 | The topic of this articlemay not meet Wikipedia'sgeneral notability guideline. Please help to demonstrate the notability of the topic by citingreliable secondary sources that areindependent of the topic and provide significant coverage of it beyond a mere trivial mention. If notability cannot be shown, the article is likely to bemerged,redirected, ordeleted. Find sources: "Steven 'Bo' Keeley" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(December 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Steven Bo Keeleyis an Americanadventurer,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-travelingexpatriate.
Keeley grew up in Idaho and Michigan, and graduated in 1972 with aDVM fromMichigan State University (MSU).[1] His father was an electrical and laternuclear engineer, and mother aWelcome Wagon activist as the family moved through fifteen cities in as many years to settle inJackson, Michigan.[2] Steven Keeley won the Jackson JuniorChess Championship, and, at MSU, multipleintramural sports championships forFarmhouse fraternity to place them first in the all-fraternity competition for the first time in 100 years. Afterveterinary school he moved to California where a bureaucraticlicensing issue caused him to seek a sports career in professionalracquetball andpaddleball, in which he gained national prominence.[3]
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 NationalPaddleball Titles. Keeley won the NationalPaddleball 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 ProfessionalRacquetball Tournament after Steve Serot, when he defeatedCharlie Brumfield 21-8, 21-17 in the finals of the NRC Long Beach Pro Am in October 1973.[4]
Keeley won the Canadian NationalRacquetball Singles Championship in November 1974 defeatingBud Muehleisen in the final. Keeley won his last ProfessionalRacquetball Title in 1980 defeatingMarty 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-housematesMarty Hogan (Racquetball),Charlie Brumfield andBud Muehleisen, as well as, Bill Schultz, Bill Schmidtke, Craig Finger, Davey Bledsoe and Mike Yellen.[5]
He became one of the game's foremost instructors[6] and an author during the 1970s golden era with approximately 100 articles published inAce,[7] IRA Racquetball,[8]National Racquetball and other trade magazines. In 2002, he refused induction into the USRA Hall of Fame.[9][10] where incumbent inductees credited him with instructing their games. He was the 2003 racquetballhistorian andpsychologist for the Legends pro tour,[11] and the same year co-invented (withScott Hirsch) Hybrid Racquetball using a racquetball with wood paddleball paddles.[12]
He wrote what many have called the Bible of the sport,Complete Book of Racquetball (1976, 200,000 sold),[13] and opened racquetball doors in every state, Central and South America[14] with hundreds of clinics and exhibitions, once beatingMiss World runner-up with aConverse tennis shoe in aSports Illustrated exhibition, and others with a seven-inch mini-racquet.[15] Keeley was a stroke and strategytrendsetter, and the first apparel-sponsored pro, flaunting multicoloredConverse Chucks tennis shoes. He was featured inSports Illustrated[16] and other publications as an unusual combination of athlete, intellectual, and 'flake.'[17]
Also a California B-divisionhandball champion, Keeley is the only player to consistently beat handball legendPaul Haber in mano a racqueta exhibitions.[18] He started a silentscholarship fund of personal prize money plus contributions to bring rising East Coast stars to train at the racquetball mecca, Gorham's Sports Center[19] in San Diego, California. In 2007 he was awarded the prestigious NPA Earl Riskey Trophy for contributions to the sport.[20] Inducted into the NPA Hall of Fame in 2014[21]
Disenchanted toward the end of his career with a faster ball and oversized racquets, Keeley, in 1978, moved to an unheated garage onLake Lansing, Michigan, in a one year's self-experiment including notblinking for 24-hours, sitting in a homemadesensory deprivation crate, a one-weekwater fast, reading books upside-down andmirror writing,[22]sleep deprivation, bladder control, inducedcolor blindness, riding a bike for 24-hours, and developing fluentambidexterity.[23]
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![24] andThe Kill and Rekill Gang.He has written eight books on sport, travel, and the maverick personality, including the 2011Keeley's Kures[25] of alternative treatments for common ailments from boxcars,veterinary medicine, and worldhealers,[26] while carrying on an informal e-mail practice.
