I met Rudy Castro the day Arizona’s 71-game McKale Center winning streak was broken by UCLA, 1992. I’d heard many things about Rudy — a Marine, a politician, a baseball coach and a math teacher — and what I didn’t know he filled in.
He said he had been part of a longer winning streak, and a few other things.
“I played at Bear Down Gym the day Arizona won its 80th straight game in 1951,” he said. “I played basketball for and against Arizona, and made the winning shot to beat them one night. Do you know anybody else who did that?”
I did not.
I knew that Castro was one of the leading shortstops in Tucson history, captain of Tucson High’s 1948 state championship team, and the starting shortstop for the first Arizona team to reach the College World Series, 1954. I knew that he was the 1974 All-City baseball coach at Cholla High School, and that any time I went to a baseball game at Hi Corbett Field, Rudy would be holding court in the grandstands.
But basketball? Rudy was maybe 5 feet 6 inches tall.
“Look it up,” he said.
I did not look it up until Tuesday, when Rudy’s friend, Pac-12 basketball referee Bob Scofield, called to say Rudy, 87, died overnight. By the end of the day, at least 10 more people delivered the same message.
“Rudy’s gone,” they’d say.
“Rudy was a happy person,” said Walt Roberson, the manager of Arizona’s early-’50s baseball teams and longtime UA administrator. “He always had a smile and a friendly hello.”
But basketball?
The UA basketball media guide does not list Rudy Castro on any Wildcat team, ever. He is not among the hundreds of players whose career statistics are recorded, and his photograph is not in the team displays at McKale. I suspected his basketball days ended when he was voted to the 1949 All-City team, part of the Badgers’ 23-0 championship team.
And then I found this in the archives:
“Diminutive Rudy Castro, the smallest man on the court, spurred Arizona’s rally with his ball-hawking. He stole passes all during the third and fourth periods and at times had the Gents perplexed with his tactics.”
Rudy scored five points that night, Dec. 13, 1952, as Centenary (the Gentlemen) beat Arizona 53-52 at Bear Down Gym.
And as for those other teams he played for at Bear Down Gym? He was right about those, too. On the night Arizona won its 80th straight game, beating the San Diego Marines on Nov. 27, 1951, Rudy Castro, a proud member of the U.S. Marine Corps, played against the UA freshmen as Camp Pendleton’s starting point guard.
A year earlier, he played for Palo Verde Junior College against the UA freshman team at Bear Down Gym. The winning shot he mentioned? That’s true, too. Castro swished a shot at the buzzer as his California JC team beat Arizona 49-47.
On Tuesday, I found all of that and much more.
I found he married his high school sweetheart, Mina, and that she tragically died during childbirth in 1961, as did their infant son, Eddie, leaving Rudy a widower with two young children.
And I found that after his basketball and baseball days he became a teacher at Roskruge Junior High School, where his influence went beyond the ballpark.
“He was truly an original. There weren’t very many places in Tucson that you could go where he was not known,” said Delano Price, a star on Tucson High’s 1969 state basketball championship team and a TUSD educator and administrator for 30 years. “We are fellow Badgers and fellow state basketball champions. He was also my junior high teacher and football coach. He was a Marine who taught us hard work and discipline.”
After he retired from his political life, Rudy bought seasons tickets at Hillenbrand Stadium, sitting behind home plate, admiring the skill and execution of Mike Candrea’s softball players. But at heart, he remained a shortstop, the man whose squeeze bunt beat Texas in the 1953 NCAA playoffs.
Before he died, Rudy asked his four children to bury him in an Arizona baseball jersey. Scofield, who lives nearby in the Reid Park neighborhood, said he’d take care of it.
He contacted UA baseball coach Jay Johnson. Was it possible to get a jersey for Rudy?
“What number?” Johnson asked.
“Fourteen.”
A day later, Scofield went to Hi Corbett Field. Johnson handed him a pinstriped UA baseball jersey, No. 14.
That’s better than a squeeze bunt to beat Texas any day.
