gotta play...

Mike Yellen looked once, paused, then looked again, much as if it were a hot July day and there before him stood a pile of snow.

“This can’t be right,” the pro tour’s top player in the mid-1980s said to himself. “Ruben Gonzalez can’t still be playing racquetball, at least not well enough to be in the semi-finals of the national singles.”

Yellen had retired from the professional tour in 1993 and subsequently lost touch with the particulars of the game. The only reason he was in Houston three years ago for the U.S. Nationals was to be inducted into the Racquetball Hall of Fame. He never expected to meet up with his old friend, to say nothing of watching him defend a national amateur championship title he’d earned only one year prior.

“I hadn’t kept up with the game much, but I had heard that Ruben had an Achilles tendon injury,” Yellen said recently from his home in Michigan. “That meant he was what? 47? (actually, 44) That’s an injury a 25-year-old can’t come back from. Yet here he was, working his way back on to the tour.”

After recalling the incident, Yellen conceded that he shouldn’t have been so surprised. Gonzalez is a freak of nature. Players on the tour have known that for years. He picked up a racket for the first time in his mid-20s, when most players are entering their prime. He didn’t win a tournament on the professional tour until 1987, when he was 36, an age when most professionals are staging exhibitions and reminiscing about their golden days. A year later, Gonzalez snatched the top spot away from Yellen, eight years his junior. Bouncing back from a serious injury? That should have created as much stir as a gentle breeze on a cool spring day.

“I remember looking at him and laughing,” says Yellen of the meeting in 1997. “The first thing I said was, ‘You’re amazing.’ He said, ‘Yeah, I just keep plugging along. I gotta play.”

Just plugging along? An understatement typical of the understated Gonzalez. Last December in Memphis, he just plugged along to the quarterfinals of the Promus U.S. Open Racquetball Championships, the premier tournament on the pro tour. To advance that far, Gonzalez beat No. 9 Andy Roberts, who was playing in his hometown and on his home court, and No. 8 Mike Guidry, who, at 29, is a mere three years older than Gonzalez’s oldest son. In Memphis, Gonzalez’s run ended against No.1 Sudsy Monchik, who is closer in age to Gonzalez’s two grandchildren than to Gonzalez himself.

Grandpa Ruben gives little thought to his longevity. He did most of his aging long before he began to play racquetball. He grew up in Harlem, street tough. His daily routine through most of his teen years was as simple as it was immutable. He hustled for money during the afternoon, drank beer in the evening, and slept wherever he ran out of energy, which was often in a public park or some flop house with drug addicts shooting up in the hallway.

“That never seemed strange to me because that was all that I knew,” he says. “I was always getting into fights. If you saw me on the street, you would have gotten out of my way. I don’t know why I escaped that and so many others didn’t.” Pause. “I just don’t know.”

If Gonzalez hadn’t dropped out of school after ninth grade, he could have been a star running back or third baseman. His athletic ability was unquestioned, as was his competitive drive.

“He dove on cement,” says Russ Mannino, who got to know Gonzalez from one-wall handball tournaments in and around New York City in the 1970s. “He would just get up and continue to play. He wasn’t hurt at all. No one could play with Ruben. He was the champ. The best.”

But being the best in one-wall handball paid for coffee and perhaps a danish. Gonzalez was in his mid-20s, married for the second time, and the father of two boys. He badly needed of a career change. Mannino, (father of IRT No.4 Jason), was about to open a racquetball club in Staten Island. He suggested to Ruben that he move his family there, work at the club, and give racquetball a try.

“He practiced, practiced, practiced, and learned,” says Mannino. “He wasn’t spoiled like the kids today. He got his ass kicked for three or four years (on the tour), but each time he lost, he learned and got better. It was a slow, gradual climb.”

But one with no doubts.

“I couldn’t afford any because I had nothing to fall back on, no other choice,” Gonzalez says. “At night I’d go up on the roof of our apartment building in Staten Island and practice 1,000 forehands and 1,000 backhands. That’s all I had going for me. I was a hustler.”

Even before Gonzalez reached the top spot in 1988, his racquetball peers were in awe of the ol’ man. He had a pleasant, quiet demeanor in a sport defined by brashness. He was a family man in an occupation that tested fidelity with its constant travel. His physical attributes were legend, not all of them displayed on the court.

Above all, however, Gonzalez was a straight shooter. He wanted nothing handed to him. If he got it, he had to have earned it, a character trait vividly displayed at a pro stop in northern Virginia in 1985.

Gonzalez was playing Marty Hogan in the final. Hogan was a racquetball icon. Gonzalez had yet to win a pro tournament. The two were locked into a five-game struggle. Hogan served with the score 10-8 in the tiebreaker. Gonzalez ended the rally with an apparent forehand killshot.

The seconds ticked by. Gonzalez did not move to take the serve. Jerry Hilecher, No. 7 on the tour at the time, was watching the match. He noticed a trace of a smile on Gonzalez’s face.

“Looking back on it, I think it was a sign of peace,” Hilecher says. “It was a very dramatic moment. It was a great match. We all wanted to see it go on, but Ruben knew what he had to do.”

Gonzalez remembers a jumble of thoughts racing through his mind: I still have a chance. If I get by Hogan, I win this tournament. But hold on! What would a win mean? I didn’t earn it. My shot skipped.

At the end of those 10 seconds — Hilecher recalls that it seemed like 10 minutes — Gonzalez overruled the referee, thereby handing the match to Hogan. The spectators sat stunned. The display of honesty took nearly a minute for them to absorb. When they understood the magnitude of what they had witnessed, they roared with approval. This was Babe Ruth pointing toward the fence, or Doug Flutie completing the Hail Mary pass. Gonzalez had given them one of racquetball’s defining moments.

“I hear about that call all of the time and that’s not bad,” Gonzalez says. “Can you think of anything better to be remembered for?”

Nothing better, but perhaps something close. He’s 48 and still hopes for another win on the pro tour. Wouldn’t that be a hoot? Tripod beating the Magic Show!

It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy ...

About the author
Tom Slear has been freelancing since 1978 and has been writing for RACQUETBALL magazine, on and off, since 1980. He plays racquetball regularly at a club near his home in Annapolis, Maryland. "I play," he says, "but I am not a player. I just love the workout."

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