Quotable

"It is one of the strange ironies of this strange life that those who work the hardest, who subject themselves to the strictest discipline, who give up certain pleasurable things in order to achieve a goal, are the happiest men. When you see 20 or 30 men line up for a distance race in some meet, don't pity them, don't feel sorry for them. Better envy them instead." Brutus Hamilton

While you are making your comeback, consider:

If your compassion doesn't include yourself, then it is incomplete.

Being James Blake

We told the story of tennis star James Blake in “Extraordinary Comebacks 2”. In 2004, running for a drop shot, he ran headfirst into the iron net pole, broke his neck and nearly died. His recoup was further complicated with shingles, a severe viral infection, and the death of his father. It was a dark time for the young superstar.

But James made a huge comeback – all the way to the top of the tennis world. The very next year, 2005, he played the legendary Andre Agassi to a fifth set in the U.S. Open quarterfinals, and won a new legion of fans.

Since then, he’s been a top player.

Which is why we were a bit surprised to see his name in the USTA Challenger tournament, Winnetka, Illinois, 2011. Just the week earlier, we saw him on ESPN, playing at Wimbledon.

But James’ ranking had fallen to 100 or so, and he was again, on the comeback trail, and not too proud to come back to Winnetka for the $50,000 tournament where he had won, and launched his career way back in 1999. Turns out he had done the same in Sarasota some weeks earlier, and emerged on top.

The Chicago Sun-Times took note of his homecoming in their June 28 edition as follows:

James Blake needed a place to play tennis in the summer of 1999.

Blake, who was 19 at the time, didn’t have a lot of options. He couldn’t get into any of the bigger ATP Tour events, so he accepted a spot in a Challenger tournament in Winnetka when Linda Goodman offered it.

It was during that week that Goodman learned Blake was as good a person as he was a player. When she needed a player to get up at 6 a.m. to do a TV spot for one of the local news stations, Blake
enthusiastically offered to help.

It was a small gesture that displayed Blake’s willingness to assist others, a quality Goodman said he still has today.

‘‘He was out there early, hitting balls with kids,’’ Goodman said. ‘‘I’ll never forget that he did that. He’s just a great human being.’’

Blake will return to Winnetka for the 2011 Nielsen USTA Pro Tennis Championship, which begins today and runs through Saturday. Blake, who is ranked 102nd in the world, lost his first-round match last week at Wimbledon.

From the outside, it might appear that the tournament this week is a step below Blake’s level. For a player who once was ranked fourth in the world, a $50,000 tournament might seem to be insignificant.

But Blake doesn’t see it that way. Not after 2004.

That year, just as Blake was starting his climb up the rankings, everything went wrong at the same time. In May, he suffered a broken neck when he slid headfirst into a metal net post while practicing in Rome. A couple of months later, his father died of cancer. Shortly after that, Blake developed a case of shingles that temporarily paralyzed the left side of his face and threatened to cause nerve damage.

Blake didn’t know whether he would be able to play tennis again. He began looking at other career options, including becoming an
author of children’s books.

When Blake finally did get back on the court six months later, he promised himself he never would take any match for granted.

‘‘I’ve learned to enjoy each aspect of my career, whether it’s rehabbing and getting back or enjoying the time when I’m at the top,’’ said Blake, who attended Harvard for two years.

‘‘He’s doing something he loves, and you never know when that can be taken from you,’’ said Thomas Blake, who has been by his brother’s side throughout his career. ‘‘He loves playing; he loves being on the court. When this is over, he’s never going to have anything like this in his life that he does as well as he does this.’’

Blake’s goals now are the same as they always have been: He wants to get better each day and play the game for as long as possible. He scoffs at the suggestion that, at 31, he’s getting too old to compete with the top players in the world. He has battled things much more destructive than age — and won.

‘‘I want to hang my racket up with no regrets,’’ Blake said. ‘‘When I’m done, I want to know I did my best. I want to know I got everything I could out of my career and I did everything for the right reasons.

‘‘I don’t have any regrets so far.’’

Older, wiser, but still competitive despite $7 million in career winnings, James Blake gave it everything he had in the Winnetka tournament.