In the 1980s, Keeley started traveling, leading to many exceptional experiences: He rode aboxcar from Jacksonville, Florida, to New York and borrowed a suit to dine withGeorge Soros at theFour Seasons Restaurant. He railed on 360freight trains as a "boxcar tourist" through the US, Canada and Mexico, and taught and wrote the textbookHobo Training Manual[27] for the first collegesociology hobo classHobo Life in America in 1985 atLansing Community College.[28] The graduating class traveled toBritt, Iowa, for theNational 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.[29] Some additional exceptional experiences include:
In 1988 he guided aSan Francisco Chronicle journalist toMount Shasta for a story that won "Bay Area Best Sunday Feature".[34] Later, a 2001 epic along theFirst transcontinental railroad with four executives ended on9/11/2001.[35] In 2005 he crossed Canada by rail[36] withSouth African accountant Tom "Diesel" Dyson,[37] and later that year the pair, disguised as Mexicans, rode atop freights with Central American immigrants[38] through Mexico to the border, where theUS Border Patrol apprehended them swimming theRio Grande with expired Mexicanvisas.[39]
In the 1980s he was regularly in theNational Hobo Association Los Angeles clubhouse and contributed to theirHobo Times newsletter.[40] In 2010,Fort Worth Weekly Peter Gorman's "Renaissance on the Rails" profile won 1st place for theAssociation of Alternative Newsweeklies best feature of the year.[41]
In the mid-1990s, Keeley turned tocommodities where his financial Low-Life Indicators[42] gathered around the world—such as cigarette butts being shorter in a down market—were seriously considered byWall Street investors and the press.[43] He espoused his analytical methods at global banking seminars[44] and he rode boxcars to speak on hoboeconomics at the 1985 Aspen Eris Society[45] and the 1995 New York Junto.[46]
A 1997 13-country tour to identify investment opportunities inemerging markets forspeculator Victor Niederhoffer earned millions in Turkey,[47] but in the Black Friday,October 27, 1997, mini-crash losses from buying Thai bank stocks that had fallen heavily in theAsian 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, andThe New Yorker took a swat at Keeley.[48]
Bo Keeley's unconventional life situation has resulted in numerous adventures, several noted in online publications online or in print: For example,Daily Speculations,[49]International Man,[50]Liberty (1987), The Coffee Coaster[51] andSwans Magazine have documented many of his exploits such as:
Americanfolk artist Linda Mears features seven of his exploits inAdventure Art (1996).[55] One painting called 'African Safari' where Keeley sufferingcerebral malaria was nearly mauled by a lion, is sold as ajigsaw puzzle.[56]
Keeley earned apsychology technical degree in 1985 from Lansing Community College, followed by one year ofvolunteer work in sixpsychiatric wards and senior living facilities to study the developingmind. Keeley has been called 'one of the greatestindividualists in America.'[57] In 2007, he founded Executive Tour Services[58] as a businessmen'sOutward Bound on the American rails and hikes toSpanish missions inBaja California.
"My life follows the vicissitudes of Buck the Dog in Jack London'sCall of the Wild," he once explained, "From comfortable back yards across America, boxcars on every majorrailroad, 100+ countries under abackpack, hiking the lengths of Florida, Colorado, Vermont, California,Death Valley, andBaja, Mexico, to finally semi-retire and write my memoirs in a dessert burrow in California."[59] (Long a devotee of grand storytellerLouis L'Amour, Keeley's hikes through the American West also led him to become an ardent fan of celebrated contemporary 'Western' writerCathy Luchetti and her poignant, realistic portraits of pioneer life—such asWomen of the West,Children of the West,Men of the West, andHome on the Range: A culinary history of the American West.)
The burrow lies one mile east of theChocolate Mountain Aerial Gunnery Range where a 2008 near-miss caved the entry that he shored with old mine timbers.[60] Keeley was the resident advisor to neighbor Phil Garlington's book,Rancho Costa Nada: The Dirt Cheap Homestead.[61]In 2007, he became the first Californiasubstitute teacher to be fired for trying to prevent a playground 'skirmish.'[62] He left to ride the rails, and then became an itinerant expatriate writing from select exotic locations includingIquitos, Peru,[63]San Felipe,Baja California,[64] andLake Toba, Sumatra.[65]
Bo Keeley has written the following books:
The following show some of the primary online publication sources for much of Bo Keeley's literary output: