This article was originally published in the November 2006 issue of Spin to Win Magazine.

I dearly love Joe Beaver. I’m not going to get sappy and state like it’s fact that I knew we’d be great friends the moment I met him. Special bonds are tested by time. 

But as I get older, hopefully a little wiser and start measuring my friendships in bottom-line terms—like, say, would I run into a burning building for that person, and he or she for me?—I truly treasure those who would actually get an unhesitating “yes.” We all have thousands of acquaintances in our lifetimes, but so few true, take-a-bullet-for-you friends.

What I’ve noticed over the years is that the greats of any game draw the most criticism from the public and their peers. How many times have I had to hear about Joe and his “arena fits” when things don’t go his way out there? “If you hated to lose as much as he does, you’d have a fit, too,” I tell them. Which, by the way, means he probably likes to win more than everybody else, too, and explains why he’s a ProRodeo Hall of Famer with eight gold buckles. 

Doesn’t everybody get it? You don’t get as good as Joe Beaver without that kind of uncompromising passion. Just because Jake Barnes and Clay O’Brien Cooper express their emotions—their thrilling victories and agonizing defeats—more quietly does not mean they don’t feel as high or low inside. That drive for supremacy is in the guts of every great, regardless of how it shows on the outside. Thus, the only conclusion I keep coming to is that the critics’ comments are primarily jealousy-based. 

I had a great visit with Joe on the phone today (in September). There was good news and sad news. We talked about the fun stuff and the tough stuff; how he’s come from nowhere to threatening to make the Finals in two events. He’s coming from nowhere, by the way, because he’s been spending a lot of time at home with his mom and dad, Bonnie and Walter, who’s probably best known simply as “Beaver.” They’ve needed Joe, and he’s been there. He’s leaned on them his whole life. Now it’s his turn to be the rock.

Walter was diagnosed with lung cancer last summer, and had one of his lungs removed. Then doctors discovered a malignant brain tumor. They removed 90 percent of it, and followed the surgery up with radiation and chemotherapy. The medical community marvels that the man is still alive after giving him six months to live over a year ago. But, you see, “Leave it to Beaver” doesn’t only apply to Joe and his spectacular late-season surges.

The latest rabbit he pulled out of his hat was a three-saddle hat trick at the Pendleton Round-Up in September. Joe B. won the tie-down, team roping (with Nick Simmons) and all-around titles, all on the grass he so dearly dreads. This is a guy who’s avoided even entering Pendleton most years of his career; a guy who three times placed on his first calf only to twice pull up on his second one because things got to rolling too fast on the grass and to once miss one by a mile after “throwing 60 feet trying to catch him before things got going too fast.”

“I hate that grass, and everybody knows it,” said Beaver, who turned 41 on October 13. “My body’s not made for it. You slip, you slide, you stick. My knees have been operated on five times, and when you get to really rolling on that grass you can’t control your get-off. It’s not worth hurting yourself at one rodeo and risking the rest of the year.”

To the Round-Up committee’s credit, he did say they resodded the arena infield a couple years ago, which really improved the conditions. 

“The grass was a lot more horse and cowboy friendly this year,” Joe reported. “It broke up a lot better to where is wasn’t so hard and slick. A lot of people rode their good horses this year, because it wasn’t as treacherous. Once my mind was at ease, I could concentrate on winning.” 

His back was pushed into the old crunch-time corner—again. But I’ve come to believe over the years that must-win situations are what this guy lives for. Say it can’t be done, then step aside while he makes a monkey of you.

“I had to have a big win or I was done,” he said. “I figured I had to win three of the big ones left to have any kind of chance of making the Finals. So this year, grass or no grass, I had to go on with it. I had no choice.”

He boarded buddy Mike Arnold’s black horse, Little Boog, in the tie-down roping, charged up his brown head horse, Turbo, enlisted Simmons’ heeling help and away he went. Beaver and Simmons actually shared the team roping victory lap with Jake Stanley and Russell Cardoza. All told, Joe B. rounded up $12,411 in Pendleton and shot from long-odds underdog to serious contender in the course of a week or two.

