League of Denial

by Mark Fainaru-Wada

  Exactly how Webster committed his crimes was not totally clear. The fact that he had been writing his own prescriptions was not in dispute. Sunny said a sympathetic doctor/Steelers fan had issued Webster a blank pad, but that was never pursued. Sometimes Webster apparently changed the numbers on valid prescriptions so that 90 magically became 190.

  Regardless, the arrest was a PR disaster and a sign that his drug use was out of control. “If you’d let Mike pop Ritalin all day, he probably would have done it,” said Vodvarka. “If he’d had an unending supply, he’d have taken one every hour.” In fact, Vodvarka’s files bulged with hundreds of prescriptions he himself wrote for his friend. Webster couldn’t function without Ritalin. Himmelhoch, the University of Pittsburgh psychiatrist who evaluated Webster for his disability claim, helped get him out of the charges with only probation by persuading the judge that Webster had forged prescriptions “for a drug that was and is appropriate treatment” for his brain damage. Ritalin “lifts the scales of [his] confusion,” Himmelhoch wrote. But it was an exceedingly sharp double-edged sword. Ritalin is a stimulant, like cocaine; among other things, it clearly was fueling Webster’s manic literary life. “He’d stay up several days and take it round the clock and write you these notes,” said Vodvarka, who received numerous letters. After the arrest, Vodvarka decided to cut Webster off. By enabling his addiction, he worried, he could jeopardize his medical license or, worse, Mike might overdose.

  Fitzsimmons scrambled together a press conference at a Holiday Inn outside Pittsburgh to make the case that Webster wasn’t responsible for his actions, that football had altered his brain. He brought in the doctors: Vodvarka, Kelly, and Krieg. Some of Webster’s former teammates, including Rocky Bleier, Mel Blount, and Randy Grossman, were recruited to show support. But behind the scenes, some players argued that jail might be the best option for Webster, if only to get him off the streets and free him from his addiction.

  Team Webster gathered in a room to prepare. Fitzsimmons had written a statement for Webster, but Vodvarka and others worried that he couldn’t deliver it in his condition. Webster sat in the middle of it all in disgrace. “Everyone’s gonna think I’m a criminal,” he told Colin. It was the lowest point of his entire soul-shattering post-career ordeal. “You could see it just clobbered him,” said Colin. Now, between Webster’s obvious depression and his erratically functioning brain, Vodvarka, Fitzsimmons, and others tried to figure out how to get him through the humiliating press conference.

  Vodvarka and Fitzsimmons pulled Webster aside 30 minutes before it started.

  “Listen, take your Ritalin now so it kicks in and you can organize your thoughts,” Fitzsimmons told him.

  Thus it came to pass that shortly before offering a contrite apology to the city of Pittsburgh for forging Ritalin prescriptions, Webster gulped downed 80 mg of Ritalin with a cup of water.

  “I want to apologize very specifically for any embarrassment and sadness these allegations have brought,” Webster said. He choked up twice while reading the statement. “I am not seeking your pity or sympathy. I’m not seeking a pardon for my actions, and I’m not really asking for your understanding—even though grown men need understanding.”

  The press conference was largely successful. Webster came off as sympathetic, a hero brought low by his overreliance on an obscure drug he needed for injuries related to the years of profound joy he had given to Pittsburgh. The focus quickly shifted from his crimes to his head. But this had an unanticipated effect: The discussion of Webster’s brain touched off a mini-debate over whether football had actually caused his problems.

  On one side were doctors such as Vodvarka, Kelly, Krieg, and Himmelhoch, who made their views known that the repeated blows Webster sustained during his illustrious Steelers career had turned him into the damaged man he was today.

  “Mike has the football version of punch-drunk,” Krieg said.

  But there was another side. Curiously, it was led by Joe Maroon, the Steelers’ longtime neurological consultant. Five years earlier Maroon had advised Merril Hoge to retire because of the fear that repeated concussions would leave him permanently impaired. Now Maroon told the Post-Gazette that such long-term injuries were rare. Of the claim that football gave Mike Webster brain damage, Maroon said: “That’s not confirmed.” Maroon, of course, was one of the doctors Himmelhoch had accused of working for two masters: first the Steelers and then Webster. He was at least indirectly responsible for the player’s medical file, which showed hardly any signs of brain injury during his 15 years in Pittsburgh.

