Rudy (22 page)

Back in the locker room that afternoon, I had heard just about enough. “Quit complaining!” I yelled.

“Aw, you're nothin' but a suck-up, Rudy,” he said to me, and he pushed me!

I wasn't about to take that, so I pushed him back, and another player stepped in and stopped us from going any further. Good thing too. With all my Bengal Bouts training I might have knocked his head off! “Knock it off,” the other player said, not directed at me, but right at that senior. The message he sent, loud and clear, was, “Why don't you try putting as much energy on the field as you're putting into all your complaining?”

The whole thing was ridiculous. I wasn't looking for a confrontation. All I ever did was work to make the team better and to make those players the best they could be. That was my role. Even though someone else came to my defense, I felt like I was being punished for doing my job to the best of my ability. The whole incident set me over the edge. That us-versus-them mentality was eating me up inside. I was never going to move up the depth chart. I was never gonna get a chance to run onto that field. What the heck was I doing? Why was I working so hard if all it was causing was anguish and agony?

I kept asking myself those questions all week. And when Thursday came around, and my name wasn't on the dress list, I walked out of the locker room thinking I'd never be back.
Why bother?
A couple of players saw how angry I was as I stormed out and asked what was up. “I quit!” I yelled as I kept on walking. They knew why I was upset. They knew I felt like it just wasn't worth it. Like I'd been wasting my time.

There were tears in my eyes when I walked back into my room. I slammed the door and dropped down on my bed—exhausted, spent, and over it.

Couldn't have been thirty seconds later when I heard a knock.

“Come in,” I said, wiping my eyes and sitting up.

It was Rudy, the old janitor who lent me the cot in his closet the previous summer. Apparently I walked right past him on my way in. I didn't even notice, but he noticed. He saw my face. He saw my pain. He asked if he could sit. I said, “Sure.”

He asked me what was up, and I told him the whole sorry tale. I opened up about the incident with the senior that Monday and the bigger picture of feeling unwanted, unappreciated by the very guys I was working so hard for, and how disappointed I was that I wouldn't get to dress for a game—that no one would even know I had ever played for Notre Dame.

He listened. Really listened. Rudy was one of those guys who always seemed to be smiling. Always content. So I was surprised when he opened up to me about knowing exactly how I felt.

“When I lost my leg, I thought my whole world was over,” he said.

“When you what?” I asked. I had no idea he was missing a leg. I don't know what's wrong with me. Was I the most unobservant guy in the world? It was a strange, strange feeling. He lifted up his pant leg a bit and showed me the prosthetic, extending down into his scuffed-up brown leather shoe. I had noticed he had a limp. I never thought anything about it. It never occurred to me that his leg was gone.

“I lost it to diabetes,” he said.

I apologized for not noticing.

“Don't apologize, Rudy. You see the good in people. You do. You don't see what's wrong with them first. You don't look for flaws. That's a gift.”

He talked to me about landing the job at Notre Dame and how thrilled he was, not only to find work in his condition, but also to land a job at a place he so admired. He was a lifelong Notre Dame fan. He described to me how much he loved the campus, how it felt like a church or a temple to him, how at peace he felt just walking between these beautiful buildings every morning, and how rich he felt to be able to contribute to Notre Dame athletics in his own way.

His name would never be up on a wall. His name wouldn't appear in any history books or yearbooks. Didn't matter. “I'm a part of something great,” he said. “And I know it. And that's all that matters.”

That started me crying again.

“Don't quit, Rudy,” he said. “Don't quit the team. Not now. Not after coming this far. Not after all the hard work you put in. You quit, and I promise you—you'll regret it the rest of your life.”

I let out a bit of a moan. “Sorry,” I said, wiping my eyes. “I don't mean to cry.”

“It's okay to cry. You just think about what I said.”

“I will. Thanks.”

“No problem,” he said, standing up strong and laying his hand on my shoulder. “I'll see you around.”

