If only.
On the morning of the biggest game of his life, Tommy Barnhardt woke up at the Conrad Hilton, took the elevator to the lobby, and joined his teammates for breakfast. In a couple of hours Chicago would host the Washington Redskins in a divisional play-off game at Soldier Field. Barnhardt, a rookie punter from the gumball-sized town of Salisbury, North Carolina, was terrified. “I glanced out the window and it was like thirty-five degrees below zero,” he said. “I’d never punted in cold like that. I didn’t know how.” Brarnhardt loaded his plate with eggs and found a spot at a table occupied by Wagner, who was injured, and Payton. “So I go to get some ketchup, and when I come back to sprinkle salt on my eggs, the top of the salt container falls off and my eggs are covered with salt. I grabbed some pepper, and the same thing happens—pours everywhere. Walter starts cracking up, because he did it. Here’s this huge game, and someone’s fucking with me. I was annoyed, but it was Walter Payton. What could I say?”
Moments later, Payton joined Barnhardt in the elevator. The kid wore his stress like a suntan. “Look,” Payton said, “I know you’re nervous, but it’s just wind. Kick it high and hard, and the wind will take it a mile. We have good enough people here to pick up the slack.”
Barnhardt nodded appreciatively. “Walter really loosened me up,” he said. “He saw how scared I was, and he wanted to help. It was genuinely decent of him.”
Though the Bears had finished 11-4, Washington was the thinking man’s pick to pull off the win. Chicago spent the week leading up to the game practicing on the campus of the University of Notre Dame. It was a huge mistake. In South Bend, Indiana, the bars are plentiful. The beer taps flow like Iguazu Falls. “We were in a college town and we partied hard the entire time,” said Hilgenberg. “By the time Sunday came we were exhausted.”
Though Chicago’s defense ranked fourth overall in the league, it scared no one. “We haven’t played [the 46 Defense] since the second game of the season,” said Marshall, the veteran linebacker. “We have a new coaching staff. The attitude here was, ‘Hey, we can trash that forty-six. We can win without that.’ ” Nobody feared coming to Chicago, or worried about Payton—expected to be the primary ball carrier with Anderson out with a knee injury—slicing up their linebackers. When, on his weekly radio show, Ditka predicted his team would reach the Super Bowl (“I think we’ll win it all,” he said. “Because we expect to win. We don’t expect to lose to anybody.”), the words were met with a collective yawn.
Payton prepared for the game by dodging most interview requests, knowing too well the first question would concern either his career-low 533 rushing yards or his fumble against Washington in the previous year’s play-off loss. When he did talk, it was softly, with a jarring level of defeatism. “Sometimes I feel I’m the problem here,” he said. “A lot of times, I don’t even feel I belong here. These are feelings I never felt before. It’s hard. A lot of times, I feel Matt [Suhey], Thomas [Sanders], and Calvin [Thomas] want to play more, and if I wasn’t here, it seems everybody’s wish would be granted. Sometimes I wish this year would hurry up and end, so these guys would get what they wanted.”
Payton started the game alongside Suhey, with McMahon back at quarterback. All seemed right in the world, especially when Chicago jumped out to a 14–0 lead. Energized by a capacity crowd of 58,153, Payton, age thirty-four, looked like Payton, age twenty-four. He ran for seventy-four first-half yards—fifteen on his first carry, seven on the next play to set up the Bears’ first touchdown. On the second scoring drive, he burst up the middle for fifteen yards on a third-and-ten draw, and gained seven on another draw. There was an inspired vigor to his step. The great Walter Payton had perhaps returned for one last play-off roll.
The Redskins, however, fought back, and held a 21–17 lead late in the fourth quarter. With 1:12 remaining in the game, the Bears received the football on their own thirty-four-yard line. Time was left for one last push. Yet after three plays netted a paltry two yards, Chicago faced a fourth-and-eight at the thirty-six. Forty-one seconds stood on the clock. McMahon dropped back, looked downfield. Willie Gault, the speedy receiver, was blanketed. So was Ron Morris, the rookie flanker from SMU. To his right, McMahon spotted a wide-open Payton. He caught the swing pass, turned up the field, and ran toward the right sideline. He saw the first-down marker, tantalizingly within reach, and aimed for it. As Barry Wilburn, a Redskins safety, approached, Payton reached out his left arm. Undeterred, Wilburn grabbed Payton by the back of his jersey while Brian Davis, a cornerback, closed in. Together, the two Redskins pushed Payton out of bounds . . .