“Everybody knows I hate the Pendleton grass, so it was so satisfying for me,” he smiled. “To be at the twilight of my career, go there needing to win at a place where my mind’s always played tricks on me and come through was big. I drew good, my horses worked good and the ground was good. That’s when you’re supposed to win. If all that’s good and you don’t win it’s just a mind deal. Everything’s in your court. If you can’t win when all that’s set up, you need to do something different. You have to be smart enough to take it and not leave it. A winner has to capitalize under those conditions.”

Remember, folks, this guy was the 1985 tie-down roping and overall PRCA Rookie of the Year. Simmons, who’s 22 now, was teething and toddling around in diapers while baby-faced Joe was busy strapping on his first gold buckle. And he’s still got game. Especially when staring down something most consider “impossible,” like, say, coming through in the late-season clutch when you’ve been home as much as he has.

“Barry Burk told me a long time ago that the football team that plays the hardest in the fourth quarter always wins the game,” Beaver said. “I’ve been hurt a lot of years, and that’s what forced me to win a lot at the wire. This last year or so I’ve needed to be there for my mom and dad. For the first time in my life, something outside the arena bothered my roping. I needed to go home and regroup. My folks have been with me all the way. To say I come from a good home and family is a huge understatement.”

Joe, who now calls Huntsville, Texas, home, hasn’t hesitated on the all-night drives back to Victoria, where he was raised, even if he could only stay a few hours. Walter worked in the oil fields and was on call 24/7 when Joe was a kid. Walter’s a quiet straight-shooter Joe describes as “the best teacher I’ve ever been around; a guy who never got ruffled about anything.” Bonnie was a Joe B. believer from the beginning, and she tends to speak her mind. 

“To this day, she’ll watch me rope on TV and call and tell me what I’m doing wrong,” Joe laughs. “I’ll hang up, and she’ll call me right back and tell me, ‘Don’t you hang up on me.’ She does not accept failure or losing. She’s just a winner who’s adamant about not quitting. You do not fail or lose unless you’re dead. She believed in me from the get-go. Nobody’s bet on me more than my mom. I was nowhere in the picture as far as any of the races go when I took off rodeoing again in August, but she’d already booked her flight to Vegas. She has that ‘just go get it done’ attitude.”

The parental combination produced a winner who simply can’t be stopped. So, Joe, what drives you these days?

“Every time you get another year under your belt, more people write you off because they say you’re another year slower,” he said. “I’m showing people that I’m a little bit different and that I’m not done. And I owe my mom and dad some good news.”

Joe and Jenna’s son, Brody, will celebrate his 16th birthday on November 20. Brody made his first trip to the NFR when he was 10 days old, so it’s tradition for him to vacation in Vegas each December with his parents. Doting dad Joe never did encourage Brody to follow in his roping footsteps, but rather to take aim at his own dreams—which he’s done. Brody’s a model and an actor. He’s also taken up riding cutting horses and playing polocrosse (think horseback lacrosse). 

“He’s a cool kid,” Joe said. “He’s special, and he’s fun. He’s his own person. I always told him not to be a follower or a tagalong—just to be himself. I’m so far from perfect I can’t even spell it. The thing you have to have is a good heart.”

They don’t make more passionately pounding hearts than the ticker inside this guy. It’s far from over as we head to press the end of September, but my money’s on Joe B. making it in both events. I’m with Bonnie. Who in their right mind would ever bet against him? But while we don’t hesitate to brag on him, I’d call his outlook hopeful and humble.

“I never sleep good and relax until Kansas City’s over,” he grinned. “I’ve been on both sides of those upsets, so I know it’s not over until it really is over.”

Once it’s in the bag, he heads for a little Italian joint in Kansas City. Roy Cooper turned him on to the little-known hole-in-the-wall restaurant years ago.

“It’s old school,” Joe said. “I’ve done some celebrating and some crying right there in that little place. I’ve been there so many times with such a load off my shoulders that it’s like an island in the ocean for me.”