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One of my favorite places in Chicago used to be the old Edens Athletic Club over on Foster and Cicero. It was a big-time racquetball center in the 70s and 80s--the sport's halcyon days--and continued to draw a large contingent of competitive players until it closed last fall. A great mix of guys used to pound one another there, too--the whole spectrum of humanity was represented, from successful stockbrokers and criminal defense attorneys to cops and streets and san. guys to petty criminals and college hipsters.
What I love about racquetball is that the sport allows, even encourages, a diversity of playing styles. This means that almost anyone can play--and even succeed at a very high level--if he can perfect his style. I mean, you could be the buffest 25-year old in the city with drive serves in excess of 120 m.p.h., but you could easily find yourself getting schooled in the first round of even the most obscure of tournaments by some pot-bellied 40-something who can't run more than 10 feet without blowing out his achilles, but who doesn't need to move too much because he's got an unreturnable lob serve and a dink shot that dies in the backhand front court on every rally.
One guy who most certainly does not appreciate racquetball's more democratic features is former Bears punter (and current Bronco, I believe) Todd Sauerbrun. Sauerbrun is a high-level racquetball player, was a member at the Edens A.C., and used to compete regularly in local racquetball tournaments during his offseasons. And what a pud he is on the courts. Sure, he was a good player, but it's not like he was one of the sport's legends, a truly elite player, or even the best player at the club. But by the way he carried himself around the facility, you'd think he was six-time world champion Cliff Swain or something. No matter how many times you played him, if you saw him the next day at the club or even a half hour later in the locker room, he'd snub you, act like you didn't even exist. One of my friends played the guy over twenty times, but when he greeted him with a "How's it goin', Todd?" at a tournament, Sauerbrun simply gave him a blank stare and asked "Do I know you?" before walking away.
That jerkoff attitude is what made Sauerbrun's tournament defeats so enjoyable for so many players. As I say, Sauerbrun always brought a prima donna persona onto the court, but rarely did he deliver a game to match his drama. In my three or four years of watching him play, I never witnessed him win the open division at a tournament, but I was treated to several Chernobyl-sized meltdowns. My favorite of these was his run-in against a talented but erratic fourteen-year old player. The kid was an extremely gifted athlete, but didn't have much going on inside his head, was still a virtual string bean lacking any muscle mass or definition and sure didn't practice much. Most times, if a skilled player put enough pressure on him, he'd fold pretty easily and end up beating himself. But against Sauerbrun this kid looked like Gary freakin' Kasparov, a master tactician whose shots were as unpredictable as they were lethal. He had Sauerbrun looking the wrong way all the time, moving back when he should've been moving up, and lunging at shadows. The match was a thing of beauty.
The kid was picking Sauerbrun apart, exposing his every weakness, and Sauerbrun was painfully aware of this fact. At first, he struggled to get back into the game by talking to himself, slapping himself in the face, and so on. But his attempts to psyche himself up only seemed to agitate him even further when the occasion really called for a zen-like calmness. Maybe football players can't muster this kind of placidity in the face of fierce competition or maybe Sauerbrun was experiencing some 'roid rage. Whatever the case, the guy's hostility was seeping out of his every pore, egging him on to new levels of theatrical violence. Once he realized he couldn't intimidate the undersized high school freshman by staring him down or erupting into profane outbursts after closely contested points, he really went bonkers. First he went to work on his protective glasses, repeatedly hurtling them against the concrete walls, until they shattered, an incident which delayed the game. Next he went to work on his $250+ racquets, treating them like sledge hammers on the walls and hardwood floor until he cracked them, too. He must've broken three or four this way and was using a pretty crappy backup racquet during the final points.
By the end of the match, a seemingly empty-headed slivery teenager had reduced Todd to a sweating mass of profane anger, a guy who seemed to hate everything and everyone around him, including himself. As he rushed off the court--after foregoing the customary end-of-match handshake--all he could do was look up at the spectator's section and tell the onlookers to "fu*k off". To me, this match, and particularly his behavior at its end, captures the essence of Sauerbrun's personality. What a jerk. But the match sure was fun to watch.
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