  The Post-Gazette story went on to tout what it called the “Pittsburgh Steelers Test Battery,” a neuropsychological exam developed by Maroon and his University of Pittsburgh colleague, Mark Lovell, as an indication of the team’s commitment to treating concussions. Maroon explained that the test was now used by every team in the National Hockey League and a dozen teams in the NFL. An affordable software version soon would be available for high school trainers, the story said.

  Maroon wasn’t the only doubter. The Bert Bell/Pete Rozelle NFL Player Retirement Plan had gotten back to Fitzsimmons with a response to Webster’s disability claim. Four doctors weren’t enough, the NFL told Webster. The board wanted a fifth doctor: an independent neurologist who would examine Webster on the league’s behalf. This tactic was familiar to many retired players, who regarded it as a sham, part of the league’s callously indifferent bureaucracy, which they believed was designed to keep them from getting what they deserved. The “independent” doctor invariably came from a list of physicians compiled by the NFL. The doctors on that list, it was thought, frequently sided with the league.

  Coming on top of the Ritalin arrest, this news was greeted by Team Webster with overwhelming despair. As addled as Webster was, there was a growing feeling among Fitzsimmons, Sunny, Vodvarka, Colin, and the others that Webster was right: The NFL intended to let him rot. Their paranoia was such that even the location of the independent doctor the NFL had recommended—Cleveland, the home of the Steelers’ archrival—was viewed as part of a magnificent setup.

  Nevertheless, on June 21, 1999—four months after his arrest—Webster traveled to the offices of Edward Westbrook, the NFL’s handpicked neurologist. Westbrook, a distinguished-looking man with silver hair and wire-rimmed glasses, had an Ivy League education and worked at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland. He had played football in high school until he broke his collarbone, after which his coach advised: “Don’t play college football. They’ll kill you.” Westbrook then had rowed at Harvard.

  By the time Webster came to see him, Westbrook had examined perhaps a half dozen former NFL players on behalf of the league. Whatever was going on inside the Bert Bell/Pete Rozelle NFL Player Retirement Plan, Edward Westbrook was not in denial. He had found himself “impressed and maybe horrified” by the degree of brain damage he encountered in the players he examined. One young former player had Parkinson’s disease, which Westbrook thought was probably connected to repeated hits on the field. The rest of the players had varying degrees of severe cognitive dysfunction.

  Westbrook didn’t look at the reports from Fitzsimmons’s doctors before he examined Webster. He did go through the medical reports from the Steelers and Chiefs and was surprised to find almost no mention of head injuries. Webster complained about headaches, some of which, he said, felt like the top of his head would blow off, and also memory loss. But what really struck Westbrook was Webster’s demeanor. He was “like a five-year-old child who was amazed by the whole situation,” Westbrook said. Webster tried to be helpful, but Westbrook struggled unsuccessfully to obtain even the most cursory medical history.

  “I mean, he was very pleasant, very charming, but didn’t have the drive and direction and decision-making ability,” Westbrook said later. “And this is what gets destroyed in this process of repetitive brain injury. He was pretty much at sea in an open boat unless somebody directed him.”

  Westbrook thought it was a
n “easy case to decide.” He wrote to the disability board: “With the history of multiple head injuries that all football players have and the history that the patient has predominately problems with what appears to be frontal lobe function, I think we can be pretty comfortable that this is related to injury.”

  “I don’t think it’s rocket science to say that there’s chronic injury from head injury in football,” Westbrook said. “I mean, we’ve all talked about it.”

  It would be years before it was known publicly what Edward Westbrook had concluded about Mike Webster, a period in which the concussion issue would sweep over the NFL like a giant wave and the question of what the league knew about the connection between football and brain damage—and when it knew it—would potentially be worth millions, if not billions, of dollars.

