last game, a 5-0 romp over Mexico on Wednesday night. And if she were like too many of the superstars which whom we are familiar, she could have turned the occasion into something ugly and unpleasant.

Instead, she showed why she has been a role model to countless young girls and why she is so universally admired and liked.

Just five years ago, Hamm along with Julie Foudy, Brandi Chastain and Joy Fawcett won the World Cup, beating China in a shootout in front of 90,000 screaming fans in the Rose Bowl. An estimated 40 million Americans watched on television. The victory spawned a professional women’s soccer league.

They were all superstars then, their names and faces familiar to sports fans and non-fans alike. But the women’s league couldn’t maintain the momentum generated in 1999 and folded shop last year. At this year’s Olympic final, which Hamm and company won over Brazil, just 10,000 people were in the stands. At Wednesday night’s final game for Hamm, Foudy and Fawcett, the turnstile count was 15,549. The younger players in the game, including the team’s new scoring star, Abby Wambach, will continue playing the game and representing their country in international competitions, but there are no professional leagues for them.

FREE VIDEO A fitting end Dec. 9: Joy Fawcett, Mia Hamm (pictured) and Julie Foudy address their adoring fans after the final game of their storied careers.

Hamm could have talked about all of that. She could have whined about a nation that adores women’s teams at the Olympics and then forgets about them until the next big international moment. She could have complained that as one of the most supremely talented athletes this country has produced, she should be making the kind of money her husband, baseball player Nomar Garciaparra, makes.

She did none of those things. Instead, she stayed on the field long after the game, even as security guards were trying to hustle her off. There were fans who wanted her autograph, one last moment of the fleeting contact, and she would not disappoint them. She made little girls and their mothers and fathers feel special. She made a nation proud.

And when the cameras and microphones were turned on, she talked only about how wonderful her life has been and how great it was to wear her nation’s colors on the field of play, to hear the national anthem, to have such joy in playing a game.

ESPN made her final game the lead story on SportsCenter, and it was a good choice. Few people on the national sports scene have been as influential in every positive way as Mia Hamm, few have been as important to their sport and to the country.

She and her fellows always took their jobs seriously. They trained ferociously hard. They conducted themselves in public in exemplary fashion. They signed the autographs, spent the time with fans, conducted the clinics, promoted their game, and never, ever complained about not getting the financial rewards their skills, had they been men, would have brought them.

It’s a team game, and Hamm would be the first to protest that she alone did nothing without her great teammates. But she was the superstar and the face of women’s soccer, not just here but around the world. She put the game on the map, made it important and worth watching, set a standard and an example that the new generation of players will have a hard time surpassing.

Years from now, her name will still resonate the same way Mary Lou Retton’s does, the way Michael Jordan’s does — as the greatest of athletes and the greatest of people, as someone who never caused anyone to cringe or blush, as someone who could no more be a candidate for Whine of the Week than John Ashcroft could be a candidate for the ACLU’s man-of-the-year award.

When she began her national career, she was the goal scorer. When she ended it, she was the one who set up the goals, who made those around her better just be being on the field. Against Mexico, she had two assists, on a pass across the crease, the other on a corner kick, both picture perfect plays.

From Mia Hamm, the picture perfect representative of everything good in her country and in sports, such brilliance wasn’t a surprise at all. It’s what we’ve come to expect, because it’s what she’s always delivered.