Everything on the Line

by Bob Mitchell

  “So, then, I suppose this is it?”

  “Yep, it’s showtime!” Satan hisses. “This is the moment we’ve been waiting for.”

  The moment we’ve been waiting for.

  Sipping His Power Smoothie, God ruminates on all that has happened, the Good and the Evil alike, on Earth since He created it. The Six Days of Creation and the Seventh Day of Rest. The Casting of Adam and Eve out of Eden. Noah and the Flood. Moses, Egypt, the Exodus, the Ten Commandments. The Wheel. The Birth and Crucifixion of Christ. The Fall of the Roman Empire. Columbus Discovers the New World. The Rise and Fall of Napoleon. Electricity. World War I. The Great Depression. World War II. Bobby Thomson’s Home Run. The Computer. The Slaying of Osama Bin Laden.

  After all the ebb and flow of Good and Evil on Earth, man’s successes and failures and advances and setbacks, and now it has finally come down to the long-awaited moment, to…settling this thing once and for all?

  Chugging his Belgian brew, a dribble of foam oozing down his cheek and seeping into the bright scarlet collar of his Salvatore Mondobasso turtleneck shirt, the Devil ruminates on one memory, the only one that has been obsessing him lo these millennia, the single ignominious blot on his estimable escutcheon. Never will he be able to eradicate from his memory the humility of that fateful day when God tossed him unceremoniously from heaven. Never will he be able to extirpate from his brain that precipitous fall from grace…downward, downward he plunged into the darkness, like a helpless and traumatized Alice falling down the rabbit hole. Never will he able to rid himself of this festering feeling aimed at God that has been gnawing at him like a famished rodent, this excruciating feeling deep within his belly that is an amalgam of hatred, envy, anger, injustice, and rebellion.

  Never, perhaps, until now.

  At last and once and for all, Satan will have the opportunity to exact a long-awaited revenge upon his Oppressor and Tormentor. And all he has to do to accomplish this lifelong dream is to have Jack Spade beat Ugo Bellezza tomorrow at Wimbledon!

  “I think we agree,” God says, “that every single match these two combatants have ever played, major or not, has been a heart-stopping, nail-biting squeaker, and that if anything separates them, it is barely discernible to the naked eye.”

  “I can’t disagree with you,” Beelzebub replies, “yes, they are dead even, they are nearly at the height of their tennis powers, and what better time to break the logjam and have our wager be resolved and decide once and for all whether Good or Evil is the stronger force and which shall prevail on Earth forever and evermore than tomorrow, at the granddaddy of all tennis tournaments?”

  As the two antagonists finish their lunch (God picks up the tab this time), Satan has one final thought before leaving the booth. He is thinking back in time about the other wager he had made with God, eons ago, concerning whether Job would eventually curse God as he endured his hardships. Satan had lost that bet and it still stings after all this time and how very sweet it would be to even the score at Wimbledon and have Evil triumph forever! And he is thinking even more about how much is riding on this tennis match, after all this time he has spent resenting God and longing for revenge, and he is thinking how high the stakes will be tomorrow.

  All the marbles.

  As he leaves the eatery, something painful is sticking in Satan’s craw.

  And it is not the remnants of his hoagie.

  18

  On the Line

  SUSPENDING CREDULITY, THE SCORE of the gentlemen’s finals at the 2053 Championships, indicated on the green Wimbledon scoreboard with gold numbers, now reads:

  At the conclusion of the titanic 123-shot rally that just precipitated the fourth-set tiebreaker, Ugo Bellezza claps appreciatively, as do his 13,998 companions-in-awe.

  It is an awe that has been building for over a decade, that has surrounded these two magnificent talents as their greatness and gravitas accrued through their formative years, all leading up to this consequential and ponderous court appointment, which is at long last here. All the anticipation and all the hype and all the buildup for the Big Showdown of All Time pitting the two greatest players ever at the absolute peak of their games is not disappointing a soul.

  The great Roger Federer had retired at the age of 39, having had the perfectly normal vision to do it in 2020. Since then, the only dominant player had been Jaden Gil Agassi, offspring of two all-time champions, Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf. With his genetic gifts and natural abilities, Jaden had scooped up ten Grand Slam singles victories before—in 2030, at the age of 29 and in the same year as the birth of both Ugo Bellezza and Jack Spade—spontaneously opting to dedicate his life to working with his parents on philanthropic projects. And so, the path had been cleared.

