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.
Early life Keeley grew up in Idaho and Michigan, and graduated in 1972 with a DVM from Michigan State University (MSU). 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. 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.'NPA National Singles Champions', NPA website http://paddleball.org/pdf/singles.pdf
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.'US National Men's Singles', Sports History
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.'US National Men's Singles', Sports History
He became one of the game's foremost instructorsJim Kaplan, 'McKay has a new racquet', April 14, 1980, Sports Illustrated and an author during the 1970s golden era with approximately 100 articles published in Ace,'Court Shorts Trivia', SUHA website http://www.ushandball.org/component/option,com_acajoom/act,mailing/task,view/listid,14/mailingid,968/Itemid,412/ IRA Racquetball, National Racquetball and other trade magazines. In 2002, he refused induction into the USRA Hall of Fame.'History of the National Racquetball Hall of Fame', USRA Hall of Fame, USA Racquetball http://www.usra.org/HallofFame/HallofFameHistory.aspx'The History of Racquetball', Racquetball Depot where incumbent inductees credited him with instructing their games. He was the 2003 racquetball historian and psychologist for the Legends pro tour,'The Classics Professional Racquetball Tour' CPRT website http://www.classicproracquetball.com/about.html and the same year co-invented (with Scott Hirsch) Hybrid Racquetball using a racquetball with wood paddleball paddles.
He wrote what many have called the Bible of the sport, Complete Book of Racquetball (1976, 200,000 sold),Keeley, Steven, The Complete Book of Racquetball, DBI, 1976, https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=complete+book+of+racquetball and opened racquetball doors in every state, Central and South AmericaNational Racquetball cover, Vol. 13, No. 8, August 1976 https://picasaweb.google.com/bokeely/FotozLinkFcbk#5576508729940489538 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.Racquetball Illustrated cover, April 1982 https://picasaweb.google.com/bokeely/FotozLinkFcbk#5576508721369776898 Keeley was a stroke and strategy trendsetter, and the first apparel-sponsored pro, flaunting multicolored Converse Chucks tennis shoes. He was featured in Sports IllustratedYost, 'He Found His Racquet', Sports Illustrated, November 19, 1979 and other publications as an unusual combination of athlete, intellectual, and 'flake.'Brinks, Bill, 'Hall of fame honor for racquetball legend', Georgia Sports, October 18, 2010
Also a California B-division handball champion, Keeley is the only player to consistently beat handball legend Paul Haber in mano a racqueta exhibitions.Levin, Dan, 'The Great Mano A Raqueta', Sports Illustrated, February 7, 1972 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 CenterGeorge, Chelsea, 'Tournament House', Racquetball Magazine, Vol. 14, No. 6, December 2003, p. 1 in San Diego, California. In 2007 he was awarded the prestigious NPA Earl Riskey Trophy for contributions to the sport.'Major Awards to Keeley...', NPA Newsletter, 2006, p. 5 http://paddleball.org/Newsletters/0607SummerNewsletter.pdf Inducted into the NPA Hall of Fame in 2014
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,Niederhoffer, Victor, Education of a Speculator, John Wiley & Sons, 1996, p. 75, sleep deprivation, bladder control, induced color blindness, riding a bike for 24-hours, and developing fluent ambidexterity.
