Blacktop Gladiators

Jeff Gustafson can do things you can’t. The star left fielder of the Courage Rolling Twins—one of two wheelchair softball teams in the Twin Cities—can field a sharply hit ball on one hop without a glove (gloves aren’t used in wheelchair softball other than by the pitcher and the first baseman) and in one motion take the bigger-than-normal, sixteen-inch ball and gun a 130-foot rope to nail the base runner at first. Yes, he throws people out at first from left field. And he makes this peculiar 7–3 putout with an unnerving regularity. And he does it sitting down.

The weird thing is, Gustafson probably draws more attention when he does the things that you can do. As a result of a rare hereditary condition that has impaired his legs (his mother, sister, daughter, and a niece cope with the same disease, though it has spared his son), Gustafson, at thirty-six, has been playing wheelchair athletics, both softball and basketball, for eleven years. But when he’s not on the field or the court, he doesn’t spend much time in a chair, unless he would have to be on his feet for a long period of time. Though it’s painful, he can walk. “The farthest I like to go is to and from the parking lot to my car,” he says. Not long ago, when he was visiting the zoo with his sister, a guy held the door for them while they tried to negotiate their wheelchairs through the turnstiles. It was an awkward maneuver, so Gustafson popped up out of his chair to avoid the hassle. “The guy holding the door looked at me like I was trying to get away with something,” he says.

In or out of a chair, Gustafson is an imposing man, with massive forearms and a perpetual three-day beard. The type of blue-collar, tough-looking dude who wears a ball cap whether playing softball or not, he doesn’t seem to be someone who needs a door held for him, literally or figuratively. He’s twice earned MVP honors, once in 1998 and again in 2002, at the National Wheelchair Softball Association’s national tournament—as a member of a team that finished seventh.

The Twins aren’t even the superior team in the Twin Cities. That would be the St. Paul Saints. And the Saints are not only the better of the two local teams, they’re the reigning national champions—and, coincidentally, the hosts of this summer’s national tournament. The 2006 title was their second as the Saints (the first was in 2000); prior to that, the St. Paul Rolling Thunder, winners of seven of the last fourteen national tournaments, folded what was left of their aging roster into the Saints’ organization. The only member of that Thunder team to still play with the Saints is their graybeard pitcher, Jerry Anderson, but the Saints have absorbed the Thunder’s legacy. They have a collective swagger befitting a team with a well-stocked trophy case. The easiest sports cliché would be to label them the Yankees of wheelchair softball, but while the Saints have the trophies and a Hall of Fame infield, there’s a rough, thuggish aura about them. The coaches and many of the players are full of tattoos. There’s a lively, profane banter constantly emanating from their sideline. One of the Twins told me that once a summer there’s a brawl. And he didn’t mean a bench-clearing dustup with the opposing team—he meant among the Saints themselves. Plus, every year they’re accused of bringing a couple of ringers to the nationals. Gustafson calls the Saints “one of the most disliked teams in the tournament.”

While the Saints have a Yankee-esque hold on the record book, a more fitting analog might be the Harlem Globetrotters. Because if the Saints are the Trotters, the Twins are the Saints’ own Washington Generals. For years the Saints have scrimmaged the Twins every summer Thursday evening, alternating between the Aldrich Arena parking lot in Maplewood and the Twins’ home field—a parking lot adjacent to the community center in Brooklyn Park—and for years the Saints would win 18–1 or 25–3. “We would be down 15–0,” Gustafson says, “and they would intentionally walk me.” After humiliating him, they would try to recruit him in the parking lot following the game.

Gustafson never defected, but he watched several of his teammates cross the river. Manuel Guerra Jr.  is now the Saints’ hulking first baseman. Scott Berg is now the Saints’ speedy outfielder. Both used to play for the Twins, and both have now won championships and accolades with the Saints. Gustafson has stubbornly played the role of Tony Gwynn—the lone winner on a team of losers. A doubles hitter on a team that couldn’t get runners on base. A brilliant fielder on an undisciplined team that would cough up a crooked number at least once a game. More recently, with a pair of bum wrists (as a physical basketball player who roams the paint, he lands on his hands constantly), Gustafson was beginning to take consolation in his two MVPs and the fact that he never gave in to those cocky bastards on the opposite bench.

But, in 2005, Gustafson was pleasantly surprised. A couple of the Twins’ vets moved on, and a few new talented players meant there were runners on base when he hit those doubles. Two new coaches—good cop Bill Schaetzel and bad cop Bill Richardson—seemed to instill in the team the objective self-awareness they needed and tightened up their defensive discipline. The Twins now had situational hitters who could keep a big inning going and, while in the field, didn’t give up the big inning so easily. The Thursday night scrimmages became more competitive, and, perhaps more importantly, the guys didn’t go their separate ways after the game. Instead, they shared their cooler of beer and talked softball for a couple of hours. At the national tournament that year, they finished fifth—their best finish ever.

The Saints still treated the scrimmages like scrimmages. They seemed to smirk at what they considered their only marginally improved whipping boys; Thursdays were only a warm-up for the tournament. But then, last summer, in the semifinal round of the nationals in Chicago, the Twins were tied 8–8 with the Saints in extra innings. In the bottom of the eighth (regulation games go seven), the Saints came up to bat, and Gustafson took his spot in left. The Twins hadn’t scored during the top of the inning, but their defense had improved to the point where Gustafson was feeling good about their prospects. “Either of us could win,” he thought.

Berg, the Saints’ center fielder, smoked one in the gap for a double. With big righty third basemen George Kiefner at the plate, Gustafson inched his cambered wheels forward, ready for a line drive that he could return to the infield in a hurry. But Kiefner rapped a line drive into right. The ball landed at the feet of Kurt Greniger. The Twins’ other veteran, Greniger was in right center for the semifinal, and he came up throwing to first. That was a mistake. Berg was going home on contact, and as the ball sailed toward first, he was already rounding third. Gustafson sat helpless and watched the Saints score the winning run. “They got lucky,” he would say later. “Could’ve gone either way.”