  On October 28, 1999, on Westbrook’s recommendation, the retirement board granted Webster “Total and Permanent” disability benefits on the basis of his injuries. A few months later, Fitzsimmons received a letter from Sarah E. Gaunt, the plan’s director, explaining the decision: “The Retirement Board determined that Mr. Webster’s disability arose while he was an Active Player.” The medical reports, including one from the NFL’s handpicked neurologist, “indicate that his disability is the result of head injuries suffered as a football player with the Pittsburgh Steelers and Kansas City Chiefs.” The league’s own disability committee—chaired by a representative of the NFL commissioner and managed in part by the NFL owners, who elected that commissioner—had determined that professional football had caused Mike Webster’s brain damage.

  A decade later, as thousands of former players were suing the NFL for fraud, Fitzsimmons, who by then had nothing to do with the lawsuit, would describe that 1999 letter as “the proverbial smoking gun.”

  The decision was a hollow victory for Webster. The league didn’t dispute that pro football had caused his brain damage, but the retirement board disagreed on when he became so disabled that he couldn’t hold a job. All five doctors—Westbrook included—concluded that that happened immediately after Webster’s career ended. The board determined that it was several years later, even though Webster’s only full-time employment was his truncated season with the Chiefs in which he lived in a storage closet. Financially, the retirement board had made a hairsplitting—but life-changing—distinction. It was the difference between $42,000 a year and hundreds of thousands.

  Webster, of course, was apoplectic, and so was Fitzsimmons. The attorney whipped off letter after letter to the board in “an attempt to correct an obvious mistake.” He recruited more doctors. He filed more forms. But no change was forthcoming. “Needless to say, I am disappointed and also frustrated,” Fitzsimmons wrote. “I have now written to you … on 38 separate occasions. I have submitted the reports of at least ten independent doctors. Mike has filed three affidavits and we have obtained all of the available records you have requested.”

  Vodvarka, who continued to bear witness to Webster’s decline as his personal physician, sat down and wrote Fitzsimmons a letter to try to make sense of it all. For much of his life, Vodvarka had worshiped Mike Webster, the Pittsburgh Steelers, and the National Football League. He couldn’t get over the injustice, how the NFL had honored Webster by putting him in the Hall of Fame, how Webster was frequently named to the all-time teams that experts put together. Yet the league had abandoned him. “I am and could only be appalled,” Vodvarka wrote Fitzsimmons. “We are dealing with a unique situation where a human being has lost his well-deserved dignity, respected reputation and most importantly his family. The Pittsburgh Steelers and the National Football League have turned their backs, and have done nothing but try to destroy one of their most prolific players. I can only imagine what misery some of the National Football League’s lesser players must suffer. Are they [the NFL] afraid to set a precedent? Do they expect the common people/taxpayers to fund their casualties while paying to watch them occur?”

  Fitzsimmons concluded he had no alternative except to sue the Bert Bell/Pete Rozelle NFL Player Retirement Plan. Thus began an entirely new battle, one that Webster would not live to see concluded.

  His life was now in free fall. As soon as the disability checks started rolling in, the IRS garnished most of the payments; after taxes and the levy, he was getting $641.67 a month. His ability to remember people and places was fading rapidly.

  One night he and Colin took a drive to the local convenience store, just down the block from their apartment. They had made the trip dozens of times. Suddenly Webster made a wrong turn.

  “What are you doing, Dad?” Colin asked. “The convenience store is that way.”

  “What are you talking about?” said Webster.

  Colin tried again, but Webster started arguing. For 10 minutes they went back and forth, with Colin trying to convince his father that he was mistaken.

  “I think you’re crazy; I don’t know what you’re telling me, but all right, let’s look,” Webster said.

  When Webster came upon the store, he was shaken.

  “That was the scariest look I’ve ever seen on his face,” Colin said. “It was like, ‘Oh, my God, I just lost how to brush my teeth or tie my shoes.’ The confusion and horror that was in his eyes, it was like, ‘Oh, man!’ I think that was really the worst for him, that he knew he was losing it.”

  One night Colin went to get a snack in the kitchen only to discover his father standing in front of the oven, the door open, his pants down, pissing into it.

  “What are you doing, Dad?” Colin asked.

  “Oh, Jesus, I thought I was going in a urinal,” Webster said.

