Philly Wally Amaro saves young lives in city's handball hotbed

WHEN WALLY AMARO was 8 years old, sleeping in his second-floor bedroom on Philip Street in North Philadelphia, he was awakened early on the morning of Aug. 14, 1990, by his mother and his grandmother screaming, "Don't take him! Please don't take him!"

He rushed to his window.

He saw Angel Morales - his beloved uncle, his mentor, the man who had replaced his absentee father in his life - being forced at gunpoint down Philip toward Ontario Street.

"There was a guy with a gun to my uncle's head, dragging him down the street," Amaro said recently, between handball games at the Salvation Army indoor court on Mascher Street near Allegheny Avenue that he and his fellow players built.

Amaro, 34, was wearing a black T-shirt with "Philly Wally" in big letters on the back. He was sweating freely and breathing hard. "Had to take a break, man," he said, smiling. "We're getting old."

Amaro's been an internationally ranked handball player for years, leaving North Philly from time to time to play in tournaments all over the world.

But his heart, he readily admits, remains in the neighborhoods he grew up in, where "Philly Wally" mentors hundreds of handball players because he fervently believes the sport saves young lives, much as it saved his.

"My mother and my grandmother were pleading with the gunman not to take my uncle," Amaro said, staring hard at his childhood's worst nightmare. "I called out, 'Tio!' The gunman turned.

"My mother said, 'Wally, stay away from the window. Don't go out.' My grandmother was following the gunman down the street, begging him."

Amaro never saw his uncle alive again.

The gunman, Jose "Cano" Melendez, 43, marched Morales, 26, into the Santurce Bar on the corner; held him and several patrons hostage for hours; made Morales dance naked on the bar; and then shot him dead.

"I couldn't sleep for days after that," Amaro said. "My uncle was the only male in my life trying to be positive. To this day, I don't open up enough. I keep a lot of stuff bottled up inside."

Melendez, who made unsubstantiated claims about being a hired hit man for reasons that were never made clear, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison.

Morales had introduced the young Amaro to handball, which, ultimately, saved him from the streets, where too many of his friends died violently.

"The Cramp Elementary school yard was the spot to be back then, playing handball and hanging out with the fellas," Amaro said. "I worked at Olympic Pizza on Second and Glenwood, making pizza boxes. I was a little kid, 8 years old, making my own money, buying my own sneakers, playing handball."

When he wasn't at Cramp, Amaro was somewhere in the neighborhood, playing wall ball.

"All the courts were makeshift," he said. "If someone had a piece of plywood, that was good enough. We'd take the side of a building, put up lines, play on sidewalks, play in traffic. If the ball went down the gutter, we'd hold little kids upside down to get it."

When Amaro moved with his mother to A and Westmoreland Streets, and moved his game to the Stetson Middle School yard, Miguel Torres, who lived a few houses away, noticed the potential in the young man who would one day be known as Philly Wally.

"Miguel was like the Don King of Philly handball, promoting guys," Amaro said. "We had these, I don't want to say gangs, but they were like handball gangs - the Cobra Aces, the Werewolves, the Latin Lemas - and Miguel would take us places to play.

"There was cursing, swearing, yelling at each other," Amaro said. "Guys were arguing about whether a ball crossed the line like they were going to cut each other's throats. Man, it was rough.

"But when the game was over, they'd split a case of beer. Some of them were alcoholics, some were drug addicts, some were hardworking gentlemen - all of us just wanted to play handball."

Amaro remembered Torres' taking the Philly guys to the Bronx for a big tournament, where they ran smack into a wall of New York attitude.

"The New York guys were trash-talking us, telling us, 'Oh, the cow-tippers are here.' They must've thought Philadelphia is farmland where we were milking cows. I said, 'Really?' "

After his team beat the trash-talkers, Amaro said, "they knew we were handball players. We earned the respect."

Amaro rose to the top of international one-wall handball rankings, playing for Team Puerto Rico as one of the world's elite players. "I discovered that so many people all over the world play the sport," he said, smiling. "I'd always thought handball was played on the side of a house."

Throughout his world travels, Amaro has always lived in Philly, where he's worked construction since the age of 17, and has devoted himself to giving North Philly kids the chance to hang on the court instead of the corner.

Years ago, Torres moved to Florida. "To this day, it bothers me that he left," Amaro said. "Miguel helped kids out of his own heart. I help them out of mine."

On the phone from Haines City, Fla., Torres said, "A lot of the Philly kids had never left their block. The only thing they knew is 'around the block.' I'd tell them, 'There's more to life than around the block.'

"I'm definitely proud of Philly Wally," Torres said. "I was raised at Swanson and Somerset. My father was a drug abuser. He was shot 13 times. I seen all that and it was not a route that I wanted to go.

"My father got saved. He was a founder of My Brother's Keeper," a residential drug-and-alcohol rehab in Camden. "He's a Christian man. He's a minister. I respect what he does."

Torres followed in his father's Christian footsteps. "My vision for our North Philly kids was: I didn't want them playing handball on the sidewalks, where you got to run in the street for balls and you could get hit by a car. I wanted the parks to have handball courts. I went crazy looking for a solution."

Amaro said Torres' aggressive prodding of politicians and civic leaders finally bore fruit.

"Miguel got the first regulation outdoor handball court in the city built in the playground at Mascher and Allegheny," Amaro said. "We loved handball so much, we were out there shoveling snow in 36 degrees, boiling water to heat the balls so we could play all winter."

Years later, Amaro led the effort to get an indoor court built in the Salvation Army gym so his diehard players don't have to shovel snow to play all winter.

Torres got to the heart of what Amaro's handball crusade means to North Philly: "I used to take over parks with all the handball kids. People would be like, 'Miguel, you gonna get in trouble.' I said, 'I'll be damned if a cop or a politician can come here and tell me what I'm doing wrong.'

"I said, 'They're not smoking pot, they're not selling drugs, they're not doing graffiti. I have 30, 40 kids here for eight to 10 hours playing handball. Do you want them in the street eight to 10 hours selling drugs?' "

Gilberto Gonzalez, a Community College of Philadelphia graphic designer who helps Amaro organize citywide handball tournaments, said, "I was a kid, growing up in Spring Garden when it was the largest Puerto Rican community in the city, and wherever there was a wall, we played handball.

"If you're going to engage young men in the community, you'll find them on the handball courts. Wally knows this."

Gonzalez said he's sure that handball saves young lives. "I keep track of Wally and the guys," he said, "and in all the five, six years we've been doing [handball programs], I only know of one guy that was killed and three guys that were injured and survived violence. Out of 200, 300 guys that participate every year, that's a great ratio."

All winter long, Amaro and the young men from North Philly play two nights a week at the Salvation Army indoor court.

Come spring, Amaro will divide his time among five community-run handball hotbeds: Collazo Playground on Mascher near Allegheny; Rainbow de Colores Playground on Fifth Street near Dauphin; the Feltonville Recreation Center on Wyoming Avenue near Ella Street; Towey Playground on Howard Street near Berks; and McGuire Playground on Mascher near Lehigh.

He'll run his six-week Pennsylvania Handball Association summer camps and neighborhood tournaments, culminating in his sixth annual citywide tournament and festival in July for 300 young players.

He'll do this on a shoestring, as he always has.

"At the end of the tournament, everybody walks away with a trophy, a T-shirt, something," Amaro said happily. "And the event is totally free."

Rested and reenergized, Philly Wally ended his break at the Salvation Army gym and returned to the game and the young men to whom he has devoted his life - a world-class guy, on and off the court.

geringd@phillynews.com

215-854-5961M>@DanGeringer