He racked up wins in matches one and two, and all was well up to the Friday night semi-finals versus South African Rick DeVoest. Against a somewhat depleted and ailing opponent, James lost the first set, then in set two, Blake found himself down 3-5, 40-40 ---- just two points from elimnation. But somehow, he hung on, won the game, then the set, then the match.

It was an amazing comeback. Your humble author was there to see it live.

In a post-match interview, Blake admitted he thought his chances were cooked, like everyone else, but he pressed on.

James Blake taught us all a lesson the past week in Winnetka. When your comeback is written up, and entombed in a book, it is only a prelude to the next comeback you’ll have to make. And the next.

Life is nothing more or less than a series of comebacks. We use whatever mental devices we favor, or have at hand. We believe, sometimes more, sometimes less, or hardly at all. But in any case, being human, we press on. It’s all we can do.

And sometimes good things happen. That’s what James Blake reminds us. Sometimes there is a reward for pressing on.

James Blake won the 20^th annual Winnetka USTA tournament the next night, 6-3, 6-1, over a red-hot Bobby Reynolds. It took a bit of “blood,” and "sweat," we don't know about any tears. During one very long point, Blake came forward to end it, Reynolds attempted to pass him, Blake dove to make a defensive stab volley, and then Reynolds did the same. Two warriors down on the court, both bleeding from the scrapes they took to try to win the point. You see a bit of diving like at the French Open (on clay), a bit at Wimbledon (on grass), but very, very rarely on hard cement courts (US Open) for obvious reasons. Blake won the point, more admiration and a bit of awe from the sold out crowd. After the match, Blake said “I left a little bit of myself on this court,” he said pointing to Winnetka’s stadium court, outdoor no. 2.. “But it was worth it.”

The tournament itself was a bit of a comeback. After hosting the likes of a young Pete Sampras in its salad days, it fell on hard times, and “went dark” from 2001-2005. But now it was back, celebrating its 20^th year, several top USTA officials flying in from New York to mark the occasion. At 20, it was now one of the oldest USTA tournaments – because it pressed on, like its 2011 champion himself.

Extraordinary Comedown:Ohio State's Jim Tressel

Pains me to share this, as an Ohio native, holder of two degrees from Ohio State University, and an author who featured Jim Tressel in one of his books, but we call this blog "Digging Deeper," and we go the mines every day, whatever our feelings.

Dig a bit below the gridiron glory of "More than a Coach" Tressel, Ohio Stadium, Buckeye football, and read the inside story on what took Jim Tressel down at Sports Illustrated. The fourth estate is the counterbalance to the illusion and misdirection that institutions -- seemingly nearly all of them -- put forth, and we are grateful for it.

Btw, to balance the ying and yang of these things, we also have a book "Extraordinary Comedowns." Not just for those afflicted with severe Schadenfreude, but for those who want to learn how things really work. It's hard to make it to the top of the mountain, yes, and even harder to stay there......

Sometimes we have to realize:Not everyone makes a successful comeback

BOOK REVIEW
THE LAST BOY MICKEY MANTLE
And the end of America’s childhood by Jane Leavy

When baseball soaked up much of America’s consciousness in the 1950s, before there were 500 cable channels, video games, soccer, and all the rest, there was a god who ran the ballfields and basepaths among the mere mortals and his name was Mickey Mantle. Raised by a pro baseball wannebe, dad Mutt and Mom, and named for old-time player Mickey Cochrane so even his name would have the right pop of an icon, he was Mickey Mantle, (MM, like Marilyn Monroe, get it)? We all did.

He backed it all up as a 18-year-old with a 3.1 second burst to first base, and 550 ft. home runs. Strength, speed, power – there was none like Mickey Mantle. For those of us who were boys then, we formed an attachment to him, to his name, to his capability that ‘defied logic,’ as Bob Costas put it, It was based solely on his speed, HRs, and the confident smile. We didn’t need to know more, and it’s a good thing. Because MM was no god, he was Esau selling his birthright out the back door, and author Jane Leavy deftly dis-mantles the legend. It is said ‘weary is the head that wears the crown,’ and in this case, one could add the word ‘cynical.’

What he did to himself with alcohol and womanizing, chronicled meticulously here, unforgiveable. What he did in promulgating his vices among his four sons, being “their friend,” sharing his drink, women, and dissolute ways, unspeakable. When told by someone he wished MM was his father, one of his sons quipped, ‘me, too.’ Their father was distant, away, uncommunicative, uncaring. But that wasn’t the half of it. Following in his steps, they led lives of alcoholism, drugs, dissolution, and even death wish. One played live Russian roulette, and only chance kept him from an untimely end.

Back in the 1990s, when pop Christianity still held some sway over pop culture, much was made of the cancer-ridden, liver-depleted Mantle’s deathbed conversion. Leavy is less than convincing on that score; read the passage there closely: without saying so per se, she’s not buying it. I hope I’m entirely wrong on this count, btw. I chronicle comebacks in my series of “Extraordinary Comebacks” books, and besides volunteering a bit for organ donation at the end, which resulted in some backfire for the cause since some claim he jumped the line to get a new liver (he didn’t), there isn’t much of one here.

In the end, an extremely sad tale, the ultimate cautionary tale for certain, we now have one less hero, when the larder, once stocked with the likes of Brett Favre, Tiger Woods, OJ Simpson, et al, was already pretty thin by now. Mickey Mantle we hardly knew ye, and maybe for the fact that such a great, great star was so fallen from the skies, maybe wished we hadn’t at all.

Take the new "Extraordinary Comebacks" quiz

Extraordinary Comebacks » exam software

The soldierly aspects of making a comeback

We are quite taken with the new classical program, THE PIANO MATTERS, by David Dubal. (Well worth your time.) So much so, we got a copy of an older (1984) book he had written and were struck with the comeback application of some comments by pianist Ivo Pogorelich.

See if you agree....

From REFLECTIONS FROM THE KEYBOARD by David Dubal, Summit Books, New York, 1984 Interview with pianist Ivo Pogorelich

DAVID DUBAL: When did you know that you would devote your life to the piano?

POGORELICH: I don't remember exactly when I realized that the piano would be for me. But I knew relatively early that I wanted to bring alive the part of my personality that needs to give. I knew I would become an artist of some kind.

DUBAL: What was your childhood like?

POGORELICH: It was a difficult life. I was always committed to practicing the piano, yet it was a hardship because I saw all the other children enjoying themselves after school. A child who wants to be a pianist doesn't necessarily understand how much he will benefit from all the work that is done rather effortlessly in childhood.

DUBAL: When did you really get motivated about your piano playing?

POGORELICH: When I first discovered how difficult it was to be really good at it, and how much you had to work and fight for real mastery. This happened when I went to Moscow to study, at age eleven. I studied at a special school for five years before I studied at the Moscow Conservatory. I was with children who had excellent training and who played well.

DUBAL: Which composer attracted you most at that point?

POGORELICH: Right at the beginning I fell in love with Prokofiev's music. I was given two pieces from the Romeo and Juliet cycle that Prokofiev transcribed for piano. They were wonderful character pieces, and I made a successful performance with them.

DUBAL: Have you retained your admiration for Prokofiev?

POGORELICH: Yes, I have, and as you know I have recorded the great Sixth Sonata, which Richter played often, and which Prokofiev premiered. And eventually I want to play all the piano concerti. I think some of the most valuable music of this century is by Prokofiev, and I do not mean just the piano music. His range is outstanding. I put him above Stravinsky. But I worry that Prokofiev is getting lost. Too many pianists play his music without looking at its meaning. They are content with the superficial effects of percussive brilliance. Suppose you participate in a competition-the Seventh Sonata has become a war-horse at these events. If you can play it cleanly you can get good marks. But the tragic and ironic aspects of that work are ignored.

DUBAL: Speaking of competitions, although you have won some, your career really took off as a result of the Chopin Competition, which you lost, but which created a furor among the judges.

POGORELICH: Yes, in one minute I was a star, and in three minutes I hit superstardom. Some of what happened was nonsense, but the main thing is I am playing concerts, which is what I always intended to do. You can't have a big career unless you play the competitions, which then spawn management, concerts and recordings.

DUBAL: Not everyone has the stamina for competition life.

POGORELICH: To be an artist requires more than talent. You need to have a bit of the soldier in you, not just for the performance but for facing all those who smile at you, but who speak behind your back.

DUBAL: Your concerts are packed, your records are hits; have you encountered much jealousy?

POGORELICH: Very much so, from colleagues who are challenged by my ability and fear it. And I've had particular trouble because of my age, because I am artistically mature and some people think that what I do can't be accomplished by someone only twenty-five.

DUBAL: Has this made you suspicious of people?

POGORELICH: No. This is a reality. I don't pay any attention to my detractors. I have always followed my own rhythm in life, and I do so now. But I wonder if some very valuable people are not victims of small people because they may not be as much of a soldier as I am. For instance, Glenn Gould, who was one of the greatest talents of the century, was just too sensitive to take part in the brutal competitiveness of concert-giving. Although I was not fortunate enough to have ever talked to him, I suspect that Gould was not aware of his weakness. He was not a soldier, he was a very delicate personality.

DUBAL: I think he was very self-aware and that he truly hated concert giving .... When did you get to know Gould's art?

POGORELICH: In Moscow, where he was considered the greatest of the great. Unfortunately, like all of my generation, I never got to hear him in concert. But his records had a purity and clarity that I could find only in his playing.

DUBAL: Was there a particular recording which had a great impact on you?

POGORELICH: I think the most stupendous interpretations are the Bach

Three-Part Inventions. There he achieves a piano sound previously unknown to pianists. Neither Horowitz nor any of the other famous pianists of this century were ever able to produce anything like it, at least in my opinion.

DUBAL: Did any other of his records make that kind of impact?

POGORELICH: Nothing quite like that. I am of the opinion that his last recordings show a great decline, especially his second recording of the Goldberg Variations.

DUBAL: I think it shows an advance over his earlier version, the one that made him an overnight success. The later one has an inwardness revealing new aspects of the score.

POGORELICH: I feel it is done with a lack of structure and without Gould's wonderful rhythmic sense. I just don't find the wisdom in his playing that I do in the later playing of Gilels. But still, Gould added more to the development of piano playing than almost any other pianist. In virtually any piece he plays you can discover more beauty than in the entire output of most other artists.

DUBAL: What do you consider the criteria of great interpretation?

POGORELICH: A great interpretation must sound inevitable. But to make that occur, you must be the creator of a whole set of musical circumstances, in which the actors are rhythm, timing, agogics, accentuation, phrasing, pedaling and so forth, as well as an understanding of the aesthetics of the score. The musical line, the essence must be inevitable. In a sense you have to become a creator of the composition. Everything must blend into a perfect form. Look at Picasso's Guernica, where you have three noses and four eyes, or an ear where the nose is supposed to be, or the eye where the ear is supposed to be. You may think it possible to add another eye, mouth, or three more teeth without spoiling the composition of the painting. But no. It must be the way Picasso made it. It was all inevitable.

DUBAL: You have told me that your wife, Alice Kezeradze, with whom you studied, has been the great musical influence of your life.

POGORELICH: Oh, yes, my wife has been my biggest influence. We say she was related to Franz Liszt because her teacher was a student of Liszt's pupil Siloti.

DUBAL: How did you meet your wife?

POGORELICH: It was like a Hollywood movie. I was at a beautiful reception, in a lovely home filled with antiques and paintings. I noticed a Steinway piano, but thought it was probably not ever used. I sat down and played and soon someone made a very simple remark to me about my playing. Yet I could tell that there was great knowledge behind that remark. It was Alice who made it. I immediately asked her if she would give me lessons. She said, "Why not?" In October I started with a Beethoven sonata. I well remember that the first bars took us three and a half hours. The world's treasures began opening for me at that lesson. This was especially important for me because at that moment I felt that I wasn't getting enough from my teachers at the Moscow Conservatory.

DUBAL: Wasn't that during the black period at the Moscow Conservatory when so many great teachers died?

POGORELICH: That's right. They started to die off there left and right. Each day we went to the Conservatory expecting to discover a new black poster telling us of the next funeral service. During that time there was a terrible atmosphere of loss at "the House," as we called it, and it began to lose its importance for me.

DUBAL: How do you practice and how much?

