Job number one was at the oil refinery: Union Oil. My dad started working there after the war. He served in the air force as a turret gunner and flew twenty-two missions during World War II, including one in which he froze his foot because the hull of the plane was so cold, which tells you a little about what the conditions were like. It wasn’t something he ever really talked about with us kids. I wish I knew more about what he went through. What he saw. What he felt. But when he came home, he found good union wages awaited him at the refinery, and he dug in. Over time, he moved up, eventually leaving the ranks of the union (and losing those guaranteed union benefits) in order to become a superintendent, where he would find himself having to fight the very union that had welcomed him into a job when he came home from the war. He would stay at Union Oil until he retired.
Most nights after he got home from work and ate, he’d go work at his brother’s gas station. My uncle Roge, whom dad always called “Whitey,” was the youngest of my dad’s brothers. He needed the help, and dad needed the money. It was a match made in heaven. And when the time came that my dad had to work nights at the refinery, he’d switch things up and go work at the gas station all day instead. He rarely even took a break on weekends: Saturday morning, he’d rise before the rest of us and head out to work construction with his friend Dan, building houses. Dan was a real creative guy—the type who would design a whole house project on the spot, on a shingle, right at the site, and my dad learned a lot from him. They became very close friends as the years went by. But to swing a hammer after working two other jobs all week must’ve been brutal on him.
Fatigue and frustration were written on my dad’s face for most of those early years. I don’t remember seeing him smile very much, and he certainly didn’t show much of a sense of humor. In fact, he never really showed his emotions at all. I don’t remember him ever hugging me as a kid. He never said the words “I love you.” I knew he loved me. I did. But it’s almost as if there wasn’t enough time in the day for that kind of mush. “Work now, play later,” he used to say in that deep voice of his. “If you play now, you’ll have to work later, and you won’t get to enjoy your life.” I didn’t understand that. I thought you were supposed to play! That’s what I did as a kid. I played. But he used to repeat that “work now, play later” mantra to me and my brothers and sisters all the time. Sure, he and my mom would get together with some friends from bridge club once in a while to play some cards and just decompress. They made a point of making a date night once every month or two, just to get a little relief from the family. And dad seemed to get real enjoyment out of fixing the car, or fixing other stuff as a favor to friends. But I can’t think of a time in my entire childhood when he did something for himself, or ever showed any real flashes of joy, at all—except when it came to sports.
The New York Yankees, the Green Bay Packers, and Notre Dame football were my dad’s escape. As far as I could tell, listening to those games on the radio and watching the recaps on TV on Sunday nights were his one and only form of relaxation. I saw the hope in his eyes, the expression on his face, his bursts of excitement at a really great play. The way he’d stand or shout or pump his fist—or all three!—when one of his teams clinched a win is printed on my memory. It was a whole different side to my dad that sunk in very early on, and whenever I could, I would sit right with him, by his favorite chair in the living room, while he watched and listened to those games.
My dad didn’t live through sports. I think sometimes people pour so much attention into their favorite teams that they live through the games. That’s not what he did. There’s a difference. Sports were his outlet, his relief. He respected and honored those players and those teams, the traditions, and what they stood for. And that certainly rubbed off on me as a kid. I mean, who wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of that kind of admiration and respect?
Not only was I listening to the games, but before long I found myself reading up on the players, memorizing stats. I could run through the whole starting lineup of the Yankees, player by player, dropping their batting averages and RBIs off the top of my head faster than you could find them on the back of their baseball cards. I loved learning about the history of the game, swapping information with friends at school, and then holding my own in conversations with my dad. Bonding with him over the Yankees and eventually trying my best to emulate those great players on the Little League field would make for some of my greatest childhood memories.
Of course, even a young Ruettiger had to learn about work. It seemed that as soon as I had mastered riding a bike, my parents set me up with a paper route. Every kid in the family (girls included) had a paper route; we just handed our route off to the next kid in line when the time came. Everyone got the local paper in those days—which meant I was responsible for delivering something like 160 papers to 160 homes. I wasn’t allowed to ride my bike out on the busy main road, so after I was done going back and forth carrying as many papers as I could on two wheels within my own neighborhood, I’d have to walk across the corn fields, even in subzero temperatures in the dead of winter, to get to the surrounding areas. I still remember my nose running, and trying to wipe it off with my cold wet mitten only to feel it freezing to my face. Man, it was the worst! But it had to get done. Over time, to make things a little easier, my dad built a custom bike with big baskets on the back end to hold the papers, and a big fat tire on the back to support all that weight. It certainly made it easier not having to go back and forth to reload all the time. Of course, the way my dad built things, the chain never quite fit, and the frame was a little bent, but it worked most of the time. And when it didn’t, he’d be right out there fixing it up and sending us back on our way.
Whatever money I made from that route went right back into our household. It wasn’t about making money for me. It was about making money for the family. And I was okay with that. Heck, I wasn’t blind. I saw that other kids’ families had nicer things than we could afford, and if I could contribute to making things better, I was all for it. Working toward a goal, making money to buy things, and striving for a better life made sense to me—unlike folding my underwear.
