Rudy Read online

  Praise for Rudy

  “This book—Rudy’s story—is for anyone who has ever been an underdog.”

  SEAN ASTIN

  ACTOR

  “Every business leader and entrepreneur in America can learn from Rudy’s lessons of persistence and perseverance.”

  DAN HESSE

  CEO, SPRINT

  “The power of Rudy isn’t just his words or his story. The power of Rudy is his message—a message of selflessness, perseverance, and hope that we all need to hear and remember.”

  DAVID MONAHAN

  PRINCIPLE, COLONY CAPITAL LLC

  “I was commissioned to work on Rudy in 1993—a date I will never forget because the real Rudy Ruettiger interacted in the making of the movie and shared his passion of never giving up, inspiring all of us. Recently, Rudy reentered my life and came to speak in my class of filmmakers and composers. The energy of his light fulfilling dreams created a memory we will remember forever.”

  KENNETH HALL

  ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, USC SCHOOL OF CINEMATIC ARTS

  “If life is all about the journey, then Rudy’s story is a journey of hope. I’m thrilled to see him share his full story with the world in this exciting new book.”

  JOHN E. ADAMS

  CEO, CENEGENICS

  “In real life, just like the movie, Rudy proves he can take the hits, and keep on coming back.”

  ANGELO PIZZO

  WRITER AND PRODUCER

  “As a young kid I had a front row seat for one of the all-time great underdog triumphs. Rudy took me everywhere . . . the locker room, the practice field, the broom closet that served as his dorm room . . . constantly telling me how he would run out of that tunnel one day. When no one else believed, and I mean no one, Rudy did. I was there when he was carried off the field on his teammates’ shoulders. Years later, I’m still inspired.”

  TERRY GANNON

  NETWORK SPORTSCASTER MEMBER OF JIM VALVANO’S 1983 NC STATE NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP TEAM

  “The Rudy message never dies. In the lessons of his life, he reminds each of us how possible it is to rise up against all odds.”

  BRIAN KILMEADE

  FOX NEWS, NEW YORK

  “Rudy’s book bursts with timeless truths and principles that, when followed, can help you succeed in anything you do in life. I highly recommend this compelling read to all who are in pursuit of a fulfilling life professionally and personally.”

  SEAN WOLFINGTON

  CHAIRMAN AND CEO OF THE WOLFINGTON COMPANIES

  “Never give up on your dreams. That’s the message that Rudy shares from his blue collar background to the Notre Dame field and beyond.”

  DAVE TREMBLEY

  MANAGER, BALTIMORE ORIOLES (2007–2010)

  “Rudy is about winning, in the biggest sense of the word. Not just winning on the field, or winning at the box office, or winning in business—but winning in life.”

  ROB FRIED

  PRODUCER

  “Just as Rudy was a film about so much more than football, this book is about so much more than the life story of Rudy Ruettiger. It’s a book about hope. It’s a book about inspiration. It’s a book that readers can turn back to again and again in the face of life’s challenges to remind themselves how to work even harder to turn their own dreams into reality.”

  STEVE LARSON

  CEO, EID PASSPORT

  “This isn’t the story of one man, one dream, one college, or one football team. It’s a story for everyone who’s ever had a dream. It’s a story of hope. It’s a story of perseverance. Rudy is for anyone who ever wanted to know what it’s really like to make dreams come true.”

  REAR ADMIRAL KEVIN DELANEY

  UNITED STATES NAVY (RETIRED)

  “Rudy: My Story is a combination of honesty and heartfelt truths of ‘never giving up’. It is a touching rendition of total inspiration.”

  JON JANNOTTA

  CEO, WWW.U-INSPIRE.COM

  Rudy

  MY STORY

  Rudy

  MY STORY

  by DANIEL “RUDY” RUETTIGER

  WITH MARK DAGOSTINO

  © 2012 by Rudy Ruettiger

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

  Thomas Nelson, Inc. titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fundraising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail SpecialMarkets@ ThomasNelson.com.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Ruettiger, Rudy.

  Rudy : my story / Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger with Mark Dagostino.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-8499-4839-8 (hardcover)

  1. Ruettiger, Rudy. 2. College football players--United States--Biography. 3. Dyslexics--

  United States--Biography. 4. University of Notre Dame--Football. 5. Notre Dame Fighting

  Irish (Football team) I. Dagostino, Mark. II. Title.

  GV939.R845A3 2012

  796.332092--dc23

  [B]

  2012016188

  Printed in the United States of America

  12 13 14 15 16 QG 5 4 3 2 1

  This book is dedicated to my family.

  Contents

  Introduction

  Part I: Growing Up

  1. On the Ball

  2. Friday Night Lights

  3. Sea Change

  4. Reading the Signs

  Part II: Blue & Gold

  5. Holy Cross

  6. Kneeling at the Grotto

  7. In the Ring

  8. Walking On

  9. Living the Dream

  10. Still Fighting

  11. Never Quit

  12. Twenty-Seven Seconds

  Part III: Up Against the Red Velvet Ropes

  13. Rocky Too

  14. Chalk Talk and Hollywood Dreams

  15. One Hurdle at a Time

  16. Making Rudy

  Part IV: Dream Bigger

  17. Red Carpets and White Gloves

  18. Sharing the Message

  19. Receiving the Message

  20. Life Lessons

  21. Hope

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  Photos

  Introduction

  “In life, it’s not about how hard you get hit. It’s about how many times you get back up and how hard you’re willing to keep fighting for your dreams.”

