Bertha Gonzalez lifts a bag full of trash after a San Jose State vs San Diego State men’s college basketball game on Feb. 9, 2022 at the Provident Credit Union Event Center in San Jose, Calif. (Ernie Gonzalez/The Spear)
By Matt Weiner (@mattweiner20) — Beat Reporter
If San Jose State star forward Omari Moore were to miss a week’s worth of games to rehab a bad hip, Provident Union Credit Event Center would still host fans.
The same goes for SJSU head coach Tim Miles and any other member of his staff
However, if Total Quality Maintenance’s ‘big three’ of Bertha Gonzalez, Rosalia Rios and Anthony Ortiz didn’t show up, fans would trip over empty bottles walking to their seats with shoelaces soaked in Coors Light.
Gonzalez, Rios and Ortiz are custodians and act as the invisible spine of each basketball game. Imagine plopping down into your seat and being rudely awakened by the splattering of a ketchup packet on your favorite pair of white pants.
Without Gonzalez, Rios and Ortiz showing up two hours before the game and staying four hours after, this crippling hypothetical would be a reality.
For Gonzalez, an immigrant from Mexico, working live sporting events is more than crisis prevention. It’s an opportunity for her to observe you and I in our rawest emotions.
“I like to read the faces of people … how you can see their passion for the game,” Gonzalez said.
Originally born in Zacatecas, Gonzalez immigrated to the U.S. in 1998 feeling simultaneously “upset and excited.”
The plan was to stay in the U.S. for two years, but homelife in Mexico grew too dangerous for Gonzalez and her two daughters.
“There wasn’t security, they could kill you for nothing,” Gonzales said.
Like many immigrants, there are some dark truths to the backstory, however it wasn’t before long when she was smiling ear-to-ear and we were laughing about how a Bacon N’ Egg McMuffin was her first meal in America. Later adding, the first item she ever purchased in a store was a mini apple pie for a quarter.
Alongside Gonzalez is a fellow immigrant from Mexico, Rosalia Rios sporting blonde hair and an infectious laugh that reveals an even-more infectious smile. The kind of smile that serves as a windshield wiper to clean up anything staining your well-being.
Rios lit up like a Jack-O’-lantern when she told me about the joy of getting to speak Spanish with players — especially SJSU freshman point guard Alvaro Cardenas — a spanish-speaking native of Grenada, Spain.
One day, while Cardenas was getting shots up at practice, he had the upbeat rhythms of reggaetón whistling through his speaker and Ortiz and Gonzalez commented on it, Rios told me through Gonzalez’s translating.
Finding a stranger that speaks Spanish briefly brought back a sense of home.
“It’s insane, I feel like being able to talk to someone who speaks your own language when you’re in a foreign country helps you build connections with people,” Cardenas said.
Custodian involvement in sports is an underexplored avenue. While shadowing their two-hour preparation for the game, I was taken through the arteries, veins and capillaries of Provident Credit Union Event Center.
I watched in awe as San Diego State’s lethal-lefty Matt Bradley strolled past me in sweats and a jacket that could barely contain his shoulders. A dozen steps later, I was exploring hallways of framed photographs of current and former Spartans. A quick left turn brought me inside the SJSU women’s locker room, where they helped tidy up Nike sneakers and bags of epsom salt in players’ cubbies.
The seven-year-old version still inside the 21-year-old Matt writing this right now thought to himself that he died and went to heaven.
Anthony Ortiz, youngest member of the ‘big three’, gets where my “pinch me, I must be dreaming” reaction comes from.
“You get to see the things you don’t really get to see on TV,” Ortiz said. “The different side of what goes on behind the scenes.”
I didn’t have to look far to spot Ortiz’s love for the game. His Iphone lock screen is Kobe Bryant in pajamas with a white beehive of a cast on his right hand and Kevin Durant’s signature Nike KD Trey 5 V shoes wrapped around his feet.
In between tasks, he catches a piece of the action just like you and I.
“Sometimes when I’m [on the concourse] trying to clean the garbage, I’ll take a few seconds to see what’s going on in the game.”
There’s the natural everpresent fan in Ortiz, while Kobe’s coveted ‘Mamba Mentality’ lurks within him as well.
“They don’t see the work, but when they get here they appreciate how clean everything is,” Ortiz said.
When the final buzzer rang out and fans left their seats, it was my turn to pick up after someone else’s night out and partake in the ‘Mamba Mentality’ Ortiz knows all too well.
My first mission was to go through each row and pick up bottles, candy wrappers, popcorn buckets and condiment packets with black gloves vacuum sealed to my hands and stuff it in a Glad trash bag.
It wasn’t long before I found myself flailing aimlessly in a whirlpool of guilt now that I was a custodian. My mind flipped between flashes of myself leaving mounds of peanut shells at the Coliseum and balled up tin foil from Dodger Dogs at Dodger Stadium.
Strangely, my intoxicating guilt evolved into pride and appreciation as the stench from my gloves grew stronger and the trash bag got heavier.
Being a vertebra on the invisible spine of basketball provided me with a rewarding and peaceful easy feeling that a game recap would never be able to offer me.
The simple art of doing something for others outweighs any dopamine I’ve ever received from typing into a laptop about a Myron Amey 3-pointer or an Omari Moore block.
Once all big pieces of trash were picked up, Gonzalez and I were set to use leaf blowers to vanquish all crumbs and popcorn kernels.
Starting at the top of section Q down to the bottom of A, we angled the machinery down so all small debris piled up on the court where it would be swept into a dustpan.
Boredom and monotony struck me immediately, however, both went away when I started to focus on the row right in front of me and stopped day-dreaming about the last one.
The row-by-row mentality was adjacent to how Gonzalez learned English when she was homeless at a language program focused toward non-English speakers.
“They always said to me, ‘if you learn one different word a day and try to repeat, repeat and repeat it, you will learn how to speak English,” Gonzalez said.
Prior to this, she wasn’t able to communicate with doctors and school faculty for her children.
“That was hard for me.”
After the row-by-row rhythmic trance, Gonzalez and I sat down behind a basketball hoop and noshed on tortilla chips. Reminiscing about her affinity for her mom’s chile rellenos and how she has yet to find any in San Jose that compare.
In between crunches, I asked about which place I should try in San Jose and she recommended taking a trip up 10th St. and trying Super Taqueria.
Brought together by basketball, connecting through food, I met a stranger at 6 p.m. and left with a friend at 12:40 a.m..