  For generations, the tennis argument had been between the Old Guard (Tilden and Lacoste and Cochet, then Perry and Vines and Budge, then Riggs and Kramer and Gonzalez) and the New Guard (Hoad and Rosewall and Trabert, then Laver and Emerson and Newcombe, then Borg and Connors and McEnroe, then Sampras and Andre Agassi, then Federer and Nadal, then Jaden Gil Agassi). But today’s two combatants have superseded all these past stars in the tennis constellation with something utterly other. From a purely statistical standpoint, Ugo Bellezza has won seven consecutive French Opens, all against Jack Spade in the finals. And Jack has won six consecutive U.S. Opens, all against Ugo in the finals. And between them, they have won seven consecutive Aussie Opens (with Jack winning four). But due to injuries and occasional upsets, they have curiously never met in a Wimbledon finals, each having won three against less formidable opponents. All in all, they have garnered a preposterous grand total of thirteen majors apiece at the ripe old age of twenty-three.

  And now they are here, unprecedentedly co-seeded number one, in their big showdown, playing each other for the very first time in the finals of Wimbledon, to determine, once and for all, who is the Greatest Player of All Time.

  The most meaningful Wimbledon tennis finals in history is inexorably approaching its climax, and in the process electrifying over three billion tennis fans around the planet, redefining competitive athletic excellence forever, demanding that true aficionados abandon their memories of other transcendent rivalries in the world of sports.

  Instantly faded in the mind’s historical eye are the fierce court battles between Lenglen and Wills, Tilden and Johnston, Budge and Von Cramm, Evert and Navratilova, Borg and McEnroe, Agassi and Sampras, Federer and Nadal. Not to mention other historic athletic showdowns between Giants and Dodgers, Yankees and Red Sox, Lakers and Celtics, Ohio State and Michigan, UNC and Duke, Auburn and Alabama, Hogan and Snead, Palmer and Nicklaus, Chamberlain and Russell, Magic and Bird.

  The Big Showdown of All Time has already eclipsed—in excitement, intensity, and sheer shotmaking brilliance—the most memorable previous Wimbledon final, when lefty Rafa Nadal beat righty Roger Federer forty-five years ago in another barn burner, 6-4, 6-4, 6-7, 6-7, 9-7.

  But this barn still has burning to do, and how.

  New Yorker Jack Spade is up two sets to one, but the whiz from Florence has begun to figure out his opponent and has clawed his way back from the two-sets-to-none precipice of defeat to the present cusp of equilibrium.

  In boxing, they say that style makes fights, and in this heavyweight bout, the old saw has plenty of teeth. Ugo is prototypically Italian, with the body of Michelangelo’s David and the mind of Leonardo; Jack is American to the bone, a Vince Lombardi/George Steinbrenner-type winning machine. (“The Florentine Flash” vs. the “Gotham Gorilla,” as the great Bud Collins might have monikered them with a wink.) Ugo possesses astounding finesse and touch and defensive skills, as well as an eerie sense of anticipation; Jack’s game is based essentially on pure power and sheer will. Ugo’s graceful movement, creativity, and lightning reflexes contrast with Jack’s brawling, bulldog, grinding style. Ugo is in your heart while Jack is in your face. The match also features righty vs. lefty, glider vs. freight train, ice vs. fire. In fact, it has, thus far and unsurprising
ly, turned into a ferocious battle reminiscent of the greatest exemplars of pugilistic contrast: Robinson vs. Basilio, Leonard vs. Duran, Ali vs. Frazier.

  At the pre-tiebreaker changeover, instituted in 2050, Ugo Bellezza, a towel draped over his head, is dressed head to toe in an all-white outfit, out of respect for the time-honored Wimbledon tradition, all articles of his retro attire respectfully sporting the laurel wreath of the great Fred Perry, the last Brit to win the Wimbledon gentlemen’s singles title, a breathtaking 117 years ago in the year of our Signore 1936.

  He sips his Robinson’s Barley Water, takes a gander up there at his friends’ box in the stands. His mamma, Gioconda Bellezza, looks back at him lovingly with that knowing Mona Lisa smile of hers. Coach and hero Giglio Marotti throws him his fervent support by slowly mouthing the word sprezzatura. Soul mate Antonella Cazzaro flashes him a look of profound caring with her gorgeous periwinkle eyes.