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!It's a Racquet, Keeley, Service Press, 1978, and The Kill and Rekill Gang. He has written eight books on sport, travel, and the maverick personality, including the 2011 Keeley's Kures of alternative treatments for common ailments from boxcars, veterinary medicine, and world healers, 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 ManualKeeley, Bo, Hobo Life in America: Training Manual, Burrow Books, 1986 for the first college sociology hobo class Hobo Life in America in 1985 at Lansing Community College.Keeley, "Hobo Class", Daily Speculations, October 19, 2006 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.Yost, "He Found His Racquet", Sports Illustrated (photo of rabbit), November 19, 1979 Some additional exceptional experiences include: playing chess with U.S. open champion Art Bisguier playing pingpong with world champ Marty Reisman matching wits against three-time Jeopardy! winner Ira Brody chatting with Libertarian presidential candidate Harry Browne being visited by Entrepreneur of the Year 1989, Stan Mason"Stanley Mason", About.com Inventors swapping travel tales with Investment Biker Jim Rogers hoboing with financial author Doug Casey looking through a microscope with DNA discoverer James D. Watson living one year in the stairwell of speculator Victor NiederhofferKenner, Laurel and Niederhoffer, Practical Speculation, John Wiley & Sons, p. 282, inventing Checkers Proverbs with world champ Tom WiswellWiswell, Tom, "Checkers Proverbs by Wiswell", Checkers Chest flying with Linuxcare pilot-founder Art Tyde being mentored under photographer Art ShayShay, Art, , CHICAGOist, February 16, 2011 riding the rails with Hobo King Steam Train Maury Graham.
In 1988 he guided a San Francisco Chronicle journalist to Mount Shasta for a story that won "Bay Area Best Sunday Feature". Later, a 2001 epic along the First transcontinental railroad with four executives ended on 9/11/2001. In 2005 he crossed Canada by rail with South African accountant Tom "Diesel" Dyson,Dyson, Tom, '12% Letter Reviews' May 11, 2008 and later that year the pair, disguised as Mexicans, rode atop freights with Central American immigrantsKeeley, "Everyone Wins Mexican Style", Swans Commentary, October 4, 2010 through Mexico to the border, where the US Border Patrol apprehended them swimming the Rio Grande with expired Mexican visas.Dyson, Tom, "Latin Like Me", North Bank Fred's Stories
In the 1980s he was regularly in the National Hobo Association Los Angeles clubhouse and contributed to their Hobo Times newsletter.Alexander, Jack, "Stupid Yuppies make big bucks & live like hobos", World Weekly News, December 25, 1990, p. 32. In 2010, Fort Worth Weekly Peter Gorman's "Renaissance on the Rails" profile won 1st place for the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies best feature of the year.Zaragoza, Jason, "First Place: Fort Worth Weekly, Renaissance on the Rails by Peter Gorman", AltWeekly Awards 2010, Association of American Newsweeklies, July 16, 2010
Finance In the mid-1990s, Keeley turned to commodities where his financial Low-Life IndicatorsNiederhoffer, Victor, Education of a Speculator, John Wiley & Sons, 1996, p. 404, gathered around the world—such as cigarette butts being shorter in a down market—were seriously considered by Wall Street investors and the press.'Wall Street Gambler Niederhoffer Intuits Millions with Hobo's Help', New York Observer, 3-21-97 He espoused his analytical methods at global banking seminarsScott, Gary A., 'The secret characters of Gary Scott', 2008 http://www.garyascott.com/2007/12/04/1907.html and he rode boxcars to speak on hobo economics at the 1985 Aspen Eris Society and the 1995 New York Junto.NYC Junto Website http://www.nycjunto.com/exchange.htm
A 1997 13-country tour to identify investment opportunities in emerging markets for speculator Victor Niederhoffer earned millions in Turkey,Gopinath, Depak, 'Niederhoffer Humbled by '97 Blowup, Posts 56% Return', Bloomberg, May 31, 2006 https://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aOnekV3748wc 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.Cassidy, John, "Blowup Artist", New Yorker, October 15, 2007, page 7 http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/10/15/071015fa_fact_cassidy?currentPage=7
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,'Keeley Stories at Daily Speculations' http://www.dailyspeculations.com/wordpress/?cat=205 International Man,International Man http://internationalman.com/ Liberty (1987), The Coffee Coaster and Swans Magazine have documented many of his exploits such as: Journeying through the Mid-East during the Gulf War A knife attack in Caracas resulting in loss of thousands in venture capitalKeeley, 'Dollar an Inch of Skin,' Liberty, January 1996 Liberty Magazine 9.3 - Liberty Publishing - Mises Institute A four-ft.-wide open mouth hippopotamus entering his Lake Turkana pup tent