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I’m embarrassed to admit this, but one night in 1980 I was feeling sorry for myself.
Riding shotgun in Rudy’s baby blue Volkswagon Bug, I was complaining about how I wasn’t playing well for my high school’s basketball team in a seriously competitive league.
Rudy, who was driving us to our game that night, had heard enough: “You’ve got more talent than anyone on this team,” he said.
His underlying message: So stop whining and start playing up your ability.
My best friend since second grade, who was on the team but not getting much playing time so seeing his hoop dreams fading, had said something to me that he never admitted to me before because we were proud and intense competitors.
He told me I was the most talented player on the team and to shut up and start playing up to my talent level.
At a low and rather depressing time in my life, Rudy told me what I needed to hear and lifted me out of my self-pitying funk.
From that moment on I played better – much better. Went on a tear offensively scoring 24 points against DeMatha and 20 against Carroll and on and on.
I will remember that moment my whole life when my friend, who wasn’t enjoying sitting on the bench, still did what he could to jump-start me, his best friend since we were eight years old.
We had been through everything together: a 29-4 8th grade basketball season, teammates on baseball and football championship squads, puberty, competing to hold hands with the prettiest girls at the roller skating outings, watching “Happy Days” on Friday nights in his den on sleepover night, listening to “Mother Freedom” by Bread in his basement with his brother Split Fingers there to intimidate us.
Throughout all things childhood, Rudy and I hung out being knuckleheads, doing flips off the high dive, playing one on one hoops, trying to psyche each other out, competing to be the best, envisioning long-lasting and high-flying basketball careers.
A few years ago, decades after all that, Rudy drove to Vermont from Baltimore to attend my daughter’s wedding.
“How was the drive?” I asked.
“It sucked,” said Rudy.
Rudy made that wedding day extra exquisite. He grew up seeing my three brothers and sisters constantly, and at the wedding he saw them all again after eons, it seemed, going down different life journeys. They knew him; he knew them.
They all caught up. He was a reminder to my entire family of the neighborhood we grew up in, what it was like when Rudy and I were little kids and best friends. Rudy’s appearance took us all back to childhood memories when things were simpler and thoughts of retirement and thereafter were so distant we couldn’t see them if we tried.
Throughout adulthood I haven’t seen Rudy a whole lot but consistently. We’ve both had our share of struggles and tragedies and disheartening results and confusing situations that make you sometimes wonder why life isn’t more smooth and pleasant more often than it is.
One night a few years ago I drove to his house unannounced and rang his doorbell. Figured it would be too cumbersome to try to set something up – Rudy can be tough to pin down – plus I’m his best friend so get special dispensation from social etiquette. At least that was my thinking and didn’t care whether Rudy agreed.
Of course he let me in. We sat around his kitchen table and caught up with his son and wife, then later went to his living room and learned what each other had been up to. It wasn’t all good nor all bad. We had been experiencing adult life with all its complexities, the endless cavalcade of ups and downs.
Best friends, we talked about having fought through adulthood, having enjoyed parenting and work and also learned how arduous it can often be, how sometimes things really are hard. Money gets tight at times.
But still going both of us were then and still are now. As I stood by my car about to leave, we hugged.
“I love you,” he said. “Now don’t come back here ever again.”
Today Rudy turns 62. Life blazes by. My first vision of him was as a second grader packing up his book bag getting ready for football practice. A pudgy kid with thighs the width of Texas, more blonde than almost anyone, a fighter from then on.
Never then did I realize that that kid would be my best friend for my entire life. You can’t know so many things about this existence.
What I do know is I feel fortunate to have him in my life. There’s something comfortable and meaningful about a person who knows everything about you from when you were in third grade that makes the relationship more raw yet more deep and poignant.
We both know hundreds or thousands of other people and many are good friends even great friends.
But I have only one best friend and that will be true forever.
Happy Birthday, Rudy, my guy always.
You are today, and will be throughout eternity, my best friend.
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Sammy Sportface, a sports blogger, galvanizes, inspires, and amuses The Baby Boomer Brotherhood. And you can learn about his vision and join this group's Facebook page here:
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