  Eventually, two years out of high school, with no money and no career prospects, Colin decided to join the Marines. When he left, his younger brother, Garrett, not yet 16, came down from Wisconsin to assume the role of son/caretaker/roommate. In Garrett’s case, it was more roommate and caretaker than son. If Colin and his father had been like bachelor pals, Garrett and Webster were more like high school buddies. Garrett was huge, nearly 6-8, bigger than his dad. He played football even though his heart wasn’t in it, saddled by the burden of being the son of a Hall of Fame center.

  But Garrett, like Colin, loved hanging out with his dad. They browsed around Kmart at two in the morning, went to WWE wrestling matches, watched many of the same movies over and over: The Princess Bride, Tombstone, Goodfellas, Happy Gilmore, and, of course, any John Wayne flick. He and Garrett were Star Wars nerds, so they made sure they were there when Episode II—Attack of the Clones opened in spring 2002. Near the end of the movie, when Yoda strikes a pose with his light saber, ready to fight for the first time, Webster leaped out of his seat, screaming, “Yeah, yeah!”

  But where once Team Webster could expect maybe 15 or 20 good days every month, he was down to perhaps 3 to 5. Sunny said Mike often sniffed ammonia late at night to stave off sleep, fearing he wouldn’t wake up. “I don’t want to fall asleep, little buddy,” Webster would say.

  Webster’s demise was reflected in his incoherent letters.

  One read:

  What is NOW what every one Family Kids Poor mother wives all more trouble Terrible situation Every one poverty worse & worse use more more our own Property Saving Every Penny still not enough

  From a Kinko’s in Madison on March 15, 2002, Webster faxed a nine-page letter to the Brain Injury Association of America. It was written in the third person in Webster’s hand. One passage read:

  To Levery all but a pathetic $800 from all Mike’s monthly assets He has Levied Then about $14,000 per month and hHas Virthually Causes The Collapse of all the Good and Beneficial Polciies That had Mike making His own Way, meeting the oblgations and Honroing the Dependents Needs and also Paying out on Thos obligations Which he has been Determoin and resolute to Fullfill.

  One night, Bob Stage, the former Steelers pilot, ran into Webster at a convenience store in Moon Township. The two men had once been close. Stage had attended Pro Bowls in Honolulu with Webster. The two men had gott
en their families together, had prayed together and shared their faith. But now Webster had cut himself off—from old teammates, old friends, nearly everyone.

  Stage walked up to say hello. Webster was gaunt and frail; he looked like he was 70.

  “Mike, it’s Robert!” said Stage, using the faux French pronunciation the way Webster used to.

  “You could see a little flicker of recognition,” said Stage, “and then it was like a light going out in his eyes.”

  Stage was destroyed. He went home and wept.

  Three months later, around 11:30 P.M., Garrett called Sunny from the Walmart parking lot at Robinson Township. He said his father was having chest pains and trouble breathing. Sunny joined them and called Charles Kelly, the Wheeling doctor who had become Mike’s good friend. By then, Webster’s lips were turning blue. Kelly told Sunny to give Mike aspirin “in case he’s having a heart attack” and drive him to the emergency room. Garrett went into the store and came back with Tylenol. His dad cussed him out. “Are you trying to kill me?” Webster said. “That’s not the right stuff.”

  Garrett went back to the store and fetched some aspirin, which Mike gulped down. His condition wasn’t improving. Sunny drove him to the emergency room at Heritage Valley Sewickley Hospital.

  “I got Hall of Famer Mike Webster in my car; he’s not feeling well,” Sunny told the nurse. “Can you please help him?”

  Webster was talkative and upbeat. He asked Sunny to take Garrett to school in the morning. As a nurse went to insert a catheter, he joked: “This is the first time a woman has touched me like that in ten years.” The nurse injected him with morphine, and Sunny and Garrett could hear him saying behind the curtain: “Oh, yeah, baby, that’s the good stuff.”

  They thought everything would be fine. And then suddenly it wasn’t. Tests revealed two fully blocked arteries and two that were partially blocked. Webster’s heart was failing. He was transferred to Allegheny General in an ambulance. Webster was still optimistic and reassuring. When he saw Sunny, he reminded him of their plan to buy a pair of motorcycles someday.