Steven Bo Keeley is an American adventurer, naturalist, holistic healer, veterinarian, professional athlete, commodity market consultant, garage publisher, and executive tour guide, who in 2000 left civilization for a desert burrow in southern California, then, in 2009, became a world-traveling expatriate.
Keeley grew up in Idaho and Michigan, and graduated in 1972 with a DVM from Michigan State University (MSU).[1] His father was an electrical and later nuclear engineer, and mother a Welcome Wagon activist as the family moved through fifteen cities in as many years to settle in Jackson, Michigan.[2] Steven Keeley won the Jackson Junior Chess Championship, and, at MSU, multiple intramural sports championships for Farmhouse fraternity to place them first in the all-fraternity competition for the first time in 100 years. After veterinary school he moved to California where a bureaucratic licensing issue caused him to seek a sports career in professional racquetball and paddleball, in which he gained national prominence.[3]
Athletic career
Keeley was one of the top three racquetball players in the world from 1971 to 1976 and in the top ten until 1979, while winning seven NPA National Paddleball Titles. Keeley won the National Paddleball Singles Championship in 1971, 1973, 1974, 1976 and 1977. He captured the National Paddleball Doubles Championship in 1974 with Len Baldori and in 1976 with Andy Homa. Keeley was the second player in history to win a Professional Racquetball Tournament after Steve Serot, when he defeated Charlie Brumfield 21-8, 21-17 in the finals of the NRC Long Beach Pro Am in October 1973. Keeley won the Canadian National Racquetball Singles Championship in November 1974 defeating Bud Muehleisen in the final. Keeley won his last Professional Racquetball Title in 1980 defeating Marty Hogan 21-5, 21-6 in the finals of the Voight Championship in Los Angeles. During his racquetball career, he defeated every US National Singles Champion from 1968–1982, and every professional champion of his era including ex-housemates Marty Hogan (Racquetball), Charlie Brumfield and Bud Muehleisen, as well as, Bill Schultz, Bill Schmidtke, Craig Finger, Davey Bledsoe and Mike Yellen.[4]
Bo Keeley in his professional racquetball and paddleball years.
He became one of the game's foremost instructors[5] and an author during the 1970s golden era with approximately 100 articles published in Ace,[6] IRA Racquetball,[7]National Racquetball and other trade magazines. In 2002, he refused induction into the USRA Hall of Fame.[8][9] where incumbent inductees credited him with instructing their games. He was the 2003 racquetball historian and psychologist for the Legends pro tour,[10] and the same year co-invented (with Scott Hirsch) Hybrid Racquetball using a racquetball with wood paddleball paddles.[11]
He wrote what many have called the Bible of the sport, Complete Book of Racquetball (1976, 200,000 sold),[12] and opened racquetball doors in every state, Central and South America[13] with hundreds of clinics and exhibitions, once beating Miss World runner-up with a Converse tennis shoe in a Sports Illustrated exhibition, and others with a seven-inch mini-racquet.[14] Keeley was a stroke and strategy trendsetter, and the first apparel-sponsored pro, flaunting multicolored Converse Chucks tennis shoes. He was featured in Sports Illustrated[15] and other publications as an unusual combination of athlete, intellectual, and 'flake.'[16]
Also a California B-division handball champion, Keeley is the only player to consistently beat handball legend Paul Haber in mano a racqueta exhibitions.[17] He started a silent scholarship fund of personal prize money plus contributions to bring rising East Coast stars to train at the racquetball mecca, Gorham's Sports Center[18] in San Diego, California. In 2007 he was awarded the prestigious NPA Earl Riskey Trophy for contributions to the sport.[19] Inducted into the NPA Hall of Fame in 2014[20]
Author and publisher
Disenchanted toward the end of his career with a faster ball and oversized racquets, Keeley, in 1978, moved to an unheated garage on Lake Lansing, Michigan, in a one year's self-experiment including not blinking for 24-hours, sitting in a homemade sensory deprivation crate, a one-week water fast, reading books upside-down and mirror writing,[21]sleep deprivation, bladder control, induced color blindness, riding a bike for 24-hours, and developing fluent ambidexterity.[22]
He created a small publishing company, Service Press Inc., in the garage foyer and self-published two books in one day, It's a Racquet![23] and The Kill and Rekill Gang. He has written eight books on sport, travel, and the maverick personality, including the 2011 Keeley's Kures[24] of alternative treatments for common ailments from boxcars, veterinary medicine, and world healers,[25] while carrying on an informal e-mail practice.