One yard short.
He needed eight yards. He gained seven. The game was, for all intents, over. The two Redskins leapt in the air. Payton, for a moment, sat frozen. On the final play of his career, the running back who always popped up stayed down. The running back who never ran for the sideline found himself by the sideline. The running back who always seemed to gain the extra yard failed to gain the extra yard. It was as cruel a send-off as anyone could remember.
“All my life, I’ve wanted to be on the same field with Walter Payton, the legend,” Davis, a twenty-four-year-old rookie, said afterward. “Just to touch him used to be a dream of mine. But Barry and I had him. I hated for it to end like that for Walter, but I said, ‘We’ve got to go on.’ ”
Payton, who had run for eighty-five yards on eighteen carries, walked from one side of the field to the other, reached the bench, and plopped down. He sat there, motionless, while the Redskins ran out the clock. As players from both teams met for the customary postgame handshakes and hugs, Payton never moved. He remained on the bench, his face buried in his right palm, plumes of warm breath rising, chimneylike, from his face mask. “One more year, Walter!” a fan screamed. “You can do it!” A couple of minutes passed. A couple of more minutes. Factoring in the wind chill, the temperature was negative twenty-three degrees. His teammates were long gone. Payton sat. And sat. And sat. Tears streamed down his cheeks. His eyes were closed tight. “I was just recapping some of the great moments,” Payton said years later. “I didn’t want to rush through it. Because if you stay there long enough these things will be etched in your heart and your soul.” What went through his mind? “Disappointment,” he told ESPN’s Roy Firestone. “Joy. Anxiety. Relief.” The fans began to chant. “Wal-ter! Wal-ter! Wal-ter!” A handful of TV cameramen and newspaper reporters surrounded him, sapping the moment of its isolated beauty.
By the time Payton rose, nearly ten minutes had passed. He took a deep breath, gazed longingly into the stands, and walked off the field. Upon entering the locker room, Payton was met by stares and silence. A pack of reporters waited for Payton at his locker and Gary Haeger, the young equipment manager, parted them with his extended arms, clearing a path. Payton sat down, placed his right leg on an adjacent bench, and closed his eyes. He had yet to remove his helmet or the thermal gray gloves that covered his hands. Nary a question was asked.
Calvin Thomas, the reserve fullback, leaned in. “You all right?” he said.
“Just taking my time, taking it all off,” Payton replied. “Just enjoying it, I guess.”
“Hey Walter!” a photographer hollered.
“Thirteen years,” Payton said with a whisper. “Thirteen damn years here and I’m still Walter, not Mr. Payton.” He wore a blank expression. Was Payton kidding? Was he serious? Nobody seemed to know.
Dave Anderson, a New York Times columnist, described the scene that unfolded:
One by one, he tugged at the fingers of the gray thermal gloves and tossed them to [Haeger]. He lifted off his turf-scraped helmet, but left on a navy blue wool hood. He unbuckled his shoulder pads and pulled them over his black, curly hair. He sat down and tore the white tape off his shoes. He took off his knee pads and his striped uniform stockings, then he cut the tape off his right ankle and his left ankle. Now he reached inside his white uniform pants, yanked the thigh pads out and handed them to the equipment manager.
“Thre
e years high school, four years college and thirteen seasons here,” he said, “I’ve worn the same thigh pads.”
He took off his wool hood, then he took off a blue sweatshirt and a white T-shirt. And wearing only his jockstrap, he walked to the shower room. When he returned with a smudge of soap near his left ear, Bill Gleason, a longtime Chicago sports columnist, was waiting at his locker. “You going to miss me?” Gleason joked.
“You going to miss me?” Payton asked.