POGORELICH: I do five hours a day if possible, but it's getting more and more difficult with my engagements. For me the best practice is when I have a practical task to accomplish. If I manage to fulfill it, then I've had a good day's work. Of course there are many different levels of work. Sometimes there is that deceptive level when you think, "Oh, how easy this is going to be)" But sometimes it's the opposite. When I first looked at Ravel's "Scarbo," from Gaspard, I could hardly read the text and I thought, "I have to have a third hand to accomplish this!"

DUBAL: I think your" Scarbo" is amazing piano playing.

POGORELICH: Thank you; I am pleased with the outcome of the recording. But what I went through to make it happen!

DUBAL: Have you ever terminated a relationship with a piece that you performed often?

POGORELICH: Yes, I'm not going to play the Schumann Symphonic Etudes any longer, although I've recorded it, and it was one of my best stage works. I just don't have anything to say about it anymore. It's dry for me. Maybe I will come back to it in some years.

DUBAL: What repertoire are you working on now?

POGORELICH: I am working on a Haydn sonata. For generations Haydn has been considered a lesser genius than Mozart. But I say no, not true. Even in his piano sonatas, Haydn goes higher and deeper than Mozart does in his sonatas.

DUBAL: Are you asked to play a large repertoire each season?

POGORELICH: I choose to play very little in public. Usually no more than two concerti per season, much less than my colleagues, and only one and a half or two recital programs per season. I try to keep my concert programs separate from what I work on at home.

DUBAL: What is the most crucial aspect of playing on stage?

POGORELICH: For me it is always one thing, that it should be as effortless as possible. You must know everything about a work in order for it to go easily under whatever circumstances-bad hall, bad audience, bad digestion.

DUBAL: Have you ever felt so exhilarated on stage that you became careless, or lost control?

POGORELICH: No, the control must never be lost. You are not there to be personally exhilarated. You are up there only to create art. You must be king on stage and dominate it.

DUBAL: In your preparation, what do you concentrate on most?

POGORELICH: I research every sound. By that I mean being constantly attentive to what I am playing at the moment. This involves using the ears as much as the hands.

DUBAL: Speaking of hands, yours are huge.

POGORELICH: My hands are very large, but that is not essential. Hands really should not be big. The important thing is a compact, flexible hand, and it's best if they are not too bony, but with pads on the ends of the fingers.

DUBAL: Have you ever had any curious things happen to you on stage?

POGORELICH: Oh, plenty of things. For example, I was on stage playing the Schumann Toccata once when a fly landed on my hand and started walking on it through the most difficult tightrope passages-and it held on! Suddenly it flew away and I was relieved, but just as I started the octaves in the other hand it descended upon me again. Perhaps the fly loved Schumann.

DUBAL: Do you know the charming episode in Paderewski's memoirs about the spider that came down its web only when he played the Chopin etude in thirds? As soon as he finished it the spider would climb back up. It happened this way for months. Do you know Paderewski's music?

POGORELICH: No, I don't, except for the Minuet in G, though I do know that he mesmerized audiences.

DUBAL: We have often heard of the demonic forces that possessed Paganini and Liszt when they performed. Goethe defined the demonic as "that which intelligence and reason cannot account for. It is something external to my nature, but to which I am subject."

POGORELICH: If the artist on stage has this quality he must let it escape. But this can be very draining, even dangerous, because the performer must release all of his personality and being, the way Horowitz could. He was white-hot-his passion and vo1canic power, his ability to excite, the fire of his temperament dominated the piano-playing world. I only wish he had not gone to play in Japan, where I heard him. Someone wrote of this performance that "Horowitz appeared in Japan as a beautiful antique vase, unfortunately broken in many parts." Because he didn't play his best he killed his legend.

DUBAL: How difficult it must be for such powers, such force to succumb to age. The world thinks of you as a god, and you're only human.

POGORELICH: The frustration must be terrible. To know that you once scaled the heights, but that the bull will finally defeat you.

DUBAL: I know you love to play in Japan.

POGORELICH: Yes, I do. I've played several times in Hiroshima. There are no more beautiful or appreciative young people in the world than in that city that was destroyed in seven seconds.

DUBAL: When do you think one is most receptive to great music?

POGORELICH: You never know when you are ready to begin to love music. Many don't get the chance in childhood and then they must wait. It's like falling in love with someone. You only know you're ready when it happens.