Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette Arnold Palmer salutes the crowd of fans who gathered to see his emotional finish at Oakmont in 1994.

Arnold Palmer has been described many ways by many different people, but this must be a first: "I'm a sentimental slob," The King said of himself.

That sound you hear is Rocco Mediate cackling.

"I made him cry like a baby," Mediate said. "I loved that."

This goes back to 1994, the most recent time the U.S. Open was played at Oakmont Country Club. It was June 17, 1994, to be exact, a day that lives on in our memory for the best and worst of reasons. It was the day Palmer played the final Open round of his storied golf career, thrilling and, at the same time, saddening his adoring hometown fans, who couldn't bring themselves to say goodbye. It also was the day murder suspect O.J. Simpson led police on a slow-speed chase in a white Ford Bronco, going south on Interstate 405 in Southern California, a surreal scene that went on well into the night, playing out in front of millions of curious eyes in America's living rooms.

Not hard to differentiate between the best and worst, is it?

Palmer's contribution to the historic day, like just about everything else he has done in his remarkable life, was all good, at least until the end, when he broke down, sobbing, his face buried in a white towel.

"You have to understand I had been playing Oakmont since I was 12 years old," Palmer said a week or so ago at his Latrobe office, which serves as headquarters for his business empire and a shrine to his career. "That was the last time I was going to be playing any kind of tournament there. That was hard for me to accept."

Sure, that was a part of it. But there was so much more to it. If you're of a certain age, you know. One day, you wake up, look in the mirror and can't believe the old person staring back. Where did your life go? How did it go by so fast?

"That's exactly how it was for me," Palmer said. "This was it for me, as far as playing in the U.S. Open. This was when I had to say adios. It overwhelmed me."

Mediate had the best seat in the house for all of it. Somebody with the United States Golf Association deserves credit for having the sense to pair Mediate, then a young player from Greensburg on the rise on the PGA Tour, with Palmer, the man he called "a mentor to me," for the first two rounds of the Open.

"I had no business playing that week. My back was killing me," Mediate said at the Memorial last weekend in Dublin, Ohio, where he shot 7-under 65 Sunday and finished in a tie for 15th place with Tiger Woods. "But to be able to play in the Open at Oakmont with Arnold Palmer? I'd have crawled around the course if I had to. So I did."

In the first round, on a hot, steamy Thursday, Mediate shot 5-over 76, Palmer 77. But it's what happened the next day, that fateful June 17, that Mediate -- both men, actually -- still remember as if it happened yesterday. "The most amazing thing I've ever seen in sports," Mediate said.

The big crowd that came to Oakmont on that brutally hot, brutally humid Friday knew what was up with Palmer, that it was going to be his final round in his 32nd and final U.S. Open. The Army, throaty as always, was unusually large around the No. 1 tee box and grew as Palmer played each hole. By the time he reached the No. 18 tee, it seemed as if everyone on the course was around the tee box, lining both sides of the fairway 10, even 20 deep or surrounding the green.

It was a difficult day for Palmer, then 64 and the oldest man in the field, even setting aside his roiling emotions. He shot 81, mostly because he didn't putt worth a lick. He three-putted five of the final six greens.

But that didn't stop the outpouring of adulation as Palmer made the slow walk up the fairway to the 18th green. He kept waving to the fans. They kept applauding. "An incredible scene," Mediate called it.

A chilling scene, actually, no matter the searing temperature.

It would be nice to report Palmer made his 30-foot birdie putt, but he sent it 6 feet past the hole, then missed again coming back. As he bent to pick up his ball, the fans stood as one and roared. It was up to Mediate to tell Palmer what each and every person around that green or watching on television must have been thinking at that moment.

"Thank you for making all of this possible," Mediate whispered into the great man's ear as they embraced before walking off the green.

The enormity of the Open. That huge crowd at Oakmont. The worldwide popularity of golf. The big money in the game that has made Mediate and so many others wealthy.

"He lost it right there on the green," Mediate said. "I loved it."

It's a shame Mediate, who, coincidentally, had his best finish this year at Palmer's Bay Hill Invitational in March when he finished second by two strokes to Vijah Singh and won $594,000, won't be playing at Oakmont this week at the 107th U.S. Open. He lost in a playoff at a sectional qualifier Monday in Columbus, Ohio, for the final Open slot. Then again, that might be just as well. Short of winning, what could Mediate, now 44, do to top his '94 experience?

Mediate had a phenomenal round with Palmer, overcoming the heat, his aching back, the exhausting emotions he, too, was feeling and all of the distractions surrounding Palmer. He shot 1-under 70 to make the cut. The next day, playing with Fuzzy Zoeller, he ballooned to 79 and withdrew. He had surgery to repair a ruptured disk a month later.

Palmer tried to do an interview in the press tent after his final round but dissolved into a puddle again. "It's been 40 years of fun, work and enjoyment," he said, before putting his face in that white towel. When last seen moments later, he was walking through the Oakmont crowd, signing autographs as he made his way to the clubhouse and then to his car for the short drive east to his home in Latrobe.

A much-needed cold beverage awaited him after his long, hard day.

So, too, of course, did the O.J. chase.