“Absolutely,” said Gleason, who waved at the swarm of notebooks and asked, “Are you going to miss this?”
“No, not too bad,” Payton said, smiling. “But I’ll miss you. What do you remember most?”
“How much fun you were,” Gleason said.
“That’s the main reason why I was playing,” Payton said. “It was fun.”
Sitting at his locker now, Payton put on knee-high black socks, gray jeans, a long-sleeved turquoise sports shirt and polished black cowboy boots. Quickly, he reached for a towel and wiped the boots. “Got to look the part,” he said, smiling. Turning up the left sleeve of his shirt, he pulled a small bandage off his elbow, revealing a bloody scrape. He tossed the bandage onto the floor and walked to the trainer’s room.
“I need another bandage,” he said. “This one has too much Vaseline on it.”
Payton retreated to a tent across from the locker room and answered a couple of questions. Yes, he was sad. No, he wouldn’t reconsider retirement. Sure, he wished the game could have ended differently. “Overall, it’s been a lot of fun,” he said. “When you take away the fun, it’s time to leave. That’s why it’s so hard to leave now. It’s still fun. God’s been very good to me. I’m truly blessed.”
With those words, Payton called it a career. Bundled in a black cardigan sweater with a shawl collar, he walked alone into the frigid Chicago air.
What, at the age of thirty-four, would he do now?
The greatest running back in NFL history hadn’t the slightest idea.
PART FOUR
RETIREMENT
Tim Ehlebracht, Chicago Bears wide receiver, 1981 and 1982 training camps
I was cut by the Bears in 1982, and the only player I kept in any kind of touch with was Walter. Just casually, nothing regular. Well, in the early 1990s the daughter of one of my close friends got pancreatic cancer. Her name was Stephanie Motzer. We had a hundred-hole golf marathon to try to raise money and get her the best possible treatment. Along with the marathon we did an auction, and because I’d been with the Bears I was put in charge of getting stuff. I called Michael Jordan’s PR firm and asked if we could get an autographed basketball. I told them it was so a nine-year-old girl could get treatment for cancer. They told me they get too many requests, so they don’t give out balls to anyone. Then I called Walter’s office and explained the whole situation—about the girl and her cancer and what had happened with Jordan. He told me I should give him a couple of days and he’d put something together. Two or three days later I went to his office. He had one of his jerseys autographed, he had signed photographs of all the current Bears, he had a baseball bat from Bo Jackson.
And he had a basketball autographed by Michael Jordan.
CHAPTER 22
NOW WHAT?
FOR THE LAST THIRTEEN YEARS, WALTER PAYTON’S LIFE HAD BEEN A WELLORGANIZED, well-patterned ode to the predictability and routine of the professional athlete. During seasons, the Chicago Bears made certain all his needs and wants were met. Travel plans—booked. Dinner reservations—done. Car pickup—scheduled. If he desired to read a newspaper, a copy of that day’s Tribune or Sun-Times would be gently placed atop the chair before his locker. If he hungered for a hamburger and fries, a locker room kid would be sent to pick it up. If he craved a back rub, a massage therapist was at his beck and call.
Even in the off-season Payton’s life was laid out for him. The family employed a live-in nanny, Luna Picart, a heavily accented Jamaican émigré who did 90 percent of the cooking, cleaning, and child rearing. Payton had an executive assistant, Ginny Quirk, who answered all his calls, filed all his papers, scheduled all his appointments. Bud Holmes pushed his client toward eventual ownership of an NFL team, handling most of the necessary filings and contacts. His accountant, Jerry Richman, made it so Payton rarely had to think about numbers. There has always been much talk of Payton’s hands-on involvement in his charity, the Walter Payton Foundation. But, truth be told, Quirk and, later, Kimm Tucker, managed all of the day-to-day issues. Payton showed up when told, smiled when told, spoke on behalf of kiddies when told. He believed in the cause (helping care for low-income children), but rarely took the lead.
Now, because of the pampering, as an ex-football player Payton found himself burdened by a realization that had crippled thousands of ex-athletes before him: I am bored out of my mind.
