Rudy (6 page)

Since my freshman year, my family had been living in a much bigger (close to 1,200 square-foot) split-level house that my dad and his partners built at 808 South Brigg—less than a mile up the road from the St. Mary Magdalene school, which made for an easier walk for my younger brothers and sisters than I had in my early years. It was a modest house with enough room for all of us kids to stretch out a bit. But it existed in a constant state of construction for many years—there were no doors or windows when we first moved in. That's just how my dad operated. All the boys hunkered down in the specially built bunk room on the lower level. The noise, the craziness, the quiet dinners—everything we had established in our previous house continued as it had, but just a little bit bigger. With more than an acre of land to ourselves, we were able to stretch our activities outside more than ever before, including great pickup baseball games and home-run derbies that dad would organize off on the side lawn. (A side lawn! Imagine that!)

With fourteen kids, there was always something nefarious going on. My mother was always catching my older sisters sneaking in or out of the house, so she was pretty well practiced before she turned that same attention to my brothers and me.

Money was still tight, so when it came to things like haircuts, my dad would just line us all up in the kitchen, hold our heads down, and buzz it all off. He wasn't exactly a gentle man when it came to working with tools, including that barber's trimmer, so we all wound up with nicks and cuts all over our heads and would wear baseball caps for days just to cover the ugliness.

My mom would shop for our suits at Sears & Roebuck, and we'd be lucky to get a new comb and a tube of Vitalis for Christmas. We'd get new underwear for Christmas too, which always turned into a challenge: all of us brothers would wind up losing our underwear or running out, not having a pair when we needed it, so we'd steal each other's perfectly pressed and folded skivvies when no one was looking. It became a regular routine. I'd go to put a pair on and they'd get stuck going up my leg because somehow I wound up with one of my little brothers' drawers in my drawer! It was a pain.

All those growing boys in the house also made food a big challenge. My mom continued to cook big meals, but we were never satisfied. We were always hungry and always snacking, which drove mom nuts. In fact, she wound up hiding food in her bedroom closet just so us boys wouldn't steal it.

The challenge of handling all of us Ruettiger boys extended beyond home as well. In school, teachers started losing track of who was who from year to year. As time went on, they just seemed to give up. They'd just call us by our last name: “Hey, Ruettiger!” Then even that seemed to be too much of a verbal burden, so our teachers, our peers, our coaches—everyone—just shortened our name down to “Rudy.” All seven of us, for the rest of our lives, would be “Rudy” to just about everyone outside of family.

Oddly enough, within our family, we came up with a different shared nickname for each other: “coach.” I'm not sure how or why that started, but I call my brothers coach, I called my dad coach, and they call me coach whenever we pick up the phone or if we're gathered around at one of their houses. “Hey coach, grab me another beer will you?” Whichever brother it's directed at, they respond to it. I like to think of it as a sign of respect. After all, you're supposed to respect a coach, right?

My dad had funny nicknames for everyone too. Mine was “wise guy.” For a lot of those years, I always had a comeback or an argument or a complaint about everything my dad ever suggested. I always put up a verbal fight or gave him a little lip. Like a lot of teens, I thought I had all the answers, always thought I knew better. So he just started calling me “wise guy,” and it stuck for many, many years.

One night during senior year, I had plans to hit the town with my buddies Ralph and George. Ralph was driving, and he was always late, but I remember sitting there waiting and waiting on him, a lot longer than usual that night. I finally called Ralph's house to see if anyone knew what was taking him so long, and his dad picked up. “You haven't heard, have you, Rudy?” he said. His voice was real shaky.

“Heard what?” I asked.

“Ralph is dead.”

I lost my breath.

“What?” I asked.

I couldn't believe it.

He'd been in a car accident on the way to my house. He apparently had tried to pass another car in a no-passing zone, the same kind of reckless stuff he'd done ever since he got his license. We'd be in the car and he'd be swerving back and forth across the yellow line, and we'd tell him, “You're gonna get killed someday, man!”

This was that someday.

I may have missed the sign from God that first time around, but this time it hit me like a bullet in the back. After two big warnings, it finally registered
: I gotta change. I gotta get away from this. I'm hanging around with the wrong people. I'm not focused on the right stuff in life
. Not that George or Ralph or Big Nick were bad guys. They weren't. Not at all. They were good friends. All of them. Good people. They had just spent too much time drowning in the negativity of a school system that neglects kids who don't fit the perfect mold, and the boatloads of other pressures society puts on its youth—the exact same way I had. For some reason, I'd managed to survive. I was thankful. I was hurt. I was shocked. I didn't understand it. But when I got off the phone with Ralph's dad, I knew I was done with that life.

Going to Ralph's funeral was the most surreal and profound moment of my life up to that point. It felt almost like it wasn't happening. I still felt like Ralph was walking around somewhere. I could still hear his voice. It was freaky.

There were no more fights for me after that. Whatever anger and frustration I had been releasing through my fists got stuffed back down inside, where it belonged.

Funny thing, though: even then, at that still-young age, I had a feeling it would find another way out.

