Sweetness

by Jeff Pearlman

  Payton, who fumbled six times during the regular season, had waited much of his life to play in a Super Bowl. He spent the night before the game tossing and turning in bed. TV on, TV off. Get up, get down. Light on, light off. A practitioner of positive visualization, he imagined himself slicing through New England’s defense en route to 150 yards, three touchdowns, and the game’s MVP trophy.

  Instead, he fumbled.

  Payton retreated to the sideline and spoke briefly with Matt Suhey, who implored him to shake off the blunder. Payton, however, was devastated. For two weeks, Chicago’s defense barked loudly about pitching the first shutout in Super Bowl history. Now, as Tony Franklin’s thirty-six-yard field goal soared through the uprights, the dream was dead.19

  “My fondest memory of that game is the Patriots taking a 3–0 lead,” said Gary Christenson, the Bears’ ticket manager. “I was sitting next to the Patriots’ ticket manager, and he had a grin from ear to ear. I thought to myself, ‘Just wait, buddy. Just you wait.’ ”

  For the remainder of the game, Payton was a nonfactor. The man who overcame prejudice and small-school bias and injury and shoddy offensive lines couldn’t get the fumble out of his head. The mishap plagued him. Haunted him. He moped along the sideline, and though he was handed the ball twenty-two times, he ran for a meager sixty-one yards while failing to catch a single pass. Afterward, Chicago’s players and coaches rationalized his poor performance by insisting New England obsessed over him, and that Payton’s mere presence allowed McMahon to throw for 256 yards and run for two touchdowns. “The Patriots,” said Gault, “were dead-set on holding Walter down.”

  Even with a cardboard Red Grange cutout starting in Payton’s place, nothing could have stopped the Bears. Chicago was too fast, too strong, too intimidating. The Bears led 23–3 at halftime, then scored twenty-one unanswered points in the third quarter. By the time the game ended, the 46–10 victory stood as the greatest rout in Super Bowl history.

  As the final minutes ticked away, Chicago players and coaches walked up and down the sidelines, hugging, laughing, embracing. This was the end result of a glorious season, and the Bears were committed to enjoying it. Mike Singletary hugged Otis Wilson and Wilber Marshall. McMahon and Gault, hardly the best of friends, exchanged a demonstrative high-five. Suhey wrapped his arm around Thomas, who wrapped his arm around Dennis Gentry.

  And what of Walter Payton?

  He pouted.

  The fumble kicked off the funk. What catapulted it to a new level, however, was the fact that, as the Bears rolled up forty-six points, Payton was never granted entrance into the end zone. When Suhey ran for an eleven-yard touchdown late in the first quarter, Payton was the lead blocker. When McMahon ran an option bootleg for a score early in the second quarter, Payton trailed him, waiting for a pitch that never arrived. When McMahon dove over the top from one yard out in the third quarter, Payton was sent wide right as a receiver.

  With 3:22 remaining in the third quarter, Payton suffered the ultimate indignity. Chicago led 37–3, and again found itself positioned on New En- gland’s one-yard line. Ditka sent Perry into the game and lined him up alongside Payton in the backfield. When McMahon took the snap, he handed the ball to the Fridge, who trampled over McGrew into the end zone. As Perry leapt to his feet to spike the football, Blackmon reached out to his fallen teammate. “’Grew, you OK?” he asked.

  “Damn,” said McGrew. “I just made a highlight film for the next fifty years.”

  McGrew smiled. Even in defeat, he could laugh at the insanity of a 325-pound defensive tackle rushing for a Super Bowl touchdown. Payton, however, wasn’t grinning. He returned to the sideline and took a seat on the bench. Early in the fourth quarter Jerry Vainisi, Chicago’s general manager, noticed that Payton had yet to score. He rushed down to the field from the press box and reminded Ditka. “I know . . . I know,” the coach responded. “We’re trying to get him one.”

  It never happened.

  “Those last two minutes of the game were agony for Walter,” said Covert. “You could see it on his face—he just wanted out of there.” When the final whistle sounded and the Chicago Bears were officially Super Bowl champions, Payton headed directly to the locker room. He entered, tore off his jersey, and slammed his shoulder pads to the floor.

  “If you looked at Walter,” said Ken Valdiserri, the team’s director of media relations, “you would have thought we’d lost.”

