Writing in Paradise

On Novak Djokovic, magic and a fun new Brilliant Reader challenge.

Aloha.

This is my view right now.

Yes, OK, I’m bragging a little. But I’m also writing on my iPad.

I really don’t think I know how to do this vacation thing.

But, hey, the whole gang is off on some amazing boat ride. I don’t do boat rides. I get deathly seasick in kiddie pools. Like, there’s no limit to my seasickness. A few years ago, when I was in South Africa for the World Cup, I went to Robben Island to see the cell where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned. We were told, very plainly, that the ferry ride was short and tame and that, quote unquote, “nobody gets seasick.”

I went with fellow seasickness soulmate Liz Clarke of the Washington Post, and on the ferry ride back we held hands tights and turned green together.

So, no, I’m not going on any boat rides no matter how many times they tell me that “it will be fine.”

Instead, I’m stuck here in paradise writing for you.

Let’s be honest: I’d much rather be here anyway.

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One of the things I’m doing is going through the final edit of FIFTY SEASONS, which comes out February 2. I so can’t wait to share this book with you. The book is beginning to make its way around now to friends and folks in the publishing world, and in the early going I’m hearing exactly what I hoped I would hear: One friend said that it feels like he’s going on a magic carpet ride through baseball history.

Man, I should use that quote!

Just a reminder that if you preorder the book from Rainy Day Books, I will inscribe it out however you like. And wherever you preorder it from, you will be eligible to get an early copy of the table of contents and a bonus chapter in time for the baseball playoffs! More details soon!

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We have gone through a lot together, Novak Djokovic and I. He became my favorite tennis player a dozen years ago, unexpectedly, illogically. I was watching him play Roger Federer in the 2014 Wimbledon final, and I was rooting for Roger, obviously, because everybody rooted for Roger.

And then, without warning, I found myself rooting for Novak.

Even now, after all these years, I can’t fully explain why. I suppose it had something to do with his story — a tennis prodigy who grew up in war-torn Serbia. Some of his strongest childhood memories are of sitting in a bomb shelter as the explosions burst around him. He saw Pete Sampras play at Wimbledon and knew his future. On his first day of tennis camp with Jelena Gencic, he carefully and neatly packed his tennis bag with a racket, water bottle, wristbands, a rolled-up towel … it looked like something you’d see on tour.

“Who packed this for you?” Gencic demanded. He didn’t understand; Novak at first thought he had done something wrong. He’d, of course, packed it himself, imagining how Sampras might have done it.

He was 6 years old.

That story stayed with me, sure, but I also loved his game, his preposterous speed on the court, his unappreciated imagination around the net, and his return of serve. I especially loved his two-handed backhand.

I switched to a two-handed backhand myself after that match.

And I suppose more than anything, I began to root for Djokovic because it seemed like nobody else was. He had been cast in the role of tennis’ villain even though he had never auditioned for the part. Federer was Federer, tennis sublime, the center of David Foster Wallace’s religious experience. Nadal was a fighter and the genius on clay. Murray was Wimbledon’s darling. Wawrinka was goofy. Monfils was fun.

And what was Novak? He could not be easily summed up. He was brilliant, and he was tortured, and he was introspective, and he was relentless, and he was explosive, and he was funny, and he was a such a perfectionist that his team would say he put them through hell. He’d smash rackets. He’d lose gracefully. He’d scream at his team. He’d reach deep within. He’d hide parts of himself. He’d reveal parts of himself. He fascinated me.

Over the last dozen years, I’ve watched at least the highlights of every single Novak Djokovic match — usually, though, I watched the whole thing. I’ve watched several of his matches multiple times. I watched the young Novak lose to Federer in the 2006 U.S. Open final a half dozen times — that match was shockingly close, even though Federer won in straight sets. I’ve watched the older Novak beat Federer in the 2019 Wimbledon final a half dozen times — that match defies description. I’ve watched his wars with Nadal. I was there in Rio when Juan Martin del Potro hit some of the hardest forehands in tennis history to knock a tearful Djokovic out of the Olympics. I was there in New York in 2015 when Djokovic was in complete command of his game, and he outplayed Federer to win the U.S. Open.

And I was here in Hawaii on Sunday, six hours behind the East Coast, watching Djokovic suffer — and I do mean suffer — through a five-set loss to Argentinian clay court specialist Mariano Navone. The match was pain. Djokovic vomited. He cramped up. He bent over in agony. Navone didn’t have any offensive weapons that could hurt Novak, but he kept returning one more ball, one more ball, and you could see Djokovic’s life force erode before your very eyes.

No tennis player has ever taken more souls than Novak.

On this day, it was his own soul that was taken. By the end — the final set was 6-1 Navone — all that was left of Djokovic was a ghost.

I suppose the big takeaway from all this is that the end is near for Novak, but we knew that already — knew it because he’s been injured and exhausted for a good while now and knew it because the end is always near no matter who you are. But the question that lingers for me is: Why? Why does he do this? It is true that when he’s feeling right, even at 39, he can compete with any player in the world and beat most of them. It is true that when you’ve been the best player on earth for so long, you do not want to let it go.

And it is true that while the rest of us can marvel at Djokovic’s unprecedented accomplishments, Novak’s life keeps going. The comedian Kumail Nanjiani has a very funny bit about how nobody feels sorry for him that his Marvel movie, Eternals, flopped. He says that he doesn’t blame anyone else for not feeling sorry for him — he’s living a great life.

“But I get to feel sorry for me!” he says. “This is my life! I live in here!”

So it is for Novak. He lives in there. He knows that when he says goodbye, he will never again feel what it feels like to stand on Centre Court chasing down Federer’s best and returning fire and facing championship point, hitting a winner and being the best in the world. I suppose as long as there’s a flicker of a chance, he’d like to try to do it one more time. And he’s willing to vomit a few times along the way.

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I’m on the prowl for my one impossible card trick. I believe that my pal Joshua Jay has found the perfect trick, and we’re going to work on it for the next few days, and I’m really excited.

Josh has also come up with a bunch of out-there baseball rule changes he would love to see put into place — it’s really interesting to get the perspective of a world-class magician who is constantly working on his act and his magic to make it all more fun, more immersive and more magical for the audience. That’s what he’d love to do for baseball. He’s told me a couple of his rule changes, and I don’t want to share them quite yet — I don’t think you’ll like them specifically, and I think that could overwhelm what I think is a great thought experiment: What is the wildest and most impossible rule change you can think of that you believe, in your heart of hearts, would make baseball better?

I’ll give you one: I truly believe baseball would be better if you were only allowed to use one pitcher. We don’t need to go through the 10 billion reasons this could never happen, but I really believe that when the dust settled and the pitchers adjusted and the hitters adjusted, baseball would be more fun.

All right, go ahead, hit me in the comments with your wildest rule change. I should have time to look at some. Everybody’s going on a helicopter ride tomorrow. I’m not doing that. I’ll be back here writing in paradise.