Reusse: Roger Erickson, ‘flexibility genius,’ draws famous, once-limber crowd in his death

Roger Erickson was a savant when it came to fitness through flexibility and hydration. Roger died a couple of weeks ago and will be buried at Fort Snelling, having served in the Army during the years of the Vietnam War.

If the choice had been a non-national cemetery where mottos were allowed on a headstone, Erickson’s clients through the years might have suggested this: “Stretch That Soleus.”

The St. Paul athletic underground gathered for a few hours Sunday afternoon to pay tribute to Erickson with their personal stories of interaction. There are probably such confabs on the west side of the river, but in St. Paul you know where to find them:

“Mancini’s,” the old steakhouse with an Italian twist, sitting down West 7th Street a piece from the bars that thrive when the Wild play a home game.

Nick Mancini was the legend of the place for decades. He died in 2007, and the heartbeat that it carries for St. Paul has continued with the newer generations.

Dennis Fitzpatrick, as St. Paul as it gets, was suffering from a bit of Nick nostalgia Sunday: “A half-dozen of us would be eating a steak with all the trimmings. Nick would come out with a platter and say, ‘Do you want some candy?’ and then put a piece of lobster on your plate.”

Erickson, living alone, was found dead in his latest residence Aug. 17 at age 71.

On Sunday, I arrived in Mancini’s parking lot a few minutes before the advertised 1 p.m. starting time and there were few cars in evidence. Inside, a lean Matt Birk, first an Erickson protégé at age 14, and a handful of others were there acting as hosts.

My unspoken thought when the conversation with Birk started was, “Not much of a turnout.” Ten minutes later, there were 50 people, then 100, then 150 or more — and all with several favored Roger stories.

Erickson was a football player in the late ’60s at Washington High in St. Paul. The coach was Mal Scanlan, who would later bring Roger to Cretin-Derham Hall — where many of Sunday’s attendees became his disciples.

“Roger was a middle linebacker, and he just stormed through the line, straight at the running back,” Scanlan said Sunday. “If the running back continued toward him, there would be a fierce collision. If the back veered, Roger would keep charging in the direction he had started.”

Erickson wound up at Lakewood Community College (now part of Century College) in 1973. Pat Boemer was a teammate.

“It was sort of a feeder program for some outstanding athletes before they could enroll at Minnesota,” Boemer said. “J.D. Pride was there. It didn’t work out that well with the Gophers, but he was a fabulous running back for us.”

Boemer opened Patrick McGovern’s on West 7th, near the hockey arenas, in 1982. “I mostly lost track of Roger, and then there was an article in the paper about him being a plant doctor,” Boemer said. “You’d go to Gertens, get some house plants, they weren’t doing as well as you hoped, and they’d bring in Roger. Apparently, he was great with plants.”

Maybe the key was hydration and flexible roots — the same secret of success for Roger with athletes.

His first workout place was an abandoned bar on St. Clair Avenue. He had a cluttered upstairs, then workout mats, his stretch box and other items downstairs.

“I was a fat, slow kid at 14 and wanted to be a football player,” Birk said. “I went to see Roger. With Roger, you had to bring a spiral notebook and write down what you did that day in your workout. But there wasn’t anything like an alphabetized filing cabinet. The notebooks were stacked up, and the first thing you had to do was go through the stack to find yours.

“And with Rog, you had to hydrate, so you would get a plastic cup and put your name on it. Roger wasn’t going to be buying new plastic cups all the time. You’d use the same one. There were plastic cups with names on ’em tucked in every corner.”

Chaos, it seemed, but it worked.

It worked there on St. Clair, and then when he moved to a house near Kowalski’s on Grand Avenue, and then for the last time to a small house that Birk owned and where he let Roger live and do his stuff.

Erickson didn’t drive. And he didn’t like taking the bus. He would bike, but his preferred mode of travel was getting a ride from somebody.

“Anybody in here who gave Roger a ride raise their hand” was a request made Sunday, and there were universal laughs before raised hands.

Joe Mauer was in attendance Sunday — not as a celebrity but in gratitude for Roger’s help.

“I came to Cretin a year after Roger left; I knew about him, but I didn’t work with him until after I had all those injuries [in 2011],” Mauer said. “I was in that workout room all winter. I came to spring training feeling great and had one of my best years.”

Perhaps Roger’s most miraculous work came in 2012. Birk was with the Baltimore Ravens in what would be his last of 14 NFL seasons. John Harbaugh, the Ravens coach, complimented Birk on his fine physical condition at age 36.

“I told him about Roger — that he was about 275 [pounds] and looked out of shape, but he could do the splits, he could lift a leg to the top of his head; he was a flexibility genius,” Birk said. “I said, ‘Fly him out, give him an hour.’ Harbaugh did that, came out of his office after an hour of stretching with Rog, and said, ‘I haven’t felt this good in 20 years.’ "

Harbaugh and Birk introduced the 59-year-old heavy guy from St. Paul to the other players.

“They looked at Rog and were shaking their heads — fitness?” Birk said. “Three days later, they were all bought in — Ray Lewis, everybody.

“That team didn’t have a soft-tissue injury that cost someone a game all year, and we won the Super Bowl.”