  “For the ten years I had played with him, Walter claimed it didn’t matter how many yards he got, how many touchdowns he scored—it was about winning,” said Brian Baschnagel, the veteran receiver who, because of a seasonending knee injury, watched the game from above in the coaches’ box. “That was the attitude I took, too. I didn’t care how many passes I caught, as long as the Bears won. And I always felt Walter felt the exact same way. But when he reacted the way he did . . . it was the exact opposite of what he had claimed to be as an athlete.”

  As Chicago’s players and coaches reached the locker room, Payton was nowhere to be found. Teammates wanted to congratulate him. Ditka wanted to tell him the Bears couldn’t have done it without him. Members of the media, quickly stampeding into the room, wanted to know how it felt to finally fulfill a dream.

  Valdiserri and Bill McGrane, the team’s marketing director, were the first to reach Payton. His eyes were red, and tears streamed down his cheeks. “He didn’t score and he didn’t feel as if he’d contributed to the win,” said Valdisseri. “I found it to be such an odd and awkward moment, because that’s not what he represented throughout his career. I never knew him to bask in his statistics. At least that’s not the way he made it seem. I thought it was a complete paradox.”

  Valdisseri and McGrane begged Payton to come out of the broom closet. “Walter,” Valdisseri said, “how is it going to look if you don’t talk? Here we just won the first Super Bowl for the Bears, and this should be the highest point of your career. Don’t let your disappointment in your own performance bring down the moment.”

  Payton wasn’t having it. “I ain’t no damned monkey on a string,” he snapped. “I don’t have to jump up and smile just because TV wants me to.”

  He was livid at Ditka for ignoring him and livid at Perry and McMahon for hogging the spotlight and livid at himself for fumbling. The highest point of his career? Ha. It felt like 1975 all over again.

  Around the time Valdisseri and McGrane were finishing with Payton, Bud Holmes entered the locker room. Ever since they first teamed up before the 1975 Draft, Holmes had paid special attention to his client’s image. He knew of Payton’s selfishness and insecurities (as well as his goodness and decency), and the last thing he wanted was for a nation of football fans to see it on display now, in the glow of victory.

  Holmes stormed into the tiny closet, where he found Payton sitting on a box.

  “What the hell is wrong you with?” Holmes screamed.

  “You know what’s wrong,” Payton replied.

  “Goddamn boy, one monkey does not stop the show,” Holmes said. “The show’s gotta go on. Look, Ditka was the one who didn’t get you a touchdown. If the press wants to gut him for it, let it be their call. But if you go out there and do anything but brag on him for getting you to a Super Bowl and brag on him for letting you achieve so much, your reputation as a good guy is dead, and you’ll be remembered as the selfish sack of shit who moped after a Super Bowl.”

  “But,” Payton countered, “this isn’t the way you treat a star.”

  “Bullshit,” Holmes said. “Right now there are hundreds of reporters out there with sharp, sharp pencils waiting for you to blast him. Maybe they even agree with you. But if you blast him now, they’ll come back in a few days and blast you even worse.

  “So do me a favor and act like the happiest son of a bitch in the world. If I can find you a straw hat and a cane, you can come out and tap dance in front of everyone to prove it.”

  Payton asked Holmes for a couple of minutes to gather himself. When he fin
ally emerged from the closet, he was shirtless, with a white towel dangling over his right shoulder. He was stopped by NBC’s Bob Costas, who requested a live interview.

  COSTAS: Walter, was there ever a time during your long career, when you were performing so brilliantly and your team was at a level beneath that, that you felt this dream would never come true?

  PAYTON: Well, you try not to think about it. During the off-season when you see other people playing in the Super Bowl, you wonder and you say to yourself, ‘Are you ever gonna get there and see what it feels like?’ And it pushes you a little bit harder during that off-season to work to try to get there the following year. This team had their minds made up after losing to San Francisco last year that we were going to win the Super Bowl this year.

  COSTAS: Can you describe the feeling for you personally?

  PAYTON: Right now it really hasn’t sunk in. I don’t feel anything. It’s one of those things where when you have it in your mind for so long what it would be like, and then after the actual event happens, it tends to take away from it. Right now I’m still a little bumped and bruised from the game. It really hasn’t happened yet.