I didn’t really understand it at the time, but my parents were striving for a better life too. In fact, that’s exactly what they were aiming at when they’d pile us kids into the station wagon for Sunday afternoon drives. My parents would head off in one direction or another just looking at the landscape, checking out land, viewing lakes in the area, dreaming of maybe one day building a house in a peaceful spot where they could retire. And despite the fact that they never made very much money, they did their best to set aside some money every week to go toward that dream. My mother was especially good at saving our pennies. Seemed like she could turn a nickel into a dollar in no time, and she was constantly socking money away for a rainy day or, perhaps, a sunny day.
One of the places that money went was to pay for Catholic school for all of us Ruettiger children. Every last one of us would traipse through the halls of St. Mary Magdalene. I was the first boy, of course, and about the best memory I have from those early years at school is that I was selected to be the milkman. I would pick up the crate of milk by the front door every morning and deliver it to the rest of the kids in my class. Man, you were a big shot if you were the milkman! And I liked that responsibility.
I think people have all kinds of clichéd things to say about their Catholic school upbringings, so I’m not going to dwell on it here. Needless to say, there were plenty of highs and lows to be had at the hand (and rod) of those nuns. For me, the highs lasted all the way through the fourth grade. Classrooms seemed to be about fun and art and dreaming about what our jobs might be or where we might travel as we learned about the world. My fourth-grade teacher in particular was a wonderful, positive person who seemed to want nothing more than to inspire us kids to dream.
Yet something changed within those tan-brick walls when fifth grade came around. I wasn’t the strongest student, to begin with. I remember feeling li
ke I was always just a little bit slower, a little bit behind the rest of the kids. But when school was fun, it didn’t matter.
Fifth grade was not fun.
The changes in curriculum, the focus on memorization, the rigid approach to math facts and spelling and history got drilled into us over and over again. There was never any context, never any reason given for why we had to memorize all that stuff. We just had to do it. And the doing part just didn’t sit well with me.
There was one particular assignment that I’ll never forget. Our teacher (who shall remain nameless, for the sake of politeness) told us we had to memorize the names of our first five presidents, and that any one of us might get called on the next morning to recite those names in front of the class. I remember thinking, right there in the classroom, What the heck do I need to know the names of the first five presidents for? Perhaps if she had made it fun, perhaps if she had given the assignment some context, I might have paid more attention.
That night, I spent my time tuned to a Yankees game on the radio. I sat there envisioning the players on the field, knowing their stats and listening as every moment of it played out in my mind. Before long, it was bedtime. Lights out. Night, night.
Well, wouldn’t you know it: the first person that teacher called on the next morning was me. She made me stand in front of the whole class. “Mr. Ruettiger,” she said. “Who was our fifth president?” I stood there, silent. “Mr. Ruettiger, answer the question!” I had no answer. I hadn’t studied. How could I study when the Yankees game was on?
“Mr. Ruettiger, did you study?”
I bowed my head and shook it, “No.”
“Why not?”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“With that attitude, Mr. Ruettiger, you will never amount to anything.”
Now why would any teacher say something like that to a child? Maybe she thought it was tough love or something. It wasn’t. It was just tough. I felt every kid in that classroom staring at me, laughing at me on the inside, thinking I was worthless and useless. And that’s exactly how it made me feel.
It wasn’t the first time. This particular teacher had no tolerance for the way I struggled with words. No tolerance for the fact that I couldn’t finish a test on time. And she let me know it. Often. I was already feeling inadequate. I saw how good my peers could read, standing up in front of the class with a book in their hand, words flowing from the page to their mouths with ease. I couldn’t do that. I stopped, I hesitated, I struggled to get the words out, let alone to get them out in a way that sounded good or actually made sense. So to have my teacher make me feel worse instead of trying to help me or encourage me just made me shut down.
It’s not like my brain didn’t work. I could memorize those Yankee stats like nobody’s business. Teachers would always accuse me of not listening, just because I was doodling in my notebook and not staring at them while they lectured. I was listening. I tried to tell them. But they’d call me out anyway and punish me in front of the class. If this is what school is all about, I thought, who needs it? By the end of that year, I pretty much made up my mind that school sucks. And from what I could tell, the school system pretty much made up its mind that I wasn’t worth the trouble either. Forget this, I thought. I’ d rather focus on sports anyway.
The first time I showed up for Little League tryouts, I got hit in the head with the ball. Now, I don’t care if it’s an eight-year-old throw or a professional throw—that hurts! I tried to blame it on the “stupid” glove I was wearing, which didn’t really fit my hand and wasn’t quite broken in. Gloves in those days were puny and poorly shaped, anyway. In reality, I got hit because I wasn’t paying attention. I wasn’t focused on what I was supposed to be doing. One hundred percent of my attention should have been on that ball, and I just wasn’t a very focused kid. Nothing like a knock in the head to teach you the hard way.