“I had no idea how to fill my days,” Payton said. “Prior to that, everything in my life was very regimental. Everything was, ‘Walter, do this, Walter, do that.’ There was not much in the way of me thinking. I was very much a creature of habit. I was the first to practice, I was the last to leave. I kind of thrived in an environment where I knew what was expected of me. Suddenly, I didn’t know what to do . . . people have no idea what an adjustment that is.”
Payton understood what it meant to be a celebrity, so he continued to play the role. In public, he laughed and smiled and waved and signed autographs. When strangers asked, he talked about how thrilled he was to be free of the burdens. “I’m not going to miss the pounding,” he told ABC’s Peter Jennings. “And the getting up at six and working out until dusk.” The words were pure fantasy. He would miss it desperately. In a world occupied by mechanics and plumbers and flight attendants and lawyers, nobody wanted to hear a wealthy ex-football player whine about the sudden lack of purpose to his life. But that’s what Payton was experiencing—a sudden lack of purpose. “He went from an abnormal existence as an athlete to a normal one,” said Brittney Payton, his daughter. “How does anyone do that?”
In early February of 1988 Payton flew to Hawaii to preside over the opening coin toss at the Pro Bowl (he found his first taste as a has-been to be depressing, and didn’t stay for the game), with a brief stop in San Diego to meet with Pete Rozelle, the NFL commissioner, about the possibility of one day owning an expansion franchise. He accepted a (largely nominal) position on the Bears’ board of directors, was named winner of the World Book James Arneberg Award for outstanding service and was honored by Columbia High School with the retiring of his uniform number (still bitter over his father’s death, he refused to attend the ceremony). It was all nice and dandy, but mind-numbingly dull. Once you’ve played in nine Pro Bowls, where’s the thrill in being an attendee? Once you’re honored 8,000 times, what’s 8,001? Once you’ve had fifty thousand fans chanting your name . . . well, how does a person move beyond such a thing?
When, four years earlier, Walter and Connie built their dream home on five and a half acres in South Barrington, the idea was that it would serve as an oasis from the real world; that the shooting range in the basement and home theatre system and pool tables and lounge chairs and fishing pond would make 34 Mudhank Road (Walter created the house number himself) seem like a luxury address, not merely a house at the end of a street. Yet now that he had nothing to do and nowhere to do it, the home felt mostly like a prison. When he was there, Payton spent countless hours on the couch, thinking, wondering, hoping, napping. He would call people at all hours of the day and night, looking to chat, longing for ideas. Though he had just recently played his final game, a feeling of irrelevance came quickly. Off-season newspaper articles about the Bears no longer dealt with Payton. Sports radio mentioned him sporadically, if at all. When asked, Payton told people that he was still working out and staying in tip-top shape. Not true. When the final whistle blew, Payton’s obsessive devotion to fitness died. He made regular pilgrimages to the nearby Bob Evans for bacon and eggs with a huge side helping of sausage. He gorged on Beniha
na whenever possible.
Once, while flying to an event, Payton sat next to a woman in first class who turned toward him and said, “Do I know you from somewhere?” Payton leaned close and said, “Actually, I’m one of the world’s most famous male strippers. You’ve probably seen me perform.” Payton rose, removed his jacket, and pretended to begin his routine. The woman was mortified until a boy approached and said, “Mr. Payton, can I have your autograph?”
She laughed uproariously. “Oh my God,” the woman said, cackling. “That’s the best trick anyone has ever played on me.” An executive with Wendy’s, she handed Payton a card that provided him a lifetime of free hamburgers. “Let’s just say they knew him at the Wendy’s drive-thru,” said Tucker, who worked with Payton after his retirement as the executive director of his charitable foundation. “He loved those free burgers.”
Walter Payton was a man who was recognized all over the country, yet he suddenly found himself very much alone. He kept in regular contact with none of his ex-teammates or coaches, and had long ago established a distant relationship with his older brother, Eddie. “When Eddie would call, a lot of the time Walter pretended he wasn’t there,” said Quirk. “He didn’t have much to talk with his brother about. The bond was iffy.”
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