  It is amazing how a movie can touch your life. I remember watching the powerful film Rocky just after I graduated from the University of Notre Dame, followed by Rocky II a couple of years after that. I remember that overwhelming feeling of just wanting to go run up some stairs somewhere and throw my hands in the air as I left the theater. That feeling that I could do anything. That I could conquer the world.

  The funny thing was, I had conquered the world—or at least a small part of it. I had already had a Rocky moment in my real life. I had already accomplished more than anyone else ever dreamed I could. Like Rocky Balboa, I had proved all the naysayers wrong. I won. In my own way, on my own path, I won. Me! A stocky, messed-up kid from Joliet, Illinois, whom some people doubted would graduate high school, had gone on to play for the University of Notre Dame football team and to earn myself a top-notch college education.

  And I was just getting started.

  Watching Rocky, and later the outstanding film Hoosiers, made me think about my own story of perseverance. Anyone I told my story to was bowled over. “Your life is
like a movie!” they’d tell me. I was an insurance agent at the time. I didn’t know a thing about Hollywood. But after enough people said it, I started to believe it—and I called on my inner Rocky to see if I could go do something about it.

  A few long years and countless struggles later, my life’s story became a movie all its own: the 1993 film Rudy.

  All of a sudden I was invited to give pep talks in locker rooms all over America. Corporate giants brought me into their boardrooms to fire up their sales teams. I was invited to the White House for a private screening. To this day, clips from Rudy play during the seventh-inning stretch at Yankee Stadium and at countless sporting events around the world. The film tops lists of the most inspirational movies of all time, and if you turn on your TV, chances are you can find it airing on one cable station or another nearly every week throughout the year.

  Rudy became something much bigger than me. Much bigger than I ever dreamed.

  Today, nearly twenty years after the film was made, wherever I go, people talk to me about how they call on their “inner Rudy” to find the strength to follow their dreams. People line up at events and appearances to tell me about their own real-life Rudy moments—the way I used to refer to Rocky moments in my life, or my own “inner Rocky.” It’s astounding. My name, my story, has become synonymous with inspiration. And over the years, I’ve asked myself, “Why?”

  I wasn’t some super-talented kid who rose up from nothing and beat the odds to make it to the Super Bowl. I wasn’t some guy with a ninety-mile-per-hour fastball who broke into major league baseball in his forties. I was a lower middle-class kid who suffered through school with undiagnosed dyslexia, who was hard-headed enough to find a side door into the University of Notre Dame to earn my degree and to dress and play for the last twenty-seven seconds of a football game my senior year. Twenty-seven seconds! That’s it! And that was the point. A point that became utterly clear to me as the years went by: what Rudy represents isn’t some far-fetched Hollywood story. This isn’t some impossible, once-in-a-lifetime fantasy that most people can never attain. It’s not the story of Michael Jordan or Peyton Manning—individuals with extreme talent they could build upon. The wisdom of age has taught me that the power of my story, the power of the inspiration that so many people feel when they watch the film Rudy comes from the fact that at heart, I’m just an “Average Joe.” Anyone could accomplish the sort of dream I tackled. The short kid. The fat kid. The smart kid. The struggling kid. The frustrated worker. The bored-to-death businessman. The housewife. The husband. Anyone. The moral of the Rudy story is that anyone with a dream can make that dream a reality—as long as they’re willing to put in the hard work and heart it takes to get there.

  Some people have the misperception that I was somehow born with more heart, more drive, and more passion to accomplish my dreams than the next guy. What I’m here to tell you is it’s just not true. I found my heart, my drive, and my passion one step at a time, simply by growing up, making mistakes, learning from those mistakes, and pressing forward. Heck, I’m still making mistakes! In the past few years I made some business decisions that got me in a heap of trouble, but I overcame it and I learned from it and I’ll open up about what happened right here in these pages for the very first time, in the hopes that you’ll learn from it too. After all, I’m only human. Aren’t we all? And we all make mistakes. The difference between those who reach their dreams and those who don’t may just be a willingness to look at those mistakes and at all of life’s obstacles from a new perspective.

  If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that life is a journey. A long journey. And the lessons never stop coming. Big accomplishments, big successes, even big bank accounts don’t stop that process. Not at all. To learn that life doesn’t get easier just because you’ve reached a certain goal, accomplished a certain dream, or even had a movie made about your life story may be the toughest lesson of all. Life goes on, and so do life’s challenges. You simply have to find a way to persevere and push through with all of the determination you can muster.