American nomad
In the 1980s, Keeley started traveling, leading to many exceptional experiences: He rode a boxcar from Jacksonville, Florida, to New York and borrowed a suit to dine with George Soros at the Four Seasons Restaurant. He railed on 360 freight trains as a "boxcar tourist" through the US, Canada and Mexico, and taught and wrote the textbook Hobo Training Manual[26] for the first college sociology hobo class Hobo Life in America in 1985 at Lansing Community College.[27] The graduating class traveled to Britt, Iowa, for the National Hobo Convention.
During the late 1980s, "just for fun", he drove a Chevy van around the US with an invisible fish-line attached to a waving seven-foot stuffed rabbit riding next to him.[28] Some additional exceptional experiences include:
In the mid-1990s, Keeley turned to commodities where his financial Low-Life Indicators[41] gathered around the world—such as cigarette butts being shorter in a down market—were seriously considered by Wall Street investors and the press.[42] He espoused his analytical methods at global banking seminars[43] and he rode boxcars to speak on hobo economics at the 1985 Aspen Eris Society[44] and the 1995 New York Junto.[45]
A 1997 13-country tour to identify investment opportunities in emerging markets for speculator Victor Niederhoffer earned millions in Turkey,[46] but in the Black Friday, October 27, 1997, mini-crash losses from buying Thai bank stocks that had fallen heavily in the Asian financial crisis combined with a 554-point single day decline of the Dow Index (the second largest decline to date in index history) forced the company to close its doors for a year, and The New Yorker took a swat at Keeley.[47]
World traveler
Bo Keeley's unconventional life situation has resulted in numerous adventures, several noted in online publications online or in print: For example, Daily Speculations,[48]International Man,[49]Liberty (1987), The Coffee Coaster[50] and Swans Magazine have documented many of his exploits such as:
Journeying through the Mid-East during the Gulf War
American folk artist Linda Mears features seven of his exploits in Adventure Art (1996).[54] One painting called 'African Safari' where Keeley suffering cerebral malaria was nearly mauled by a lion, is sold as a jigsaw puzzle.[55]
"My life follows the vicissitudes of Buck the Dog in Jack London's Call of the Wild," he once explained, "From comfortable back yards across America, boxcars on every major railroad, 100+ countries under a backpack, hiking the lengths of Florida, Colorado, Vermont, California, Death Valley, and Baja, Mexico, to finally semi-retire and write my memoirs in a dessert burrow in California."[58] (Long a devotee of grand storyteller Louis L'Amour, Keeley's hikes through the American West also led him to become an ardent fan of celebrated contemporary 'Western' writer Cathy Luchetti and her poignant, realistic portraits of pioneer life—such as Women of the West, Children of the West, Men of the West, and Home on the Range: A culinary history of the American West.)
The burrow lies one mile east of the Chocolate Mountain Aerial Gunnery Range where a 2008 near-miss caved the entry that he shored with old mine timbers.[59] Keeley was the resident advisor to neighbor Phil Garlington's book, Rancho Costa Nada: The Dirt Cheap Homestead.[60] In 2007, he became the first California substitute teacher to be fired for trying to prevent a playground 'skirmish.'[61] He left to ride the rails, and then became an itinerant expatriate writing from select exotic locations including Iquitos, Peru,[62]San Felipe, Baja California,[63] and Lake Toba, Sumatra.[64]
Books
Bo Keeley has written the following books:
Keeley, Steven, The Complete Book of Racquetball, DBI, 1976, ISBN0-695-80651-3
Racquetball is a racquet sport and a team sport played with a hollow rubber ball on an indoor or outdoor court. Joseph Sobek invented the modern sport of racquetball in 1950, adding a stringed racquet to paddleball in order to increase velocity and control. Unlike most racquet sports, such as tennis and badminton, there is no net to hit the ball over, and, unlike squash, no tin to hit the ball above. Also, the court's walls, floor, and ceiling are legal playing surfaces, with the exception of court-specific designated hinders being out-of-bounds. Racquetball is played between various players on a team who try to bounce the ball with the racquet onto the ground so it hits the wall, so that an opposing team’s player cannot bounce it back to the wall.
A hobo is a migrant worker in the United States. Hoboes, tramps, and bums are generally regarded as related, but distinct: a hobo travels and is willing to work; a tramp travels, but avoids work if possible; a bum neither travels nor works.
American handball, known as handball in the United States and sometimes referred to as wallball, is a sport in which players use their hands to hit a small, rubber ball against a wall such that their opponent(s) cannot do the same without the ball touching the ground twice or hitting out-of-bound. The three versions are four-wall, three-wall and one-wall. Each version can be played either by two players (singles), three players (cutthroat) or four players (doubles), but in official tournaments, singles and doubles are the only versions played.
