[Greetings, Tribe. I'm proud to announce that Breaking Back, the James Blake autobiography that the subject co-wrote with our own Andrew Friedman (aka Rolo Tomassi), will debut at No. 22 on the New York Times hardcover non-fiction best seller list. James and Andrew consented to collaborate once more, for us, in a post for TW readers. James has included some book signing dates at the end of his post. Many thanks, James, Andrew, from all of us. . . PB]
I met Arthur Ashe when I was about three-years old and he paid a visit to the Harlem Junior Tennis Program. I don’t remember much about the encounter, but I remember a lot about the man, having read his books, studied his career, and admired his character since I was old enough to take an interest in such things.
In 2004, laid up with a fractured neck in a Rome hospital, unsure of what would become of my body or my life, it was something Arthur Ashe said that transformed my view of the situation. When he was diagnosed with HIV, the result of a tainted blood transfusion, he had the presence of mind to think, “If I were to say ‘God, why me?’ about the bad things, then I should have said ‘God, why me?’ about the good things that happened in my life.”
That’s a very simple statement, but I never fully understood its power, or its meaning, until I had a reason to apply it to myself. I learned a lot in 2004, but the first thing I learned was to cherish the “now” because everything we have can be taken away in an instant. That’s something we all know intellectually, of course, but until you’re face to face with a life-altering scenario, it’s tough to really believe it. I spent a lonely night in a foreign hospital taking those words to heart. By the time the sun brightened my room the next morning, I had the strangest sense of peace, and resolve. I was in a great deal of pain, but felt a greater appreciation for what I’d accomplished up to that point than I ever had before. I also knew that everything, one way or another, would be all right.
That moment occurs early in my new book, Breaking Back, but in many ways it sums up what the book is about. Over the course of 2004, there were a lot of opportunities to look at myself as the Job of Fairfield County—I lost my father to stomach cancer that summer, and just a week after he passed, I contracted zoster, or shingles, which had the potential to linger for years. But I never wondered “why me?”
It wasn’t just that I knew Arthur Ashe’s words, of course. I was also very lucky to be raised by parents who put a lot of emphasis on family and community, and on hard work as something that would get you through almost anything. That’s why, although the book focuses on the events of 2004, my comeback in 2005, the banner year I had in 2006, and my current season (the first one I’ve entered and lived as a Top Ten player), there are a number of “flashbacks” that weave in my earlier life, and the role that my parents, and my coach, Brian Barker, played in bringing me up with the kind of beliefs, and support structure, that would see me through anything.
From the time I was a little kid, Brian’s instilled in me a goal of “getting better.” It’s a major theme of the book. We don’t set our sights on specific rankings or titles, we just focus on getting better. It’s something that’s gotten me through just about every hurdle I’ve ever had to clear, from a down period in my playing life to my recovery from illness and grief in 2004 and 2005.
The backdrop for my story is, of course, the tennis world, so I also hope that, along the way, tennis enthusiasts (this means you guys) will enjoy learning about what it was like to be scouted by agents, deciding to go pro, and what my first years on tour were like. If you happen to be a fan of mine, you’ll get a front-row seat to milestones, like that famous incident with Lleyton Hewitt at the 2001 Open (I remember it more for the tennis I played at that early point in my career than for the nonsense that followed the match), the great human kindness shown to me by Pat Rafter in Cincinnati that same summer, and of course my matches at the 2005 Pilot Penn and US Open, especially victories against Tommy Haas and Rafael Nadal, which are recounted in the book in some detail.
But I have to be honest: I didn’t write this book to pull back the curtain on the tennis world. I wrote it because of the amount of attention my story has received since 2005, which is still unbelievable to me. On the heels of my comeback, I was interviewed everywhere—on Oprah and 60 Minutes and the Late Show with David Letterman and in the New York Times Magazine. You would not believe the outpouring of cards and letters I received and continue to receive from people I’ve never met. One of the most touching ones came from a young girl who had severe scoliosis and kept an interview with me on her ipod that she listened to for inspiration. When people tell you you’ve had that kind of effect on them, it changes you.
I would never make a comparison between myself and Arthur Ashe, except in this small way: at some point, it occurred to me that maybe my story was offering people the same kind of hope and perspective that his offered me when I was confronted with my own crisis. I got to know him through his writing and what I took away helped save me at a very low moment. It might sound like a cliché, but my big wish for this book is for it to offer the same kind of support to anybody who might benefit from it, whether it’s somebody facing down a seemingly insurmountable setback, a kid dreaming about being a pro athlete, or anybody with a goal that others might find farfetched. (An unexpected benefit of the writing process was that it gave me an even greater appreciation for my own journey and for the people who made it with me, reinforcing some key themes even to myself.) I’ve seen the impossible come true in the past few years, and at the end of the day all it took was believing that it wasn’t impossible.