I called home that night. My brother Francis picked up the phone, and I told him what had happened. I told him there was only one home game left, and that it didn't look like I was going to dress for a game after all. I told him I wasn't going to bother going to practice anymore.

“Are you nuts?” he said. “You can't quit the team. It's Notre Dame!

What the heck are you thinking?”

Of my six brothers, Frank's the one most like me. The one who got into trouble. The one who finished second or third in his class—from the bottom. The one who suffered from similar undiagnosed learning disorders. He confided with me on the phone that night just how much he'd been influenced by my whole course of action. The fact that I said I was going to get into Notre Dame, and then did it. The fact that I said I was going to play football for Notre Dame, and I did it. It didn't matter if I dressed for a game or not. I accomplished what I set out to do, and that something was much bigger than any of us had ever dreamed possible. He talked to me about his own dreams of becoming a police officer one day, and how he was turning that weight room he'd set up in my parents' garage into a business: Rudy's Gym. It was awesome. He was already starting a business just coming out of high school, and he said I was the one who helped inspire him to do it.

It's humbling to hear something like that from your little brother.

“Don't quit the team, Rudy. Don't let yourself down like that. We all know what you've done. You know what you've done. That's what matters.”

I know I'm a little hardheaded, but I went to bed still thinking I was done with the team. I was confused, of course, and my mind kept spinning, but the anger and frustration seemed to overwhelm the very reasonable arguments for going back.

The next morning, I woke up a little less stressed. There's nothing like sleep to help give you some perspective. Still, it hurt to think that I wasn't appreciated by all of the other players. I had given everything to that team.

That's when a third set of lessons came knocking on my door. First Rudy. Then Frank. Now? Four team members came by to give me a little pep talk before practice. Some of the strongest, most well-respected members of the team: Pat Sarb, Dan Knott, Ivan Brown, and Bobby Zanot. They were all real serious. They just wanted me to know they didn't want me to quit. They all had struggles. They all got frustrated, they said. They were all bummed out about the way the team was playing and disappointed by the big attitudes of some of the star players, and they said it was unforgivable the way I'd been treated by that fifth-year senior. They were also upset about that new NCAA rule that was keeping so many of us seniors from suiting up for our last home game. After all, it was a Notre Dame tradition! But they wanted me to know how much they all appreciated me. They wanted me to know how much they admired me and were blown away by how hard I worked.

“Be sure to come to practice today,” they said. “You won't regret it.”

It was exactly what I needed to hear, from exactly the people I needed to hear it from. It wouldn't have meant any more to me if Ara Parseghian himself had come along and told me to get off my behind and get back on the field.

By the time practice came around that day, I was embarrassed. I didn't want to dress in the locker room with everyone else. I held off and showed up late. It was the day before the final home game, against Georgia Tech, and I glanced at the dress list outside the locker room on the way to the field, just in case.

My name wasn't on it.

I dressed in the empty locker room. I walked out toward the practice field with my helmet under my arm, listening to the sound of those explosive hits, the crunch of that herd of cattle exploding into each other, the yells and whistles of the game I loved, the team I loved, echoing off the beige-brick walls of the distant campus buildings.

I stepped through the gate, to the field behind the blocked-out fence, reminded of just how privileged I was to be able to pass that barrier, to be on the inside—a part of the team.

“Sorry I'm late, Coach,” I said to Coach Devine.

“Glad you're here, Rudy,” he said, turning and yelling. “Now let's get back to work!”

I pulled my helmet on and took my position, fist in the grass, determined to give it my all. I could hear my own breath in the helmet—the muffled sound of the quarterback's call. I focused in. Everything on the line.
Time to play
. Instincts fired up.
The snap! Stop him
.
Smash!

At the end of the day, Coach Devine told everyone to take a knee and we gathered around him for a pep talk and a rundown of what to expect on Saturday. He talked about how practice had been going well, but it was no time to rest. He talked about Georgia Tech and what we needed to do to win. How we weren't going to let another team come in here and push us around. And he talked about the fact that it would be the last home game in that stadium for all of us seniors. He said he knew what it meant to us all, and that for those players who dressed for the game, he would do everything he could to get them in for at least one play—as long as we were winning.