  Standing to the side, Holmes was satisfied. Payton, however, remained petulant. Instead of making plans with teammates or family members, he retreated to the empty training room. “He and I left the Super Bowl together in a taxicab, after everyone was gone,” said Fred Caito, the veteran trainer. “By the time we left the training room it was quiet and dark. He never even took a shower—just sulked.” Upon reaching the hotel, Payton was greeted in the lobby by Lewis Pitzele, a Chicago-based music producer he had known via business dealings. Payton invited him to his room. “He started telling me why he wasn’t going out, and then he started crying,” said Pitzele. “I was answering the phone for him—ABC and CBS and Good Morning America were all calling the room, trying to book him for the next day. He didn’t want to talk to anyone. We eventually went downstairs to the banquet, but he was crushed.”

  Many of Payton’s teammates were perplexed and disappointed. Some were mad at the running back for his selfishness. Who cared about a touchdown in the Super Bowl? What difference did it make? “He felt like it would have been the crowning jewel on his career,” said Covert. “But Walter didn’t need a crowning jewel.” Others were perplexed by Ditka slighting their beloved superstar. Maury Buford, the team’s first-year punter, thought back to the preseason, when the coach embarrassed him during a Monday afternoon film session. “Ditka never could pronounce my name,” said Buford. “In front of everyone he said, ‘Murry, Morty, Marty . . . whatever the fuck your name is. You better get your shit together and stop shanking punts, or I’ll have enough punters in here tomorrow to make your head spin.’ I was crushed. Well, from behind me I feel a huge hand on my shoulder. It was Walter, and he whispers, ‘Don’t worry about that, Maury. Ditka pulls this shit all the fucking time.’ That’s who Walter was—someone who’d die for a teammate. He deserved a touchdown.”

  McMahon, the owner of two scores, kicked himself for not taking action into his own hands. “When they called the play for Perry,” he said, “I should have just ignored it and given the ball to Walter.” Jay Hilgenberg wondered how such an oversight could have happened. “We scored forty-six points—why couldn’t Walter have scored at least once?” the center said. “In hindsight, there’s no excuse.”

  Nobody felt worse than Ditka, who through the years came to love Payton as he had few other players. In the heat of the game, he simply failed to consider what a touchdown would have meant. “I would never do anything to hurt Walter,” Ditka said. “As I’ve said repeatedly, I wouldn’t want anyone else carrying the ball in any situation than him. Not Jim Brown, not Gale Sayers, no one. I scored a touchdown in a Super Bowl, and I wish I could take that and give it to him. Because the last thing I wanted to hear was, at his greatest career moment, Walter Payton feeling down.

  “He was,” said Ditka, “the best player I ever coached. And, in hindsight, he deserved better.”

  CHAPTER 21

  AFTERMATH

  WHEN A FRANCHISE PLAYER WINS A SUPER BOWL, THE WORLD BECOMES HIS oyster.

  No, things didn’t go as planned for Walter Payton in New Orleans. And no, he would not soon forget Mike Ditka failing to allow him to score a touchdown against the Patriots.

  But if Bud Holmes had concerns that his client’s petulance would leave a lasting—and damaging—impression on sports fans and corporate America, those fears were quickly put to rest. In the days and weeks following the big game, a smiling, giddy, reenergized Payton could be found everywhere. He was asked to attend a state dinner at the White House by President Ronald Reagan, America’s foremost football fan (Brian Mulroney, Canada’s prime minister, used the occasion to invite Payton to his home for some fishing). As always, he appeared at the annual Chicago Auto Show, signing autographs on behalf of Buick. Both the Cubs and White Sox requested he throw out the first ball at their home openers (he went with the Cubbies). He made the first public political statement of his life, using an NFL luncheon to expound on the strife in Libya (Payton: “It shows the uncertainty of what this world is heading for”). He participated in Hands Across America, a four-thousandmile chain of hand-holders from New York to California, and was saluted by Jackson, Mississippi, with “Walter Payton Day” and a parade in his honor.

  In one of the proudest moments of his career, Wheaties told Payton it wanted to place his image on the front of its cereal boxes—an honor bestowed on only four previous athletes (Bob Richards, Bruce Jenner, Mary Lou Retton, and Pete Rose). “To be on the box is sort of like a fairy tale that eventually came true,” he said. “Because in the world we live in, it’s a fantasy.”