Football really was my salvation in high school. For some kids it's art. For some it's music. For me, it was strapping on those pads, yanking that helmet over my head, and getting out there with the team. I was relentless on the field, especially my senior year. My teachers always complained that I was untrainable or uncoachable in my academic pursuits because I refused to do things their way; in fact, I wasn't capable of doing things their way, and yet out on that football field the coaches usually loved me because I got out there and played as hard as I could. Head coach Gordon Gillespie made every player feel like he was a part of the team. I looked up to him in a big way. He made every one of us believe we could accomplish great things on that field. He inspired me to put it all on the line in every practice and every game. It's as if all of my aggression was channeled into playing. I took hits like no one else. I got the sense some of the big guys wanted to see how hard of a hit I could take, and there was never a hit that kept me down. I always came back for more. Same way I did in those fights down by the river. Always. My drive went right back to what my dad told me on the baseball field: “Just keep playing hard.” That made sense to me. We were all in this together, and there was no way I would allow myself to be a weak link in any other players' eyes.

Football is different from baseball. You're not alone at any point, never standing at a plate with the pressure solely on you. You're truly a part of something, from start to finish. Wherever your effort ends, someone else's begins. It's a game full of moving parts; all of those parts have to work together, and every part of the machine is equally important (despite what some quarterbacks think). Every single person has a role to play, and you have to play it well if you ever want a shot at winning.

I liked that.

I also have to admit I liked that feeling of being out there under the lights on Friday nights. All those people cheering. You were somebody when you were on that team. A big shot. People paid attention. And to a kid who wasn't used to being paid much attention to in school, that filled me with a sense of pride.

It didn't seem to matter that I wasn't the tallest (I stopped growing at just around five feet six inches) or the fastest or the strongest on the team. As long as I played hard and played my part, I basked in the glory of those wins just as much as every other player. As much as I floundered in school, I excelled on the field and was rewarded accordingly. I was All-Conference Guard and All-Conference Linebacker. Nothing could stop me!

I loved the game so much. I'd go practice or join in pick-up games even when I wasn't supposed to. One time, I convinced my mom to let me borrow her car. She kept saving those nickels and finally had a car of her own, a Buick Skylark, and she wouldn't let anyone else drive it. But on this day, I convinced her that I really, really needed to go downtown to the library to study—and she gave in. Imagine her surprise when I called her a few hours later from the hospital with a broken collarbone. “I thought you were at the library!” she yelled. I couldn't drive back. She had to arrange to have a friend bring her to the hospital so she could take me (and her car) back home. Well, by the time we got there, my dad was home from work and had heard the whole story. My little brothers still recall the fear they had for me as I walked into that living room to face him. He was so mad! I felt like a fool, of course, for lying. But I wanted to play football every chance I got. On this occasion, I took a shot and lost.

Of course, my hardheaded attitude—the one that kept me coming back for more even after being spanked as a child—was still in full effect. A few weeks later, on the very day I got my cast taken off and was told by the doctor, very specifically, to take it easy, not to do anything but rest and relax for a couple of weeks, I went down the street and wound up playing touch football with our neighbors. Giving it my all, I snatched the ball on a long throw, took a hard fall, and
crack!
Broke that collarbone all over again.

I hobbled back to my dad, who was in the driveway changing the tires on the station wagon. He was always changing those tires, from bald tires to nearly bald tires that he'd grab for free from his brother's gas station. I'll never forget the look on his face when he saw me. That look of frustration and disappointment. That look of, “How am I ever going to get through to this kid!” He was so hurt and let down to think that I would go right out and hurt myself playing football after being told so specifically not to do so!

I hated that look. I remember thinking,
I never want to see that look in his eyes again. Ever
.

I knew there was no future for me in football, of course. Maybe that's why I tried to play so often. When would I ever get a chance to play after high school? I wasn't going to college, and no matter how good it made me feel or how good I thought I was, it was clear as day to me that I could never play professionally. I knew I would never play with the gods of Notre Dame, so I didn't even fantasize about stuff like that. It just couldn't happen. It was something I did for fun, and for me that was enough.

Like I said, I didn't even realize where Notre Dame was. It felt like a far-off fairytale land. That is, it felt far-off all the way up until late my senior year, when I went along on a religious retreat with the rest of my class to the Fatima Retreat Center . . . in South Bend, Indiana. Right on the edge of the Notre Dame campus.

I was shocked that the trip was so short. It felt as if we'd barely left, what with all the carousing and joking that goes on in the back of any school bus. In reality, it was only about a ninety-minute trip from Joliet. Ninety minutes and we were there. That far-off place was real. That seemingly unknowable place was close.

Fatima House was a low-slung brick building surrounded by beautiful green lawns, and as soon as we got off the bus at the top of the circular drive, the priests divided us into two groups: one group would go take a tour of the Notre Dame campus, the other would head inside and get started with our spiritual exercises. I was pumped up to see Notre Dame, so I immediately went toward that group, until one of the priests stopped me. “Rudy,” he said, “this is for college-bound students. Not you.”

I don't blame that priest for stopping me. He was right. I wasn't college-bound. He was trying to be nice and save me some embarrassment, I think. After all, you had to get all As, maybe a few Bs; you had to be in the top percentile; you had to test well; you had to be one of the elite to attend Notre Dame. I knew all that. I had heard it my whole life. But I also knew then and there that those priests would be hard-pressed to keep me from seeing that campus now that I was standing right on the edge of it. And the thing I really wanted to see was the stadium. I wanted to get up close to that world of Notre Dame football I'd heard about, watched on TV, and dreamed about all my life. I could hardly believe I was standing so close to that place that always seemed so impossibly far away.