  Jack Spade, a towel draped over his head, is dressed head to toe in an all-black outfit, the brainchild of manager Odi Mondheim, who, with Ira Spade, just two days ago had marched into the meeting with the Wimbledon Apparel and Comportment Committee and threatened the right honorable British gentlemen with a goddam lawsuit if they didn’t allow Jack to wear whatever color he goddam chose to wear ’cause that was his frigging constitutional right as a law-abiding, tax-paying citizen of the United States of America, amen.

  In Jack’s friends’ box, Ira Spade’s left eye is twitching uncontrollably as he mutilates his program in his small, sweaty palms and mumbles c’mon, you sonuvabitch! to his son under his breath. Avis Spade looks sadly at her husband, this intense, driven incarnation of a husband sitting right here next to her, recalling in her weary mind the kinder, gentler version who used to open doors for her and bring her roses and whisper sweet nothings in earlier years. Short, fat, bald, chinless Odi Mondheim smiles nervously at Ira and takes a piece of paper out of his breast pocket and peruses it and grins wickedly.

  Ugo spends his entire five minutes of repose thinking about what his mentor Giglio has stood for and taught him through the years, bringing him to this special moment. Winning as a by-product, not an end in itself. Sprezzatura. Creating le belle cose. Gaudí pushing the envelope. Leonardo’s Notebooks. Rodin’s The Hand of God and the power of metaphor. Roland Garros and Einstein. Aesop’s fable of the wind and the sun. Benchley’s telegram from Venice. Per aspera ad astra and learning from obstacles. The story of Bernini and Borromini and the true nature of competition. The importance of fingerprints. O jogo bonito. The importance of process. Australia and sportsmanship. Non c’è rosa senza spine. Ronsard and Goya and Beethoven and Edison. And about how grateful he is to Jack Spade for helping him be the best Ugo Bellezza he can be.

  Jack spends his entire five minutes of repose thinking about what his father Ira has stood for and taught him through the years, bringing him to this special moment. Knight, Lombardi, Steinbrenner, and winning. The boiling lobsters who were losers. Darwin and Survival. Kissing your grandmother, with her teeth out. Winning ugly. The “To Hell and Back” drills. The power of the color black. Why lefties are sinister. The video of the lion killing the antelope. “I am the greatest!” Those games of “Winner/Loser.” Jim Morrison’s tomb. The deaf sign for stupid. No more Mister Nice Guy. The King Midas dream. The “25 Greatest Players Ever” list and the foul, bourbony breath. Win or die. Woody Hayes and winning. Win or tie. America and winning. All the dirty tricks to be used against this little Italian sonuvabitch. This little Italian sonuvabitch’s sandbagging letter.

  Before taking the court again, Ugo takes a final chug from his bottle of Robinson’s Barley Water and gazes down at his racquet, the gift of love from his mentor, his mamma, and his Antonella, looks at the lovely spruce overlay, this wood harvested in Cremona from the same trees the Italian genius Stradivari used for his extraordinary violins, and it is all the strength and motivation he needs for the tiebreaker.

  As the players cross paths and return to the court, Jack tosses Ugo a supercilious sneer. Ugo smiles back respectfully.

  Ugo initiates the opening point of the crucial tiebreaker by cracking an angled serve that hits the sideline squarely, throwing up a soft puff of chalk (which, in 2047, replaced titanium paste as line material) and drawing Jack way out of court but Jack, being the quintessential digger and grinder and by dint of his absolute refusal to surrender, throws up a towering defensive lob that Ugo has to let bounce and it does, smack on the baseline, and the two exchange a dozen blistering cross-court groundstrokes and they are two ball machines, Jack rifling pinpoint backhands to Ugo’s forehands and vice versa, and so many lines have been hit that the bright yellow ball is now the color of straw and as if to put Jack Spade out of his misery Ugo Bellezza whales a winning forehand down the line that barely clears the net and just clips the chalk and sends the crowd into a frenzy.

  Walking to his receiving position in the ad court and ahead in the tiebreaker, 1-0, Ugo Bellezza thinks to himself: Piccoli passi, little steps! You won that point, certo, but you’re not getting to the ball quickly enough. Cut out those long strides. Piccoli passi!

  Jack Spade bounces the ball eight, nine, ten times on the baseline as he prepares to serve, trying to get into the mind of his opponent, but the elegantly tranquil Bellezza will have none of these shenanigans. Looking up at his father in his friends’ box, Jack is reminded of the Tom Seaver quip Ira had shared with him for the umpteenth time just before the start of the match: “There are only two places in the league—first place and no place.” Ira looks daggers at his son and mouths a firm C’mon! with his lips and grits his teeth. Jack grits his teeth, too.