Lecil Travis Martin, whose stage name was Boxcar Willie, was an American country music singer-songwriter, who sang in the "old-time hobo" music style, complete with overalls, and a floppy hat. "Boxcar Willie" was originally a character in a ballad he wrote, but he later adopted it as his own stage name. His early musical career was parallel to service as an enlisted flight engineer in the United States Air Force.
Ben Lewis Reitman M.D. (1879–1943) was an American anarchist and physician to the poor. He is best remembered today as one of radical Emma Goldman's lovers. Martin Scorsese's 1972 feature film Boxcar Bertha is based on one of Reitman's books.
Head Sport GmbH is an American-Austrian manufacturing company headquartered in Kennelbach. It owns the American tennis racket brand Head. Head GmbH is a group that includes several previously independent companies, including the original "Head Ski Company" ; Tyrolia, an Austrian ski-equipment manufacturer; and Mares, an Italian manufacturer of diving equipment.
Juan de Villafranca Lawyer graduated from Universidad Iberoamericana. Businessman, public server and diplomat, born in Mexico in 1954. He is Executive President of AMELAF. He has been Director General of Marking Services de Mexico, a subsidiary of Marking Services Inc. He was CEO of Pegaso Media. In 2000 he started a career in private sector as a consultant.
Scott Hirsch is an American internet entrepreneur. He got his start in online business when he marketed contact lenses and other products online in 1992. He entered the commercial email marketing business in 1998 when he founded eDirect. In 2004, Hirsch founded Relation Serve Media, an interactive advertising agency also specializing in email marketing.
Marty Hogan is a former American racquetball player who won more than 100 international or national titles and six U.S. national championships during his 14-year career. Hogan was ranked either number one or number two in the world from 1976 to 1990.
Cliff Swain is a professional racquetball player and coach from Boston, Massachusetts. Known for his dominant drive serve and on-court intensity, Swain finished as the #1 player on the International Racquetball Tour (IRT) six times -- in 1990, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1998, and 2002. He won US Open Championships in 1997 and 2001, and was inducted into the USA Racquetball Hall of Fame in 2003. A legendary figure in racquetball for over 3 decades, Swain still plays professionally and is quickly becoming a sought-after professional coach as well.
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Below are select minor league players of the San Diego Padres organization and the rosters of their minor league affiliates:
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Charles Edgar Brumfield is an American attorney and former professional racquetball player as well as a noted paddleball player. For much of his professional racquetball career, Brumfield was the marquis player for Leach Industries, the leading manufacturer of racquetball rackets at the time. Leach produced several Brumfield signature rackets including the "Graphite Brumfield". For a brief time, Brumfield had his own sports brand label, which marketed rackets and sports apparel.
Four wall paddleball, or paddleball, is a popular court sport in the Upper Midwest of the United States, on the West Coast of the U.S. and in the Memphis, Tennessee area. It is played with a paddle and small rubber ball on a standard handball or racquetball court, with similar rules to those sports.
Bud Muehleisen is a dentist in San Diego, California, and a racquetball and paddleball player. A left-handed player, "Dr. Bud" Muehleisen was the first person inducted into the Racquetball Hall of Fame, and is considered the best racquetball player and the best paddleball player of the 1960s era, and one of the best finesse players in the history of either game. The description of his career at the Racquetball Hall of Fame reads:
'Dr. Bud' Muehleisen has sometimes been called the most influential man in racquetball. He began playing paddleball in 1962, won four national titles, then took up paddle rackets in 1969, edging out Brumfield to win one of the first national championships in the sport that would become racquetball. Bud served on the IRA board of directors for seven years as the first Rules Committee chairman and was instrumental in the formation of the game's first rules. He won an unprecedented 41 national titles, was a coach and teacher, a regular contributor of instructional material to early magazines and worked with most of the major equipment manufacturers in developing racquets, balls and other products.
Dane Elkins is a professional racquetball player. He holds 23 major national junior racquetball championships. He is also the 2017 National Paddleball Association-(NPA) Junior's 18-and-under National Champion. Elkins holds a black belt in taekwondo.
James Stout, born 16 August 1984, is a world-ranked professional squash, rackets and real tennis player from Bermuda.
William ‘Bill’ L. Schultz was a late 20th century American circus performer, national paddleball champion, national racquetball champion, U.S. Marine, Big Time wrestler, the youngest executive director of the YMCA, and poet. He also sparred with John Wayne and other Hollywood celebrities.
↑ George, Chelsea, 'Tournament House', Racquetball Magazine, Vol. 14, No. 6, December 2003, p. 1 "Vance Lerner's Tournament House". Archived from the original on 2010-03-27. Retrieved 2011-06-05.
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