Whether it was because of my dad’s interest in the game or just because it’s what kids tend to do at that age, baseball became an outlet for me pretty quickly. Learning to catch, to connect with the ball, to run those bases with all of my might as the cool spring air filled up with the promise of summer and the green grass glistened in the sun . . . man, there’s nothing better. The really magical thing about baseball was that my parents were always there to support me. I might not have said anything about it at the time, and maybe I didn’t even realize it, consciously, but the simple fact that they showed up meant the world to me. To this day, I don’t understand how they found the time. But they did. Unless it was utterly impossible for some reason, on some rare occasion, they were right there in those little bleachers at Highland Park, cheering me on. After practice, and especially after the games, my dad would always tell me, “Great job.” Even when I didn’t do so great. “Just keep playing hard” was his message, over and over—a message I took to heart.
Highland Park, by the way, is one of the more beautiful spots in otherwise industrial Joliet: a wooded park set back from the main road, filled with green grass and a bunch of baseball fields tailored to players of all ages—complete with a flat-roofed, concrete shack of a building that conveniently housed the local bar, where all of the coaches went drinking between games.
I wasn’t a natural ball player. I wasn’t the tallest kid, or the thinnest kid, or the fastest kid, or the hardest hitter. In fact, the only reason I was any good at catching the ball was because I didn’t want it to hit me in the head again!
For a while, though, baseball became the be-all, end-all for me. I played a little harder after that moment when I snagged that major league ball from the White Sox game. I focused more when I played. I did my best to play the best I could. I tried to recapture that feeling I had when I knew that ball was mine. I tried to apply that focus to every hit, every catch, every throw. We had great coaches who talked to us kids like we were all champions in the making. Following their lead, absorbing all of that encouragement, over the course of a couple of years I became the best hitter on the team. I tried to emulate major league players in the way I stood at the plate, the way I wore my hat, the way I dove for the ball without worrying about getting hurt or getting grass stains on my uniform. My mom was always there to wash it for me anyway, drying it on the line so it would be spotless but stiff as a board when I went to put it on the next time. Man, did I love that uniform. I always looked forward to getting a new one, and especially that new hat, every year. That was a big deal.
My hard work and focus paid off, too, when I made the All-Star team. It felt great to actually get rewarded for my efforts. In fact, my memories of playing baseball are almost entirely good ones . . . at least until I was twelve or thirteen. Something happened as we moved up from Little League to PONY League. It became more about the competition and less about the game. Playing on that level, dealing with coaches who yelled at everyone and put you down whenever you messed up, just made the whole thing lose some of its shine. I learned a lesson about the value and importance of building a great team when we were playing for PONY League championship. If we won, we’d go to the PONY League World Series. I was so pumped up at the possibility, the other team could have put a grown-up major league pitcher on the mound throwing knuckleballs and I still would have hit ’em out of the park!
Unfortunately, not everyone shared that passion. I was playing one of my best games ever, but it was down to the final inning and we were down by one with two outs. I found myself on third base, waiting for the chance to run home and tie it up. I knew we could win this thing! My teammate got up to the plate, and I knew all he had to do was hit that ball and I’d score. I thought he had the same passion I did. I thought he saw the glory that was so close you could taste it. I thought wrong. The kid’s body language was flat as he pulled the bat up and let it flop, lazily, on his shoulder. His posture said it all. He’d given up hope. He’d lost the fire. That one guy was about to blow it for the whole team. We all cheered him on, yelling, screaming for our chance at the World Series.
I
t didn’t work. When he struck out without even swinging, I cried like a baby.
Assuming everyone on the team shared the same level of passion was a mistake. And seeing my young baseball career end on a down note was certainly not what I had dreamed.
But that’s okay. It was glorious while it lasted. And the lessons I learned would serve me well as I headed into high school and turned my attention to another sport: football.
2
Friday Night Lights
Growing up in the Midwest, you start hearing about this place called Notre Dame before you can talk. It’s a Catholic thing. You weren’t even sure what college really meant, but the idea of it, the myth of it, the legend loomed large: if you were Catholic, you automatically had this dream of Notre Dame planted in your head. And if you went to Notre Dame, you were somebody.
The closest we ever got to that exalted place was listening to the voice of Lindsey Nelson as he broadcasted the Notre Dame replays on TV on Sunday mornings during football season. Watching those replays was like a second religion in my family, and for my dad, his passion for the Blue & Gold ran deeper than even his love of the Yankees. My dad always loved the underdog, and when you look at the kids who went to Notre Dame, they were ethnic kids like us—the Germans and Polish and Irish who were raised at a time when that simple ethnic distinction made them underdogs in America, no matter how gifted or talented they were. Those were the guys who played there. Black-and-white visions of that stadium filled my head as a kid, as did images of “Touchdown Jesus,” the infamous, giant, skyscraper-size mural of Our Lord Jesus Christ with his arms held up toward heaven in a near-perfect reflection of a ref’s touchdown signal, which went up in 1964. It was always visible in the distance over that stadium wall, above the tunnel through which those gods of the gridiron ran out onto the field for each game. They really did seem like gods too. They were bigger and faster than normal guys, and they showed more finesse and expertise with the ball than any normal human being had a right to.
Rudy Page 3