Everyone cheered.

“And one last thing,” he said. “We're going to make one change to the dress list for Saturday. One player is going to give up his uniform . . . and Rudy Ruettiger's gonna dress.”

I was floored. Speechless. As the players around me started applauding and hooting and hollering for me, patting me on the back, I just closed my eyes and smiled. I thanked God for giving me that blessing.

Then I opened my eyes, looked at Coach Devine, and said, “Thank you, Coach!”

“Good practice, everyone. See you tomorrow,” he said.

As we got up and headed back to the locker room, more and more players came and slapped me on the back. “Alright, Rudy . . . Way to go, Rudy!” Some of them got real emotional about it. I still couldn't believe it. It was almost as if it wasn't happening. Once again, as if it were a dream. It was a dream. A dream come true.

What I found out years later is that those four guys who came to visit me in my room at the ACC had actually gone to the coaching staff on my behalf and asked if I could dress. “Guys like Rudy deserve a chance,” they argued. And Coach Devine agreed without hesitation.

I dressed in a fog, almost dizzy with emotion.
I almost quit!
The thought of it made me laugh! I almost quit when I was so close! What a mistake that would have been. I was overwhelmingly grateful to Coach Devine, to those players who hoisted me up with their pep talk, to Rudy the janitor, and to my brother Frank.

Frank! I had to call Francis right away. I suddenly snapped out of the fog and booked it over to the pay phone in the ACC. Of all the people in that house in Joliet, it was Frank who picked up the phone on the first ring.

“Frank, you're never gonna believe it,” I said.

“What?” he asked.

“It's happening. I'm dressing for the game tomorrow!”

“What?” he yelled. “For real?”

“For real, Frank. Coach just announced it in front of everyone at practice!”

He was beside himself. “You've gotta tell dad.”

“Is he there?” I asked.

“No.”

“Frank, you've gotta tell him. And tell him I've got four tickets to the game. You've gotta be there!”

Frank cupped his hand over the phone and yelled out to the rest of my brothers and sisters, “Hey guys, Danny's gonna dress for the Notre Dame game tomorrow!”

Just as my Notre Dame dream coming true set the whole family off on one of the happiest dinners of our lives, and my making the football team sent the whole clan into cheers over the phone a little more than a year earlier, once again I listened as my whole family erupted with excitement over something I'd done. What a feeling that is, to spread that kind of joy.

I called Freddy, who just about blew a gasket on the phone. He wasn't sure he'd be able to make it up on such short notice, he said, but he'd be there in spirit and he'd be sure to listen to the game on the radio.

I called D-Bob, who flipped out too, and promised he'd be watching the game on the TV at his store.

I ran into Rudy the janitor down the hall and told him the news. He was so thrilled for me. “Come to the game!” I said. “I just might do that, Rudy. I just might do that,” he replied with the biggest, broadest version of that smile he always seemed to wear. “I couldn't have done it without you, you know?” I said to him.

“Well, I don't think that's true. But thank you, Rudy. It's quite a story you have to tell.”

It was quite a story. I had never really thought of it that way. Even after it showed up in the basketball program and the student paper, it never occurred to me that my story was anything special. It was just my life. But to dress for a game? To actually step into that stadium with a gold helmet? Me? This lousy student from Joliet who wasn't even a “college-bound” type of guy? Yeah. I guess that did make for a pretty good story. People always joke about this sort of thing, but I remember thinking, right then and there,
I' ll be telling this story to my grandkids someday.

That was a pretty cool feeling.

Of course, it wasn't nearly as cool as the feeling that would come my way in the next twenty-four hours.

It's funny, but on my way into the locker room the next day, it still didn't feel real. I remembered what Coach said—and said in front of the whole team—but I still had this nervous knot in my stomach as I walked up to check the dress list. I put my finger on the first name on the top of that piece of paper and dragged it down, down, down the list until finally, there it was. “Ruettiger—#45.”