  Jack puts a wicked spin on his left-handed serve and the gyrating ball hits both lines, the intersection of sideline and service line, and the madcap spin forces Ugo way out of court—just the type of nasty wily lefty serve that has driven opponents batty for the past century or so from the likes of Drobny and Larsen and Fraser and Laver and Leconte and Korda—and Ugo, with the creativity of the maestro from Vinci, fashions a return from out of the instinctive blue, low and screaming and under the net from a ridiculous angle that sends the ball just past the net post, and the sideline chalk flies, but equally incredibly the American wills his way there to strike a stupendous backhand half volley with a soft wrist reminiscent of and even surpassing the brilliant net magic of fellow lefty John McEnroe, and no sooner is the ball deposited barely over the net than the fleet Italian, whose anticipation is unparalleled, is all over it and pushes a deft half volley of his own diagonally across the net, but Jack Spade will not permit himself to lose this point and gathers himself and cuts off the shot and returns it into the yawning open court and sneers once again at his opponent and pumps his fist with a vicious uppercut and slaps his thigh and turns his back and returns intensely to the service line.

  Jack Spade, serving at 1-1, launches an ace of Richter proportions, a flat lefty bomb with no spin whatsoever that reminds the tennis historian of Roscoe Tanner or Goran Ivanisevic or Greg Rusedski at their best and way beyond, and that measures 256 kilometers (160 miles) an hour and splits the T and sends chalk flying and leaves even one as nimble as Ugo Bellezza frozen at his baseline post.

  At 1-2, Ugo, amid all the tension and down two sets to one and as cool as a cetriolo, fires two aces of his own.

  Bling.

  Bling.

  Ugo’s serve is a skosh more limited in power than Jack’s, but his mind is not: Jack had been expecting to hit a forehand return in the ad court and a backhand return in the deuce court, respectively, but instead, both pinpoint serves hit squarely on the line, smack on the T, in precisely the same spot.

  Suddenly it is 2-3 Ugo’s with Jack serving, but they are still on serve, with not a sniff of a minibreak in the air.

  Before the match begins, Jack and Ira Spade are looking up at the sign over the locker room door, at the Rudyard Kipling quote:

  If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

  And treat those two i
mpostors just the same…

  “Bullshit,” Ira erupts, looking his son straight in the eyes. “What a loser this guy Kipling was! Winning is all that counts. You know it and I know it and the only impostor around here is the goddam moron who doesn’t have the guts to admit it!”

  Ira pumps his fist in Triumph. Jack does, too.

  Before the match begins, Ugo and Giglio are looking up at the sign over the locker room door, at the Rudyard Kipling quote.

  “Capisci? Get it? That’s what we’ve been talking about all these years,” Giglio says, gesticulating purposefully. “Play your game, be faithful to yourself, do your best, and the rest will follow.”

  Ugo smiles lovingly at Giglio.

  Jack pipes a scorching serve to Ugo’s midsection, and the Italian pivots quickly and blocks an underspin backhand return at the onrushing American’s feet. A half volley and a forehand drive later, the two are at the net, within shouting distance. And then bing! bing! bing! and the rally ends with Jack smacking an eye-high volley right at Ugo’s body, aimed with great purpose at his most prized Florentine possessions, but Ugo instinctively twirls to avert the danger, and the winner whizzes by harmlessly. Barely three feet away from his opponent, Jack pumps his fist perilously close to Ugo’s face and shouts Take that!, a glob of projectile spittle exiting between his teeth and wobbling across the net and depositing itself onto Ugo’s right cheek.

  Ugo calmly wipes it off with his wristlet and walks over to the other side of the court after this sixth point. He is thinking positive thoughts, about how he is hanging in there and making inroads on Jack’s monster serve and playing beautiful tennis and about the flatbread with rosemary and sage of his mamma and Giglio’s wisdom and affection and the soft, warm skin of the lovely Antonella.

  Jack Spade crosses Ugo’s path, throws him a sneer, and is thinking about putting this little Italian sonuvabitch out of his misery and ending the match right here and right now in this tiebreak and about how he’s gonna be hoisting that golden trophy high in the air pretty soon and what he’ll be saying in his acceptance speech right here on Centre Court.