  Payton’s strangest post–Super Bowl endeavor came in the form of a rap single/video called “Rappin’ Together,” which he recorded with—of all people—William Perry as a follow-up to “The Super Bowl Shuffle.” For some inexplicable reason, the idea sounded like a good one at the time: Take two football stars, hand them a sheet of lyrics written by four Evanston, Illinois, high school students, shove them in a recording studio, and let the magic happen. “There were two guys who knew I was a music promoter, and they said, ‘Why don’t you get Walter and the Fridge to do a rap together?’ ” said Lewis Pitzele, who became the song’s co-executive producer. “I thought it was a wonderful idea.” At the time, the genre was still considered fertile ground for goof ball fluff (think Rodney Dangerfield’s “Rappin’ Rodney”). The words:

  Together as a team we have a dream.

  Everyone will stand together.

  If we hold hands in this great land.

  We could make life a whole lot better.

  ‘Cause the people are the world we are the ones.

  Everyone should get involved.

  If we stand together and lock our hands.

  Our problems can be solved.

  Blessed with laughably bad lyrics and the inarticulate Perry, the “Rappin’ Together” cassette single sold a couple of thousand copies before finding itself in Illinois’ scattered bargain bins. “Walter was happy with the project,” said Pitzele. “And if the space shuttle [Challenger] hadn’t crashed the same week it was released, it would have been a huge hit.

  “But,” Pitzele said, “it wasn’t.”

  Though Walter Payton felt as if he were finally getting his due, reality as a professional football player can be harsh.

  On April 29, 1986, with the twenty-seventh selection of the first round of the NFL Draft, the Chicago Bears selected Neal Anderson out of the University of Florida.

  Neal Anderson—the running back.

  It was, of course, inevitable. At some point the Bears had to start grooming Payton’s successor, and Jerry Vainisi, the team’s fourth-year general manager, rightly determined that the time was now. Despite all the praise and accolades coming Payton’s way, he wasn’t the same player he had been in years past. He was slower, more mechanical, less willing to deliver a hit. Still gre
at, still tough, but no longer transcendent. “Walter had played eleven years, and even he knew we needed a running back,” said Vainisi. “He was somewhat uncomfortable with it, especially because Neal was very good and chomping at the bit to play. Walter had a lot of pride.”

  So did Anderson. Florida’s all-time rushing leader in yards, touchdowns, and attempts, the twenty-one-year-old Graceville, Florida, native was the first top pick of the Bears to ever miss his introductory press conference in the name of academics. “He’s a scholar,” an irked Mike Ditka said in explaining Anderson’s absence to take two final exams. Anderson further annoyed the organization by holding out for most of training camp. When he finally signed a four-year, $1.3 million contract, Anderson reported to the Lake Forest complex and was ordered by the other running backs to fetch them doughnuts.

  He steadfastly refused. As a freshman at Florida back in 1982, Anderson was told all first-year players were required to shave their heads. “It was a Gator tradition, but I wasn’t having it,” he said. “Some of the upperclassmen, these big linemen, broke into my room one night when I was sleeping. They had a pair of trimmers, and they decided they were going to hold me down and cut my hair. It didn’t happen. I had a knife, and I made some threats. It didn’t make me any friends, but I believe what I believe.”

  With the Bears, Anderson once again stood his ground. Jelly, cream, chocolate sprinkled—didn’t matter. Neal Anderson would fetch no man a doughnut. “Even for Walter,” he said. “I’m a stubborn person, and it’s not my job to get you your morning sweet. It’s my job to play football.”

  Throughout the season stories were written about the old Bear taking the new Bear under his wing; about Walter and Neal forming a potent one-two duo for a team that thrived upon running the ball. The whole bosom buddies narrative was fictionalized. “I don’t think Neal ever bought into Walter,” said Jay Hilgenberg, the veteran center. “He wanted to be his own guy.” Payton eyed Anderson wearily, like a lion guarding his food. Anderson mostly stayed out of his way. “I can’t say Walter embraced me, but he wasn’t mean to me, either,” Anderson said. “For a while the running backs didn’t accept me, but over time it got better. Walter was friendly enough.