  I don’t have all the answers. I don’t pretend to have all the answers. If you’re looking for a self-help book filled with a lot of hot air, there are plenty of those books on the shelves. Go buy one. Instead, what I offer is the story of my life. A story that’s far bigger and more complicated than any two-hour film could cover. (In fact, Rudy fans may be surprised to learn just how many of the stories from my life, even the people in my life, were compressed to their essence in order to serve the message and meaning of my journey on film. That’s part of the Hollywood magic I’ll share in these pages as well.)

  What I offer instead is a story focused on a series of triumphs over seemingly insurmountable odds. A story that I hope will inspire you to take the hits and keep moving forward, to triumph over your own obstacles, and to dream bigger. ’Cause once that happens, once you find yourself dreaming bigger than ever before and leading the life you truly want to live, that’s when you’ll know that you’ve really dug deep and brought out the “Rudy” in you.

  Part I

  Growing Up

  1

  On the Ball

  I was ten years old when I got my first glimpse.

  I remember the hot vinyl seat searing the back of my legs as I sat toward the back of a school bus full of other young ball players, returning from a Little League field trip to a White Sox game up in Chicago.

  The whole day had been amazing. Seeing those players take the field; actually witnessing my first live game; and stepping foot into a major league stadium and feeling the roar of that crowd was electrifying. Of course, every one of us kids from every one of those Joliet teams wore a glove to the game—just hoping and dreaming that we might be lucky enough to snag a foul ball as we sat in the stands. The thought of actually catching, touching, holding on to a major league baseball was about as big a thrill as my ten-year-old mind could imagine.

  Then it happened. The wind-up. The pitch. The clock of the ball as it cracked off a Louisville Slugger, high and shallow down the left-field line, arcing foul and coming right for us! Every kid stood with his glove in the air. I remember squinting into the sun, doing everything I could to wish that ball directly into my hand. It came close! But I just couldn’t reach it. One of the other team’s coaches snagged that ball out of the sky as if it were tossed directly to him.

  So there we were, rolling back toward Joliet, when that coach stood up and told everyone to quiet down. He stood at the front of the bus with that major league baseball in hand, tossing it and re-catching it a couple of times before holding it high above his head so every one of us could see it. “When we get back,” he said, “we’re all gonna line up and I’m gonna throw this ball. And whoever gets it can have it.”

  I nearly fell over. I wanted that ball more than anything I’d wanted in my entire life. The whole ride home, all I did was keep thinking about that ball. A major league baseball! Mine for the taking! I couldn’t believe my luck.

  My knees bounced up and down with anticipation as we pulled into Highland Park. As soon as that bus driver opened the door, we all burst out and ran onto the field. There must have been thirty of us boys all lined up at our home plate, staring out across the baseball diamond to the chest-high wooden fence at the back of the outfield, chomping at the bit to get this ball. Even so, I kept thinking, That ball’s mine. It was mine. I knew it.

  That coach got up in front of us on the pitcher’s mound while the other coaches and a few of the parents who had come to pick us up corralled us into a straight line so it would be fair to everyone. “Ready?” he said.

  “Yeah!” the kids all shouted.

  “Are you ready?” he asked again.

  “Yeah!” they all screamed louder. But not me. I was silent. I was focused on that ball, watching the red seam stitching go round and round as he turned it in his hand.

  Satisfied by the enthusiasm of that final shout, the coach turned around; pulled his right arm back; lifted his l
eft leg; took a big, exaggerated, hard step forward; and launched that ball in a massive arc all the way to the back of the outfield. I never took my eyes off it, even for a split second, even as my feet began to move beneath me. I wasn’t conscious of just how fast I was running. I paid no attention to whether I was out in front or far behind those dozens of other competitors. All that mattered to me was that ball, and that ball was all I saw—even as it hit the ground in the neatly trimmed grass, took one hard bounce, and flew right over that fence to land in the overgrown mess of weeds on the other side. I watched that ball the whole way as I blew through the outfield and leaped over that fence like it wasn’t even there. I was so focused, I didn’t even stop to think about how to get over it—I just did it, as if I had leaped over a thousand fences before and knew exactly what to do. I knew just where that ball had landed. I knew which blades of tall grass and milkweed it landed behind, and I dove right through them, crashing to the ground and feeling that hard, round presence crush into my chest. I pulled my arms in, clutched that ball to me as I rolled over, sprung up from the ground, raised it high above my head and screamed, “I got it!”

  Suddenly aware of the world around me, I noticed kids to my right and my left looking in the weeds in all the wrong places; a whole bunch of other players were still on the field or struggling to get over the fence. I left them in the dust. The fact that they were bigger than me, faster than me, and stronger than me didn’t matter. I was kind of stunned by it. I remember having flashes of “What just happened?” and “How did I do that?” But what I really remember is the feel of that baseball in my hand. I was bolstered by the knowledge of where that ball came from and the undisputable fact that it now belonged to me. Squeezing the leathery weight of it just felt good.

  That night, I placed that major league ball on the nightstand beside my bed, where I could see it from my pillow. The last object I would see before I fell off to sleep. I kept it there for years, unknowingly holding on to that feeling. Holding on to that tiny moment when I gave it my all and got exactly what I wanted. A feeling I would someday need to recapture: proof, in the form of a little round ball, that anything—anything—is possible.