Payton watched the exchange and said nothing. He later recalled it as the moment he first knew St. Louis was doomed. “I saw the whole thing crumbling right there,” he said. “I just kind of sat there and said, ‘Guys, I think we all have a common goal, which is to get this team.’ ”
On September 9, 1993, the partnership announced that Orthwein was stepping down, leaving Clinton in charge. “Frankly,” Clinton said, “I think our current partnership structure is stronger as a result of these recent moves.”
Payton was incensed. He called Clinton and chewed him out. “What the fuck are you thinking?” he screamed. “What did you just do to my dream? What the fuck did you just do?”
A flustered Clinton tried explaining his position, but to no avail. He went, hat in hand, to every wealthy person he knew, selling an opportunity nobody saw as an opportunity. A couple of weeks later, when it became clear he couldn’t get the proper financing, Clinton shuffled aside so that E. Stanley Kroenke, a wealthy real estate developer from Columbia, Missouri, could step in, take the lead, and save the day. Kroenke told Payton that he was still wanted and needed, and the ex–running back offered his support. “I’m with you,” he said. “If you can get this done, I’m with you.” Payton’s words hid his feelings: Hope was dead. He thrust most of the blame upon Clinton, whom he no longer spoke with. Not all that long ago, Clinton had paid nearly sixty thousand dollars of his own money to place a full-page advertisement in USA Today highlighting Payton’s place among the St. Louis ownership group. Now the two were enemies. “I honestly think Walter was brainwashed by the other group,” Clinton said. “I don’t know how else to explain it.”
On October 26, 1993, Kroenke, Payton, and company gathered at the Hyatt near Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, where the NFL was holding its expansion meetings. Each city—St. Louis, Charlotte, Jacksonville, Baltimore, and Memphis—had its own suite, and the two NFL officials in charge of the expansion decision, Roger Goodell and Neil Austrian, went from room to room, listening to the pitches. The St. Louis presentation was, even with Payton’s impassioned plea, a disaster. “You know what, guys, get this shit together,” Goodell said. “This is ridiculous. You’re there if you can cut the squabbling.” The NFL announced that one of the teams would be given to Charlotte, but the decision on the other location wouldn’t come until a month later.
In St. Louis, the news was greeted with mixed emotions. Maybe, just maybe, there was still a reason to believe.
There wasn’t.
On November 30, Jacksonville, Florida—a city one-eighth the size of St. Louis, with the nation’s fifty-fifth television market—was gifted with the second team. Payton knew the situation was looking grim, but he still couldn’t believe it. Jacksonville? Just in case Payton’s devastation wasn’t raw enough, one of the partners in the Jacksonville bid was Deron Cherry, a longtime Kansas City Chiefs cornerback who, thanks in large part to the bumbling St. Louis crew, would beat out Payton to become the NFL’s first African-American owner.
Cherry and Payton shared a friendship dating back to the 1983 Pro Bowl—Payton’s sixth, Cherry’s first. “One of the NFC’s defensive backs warned me about Walter, that if you didn’t tackle him early in a play he’d high-step all over you,” said Cherry. “So they give him the football and he’s high-stepping, and I came over and grabbed him around his neck, hog-tied him like one would a bull and brought him down. He got up and pushed me. I pushed him back. Then he looked me in the face and said, ‘I like the way you play the game!’ ” The two kept in regular touch and years later, when Payton first joined the St. Louis group, Cherry ran into him at an event. “Shoot,” Cherry said, “you’re all but guaranteed a team. You guys have everything working for you.”
Now, as the members of Jacksonville’s expansion unit exchanged hugs inside the Hyatt, Cherry’s joy was mixed with a modicum of guilt. This was supposed to be Walter Payton’s moment. He worked for it. He deserved it. “He was the face of the NFL,” Cherry said. “I remember how sad it was when he didn’t get to score in the Super Bowl, and this was sort of the same way. He was denied something he clearly wanted very badly.”
With nothing else to shoot for, a despondent Payton left the hotel and drove home. Four years of work for nothing.
He never felt more depressed. Or alone.
But wait. Go back. There was a bit of good news in 1993. Although Walter Payton would never fulfill his dream of owning an NFL franchise, on January 30 he became the twenty-third Chicago Bear to be voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. As his fellow inductees—Chargers quarterback Dan Fouts, Dolphins offensive guard Larry Little, and coaches Chuck Noll and Bill Walsh—greeted the news with equal parts glee and deference, Payton’s take was odd. He called the honor “nice,” but refused to display even a sliver of outward happiness. When informed of his induction, his reaction was unprecedented and perplexing. Journalists expecting the requisite I’m-just-so-honored response received little of the sort. Payton asked members of the local media whether the vote was unanimous, and brooded when told the tally (a panel of thirty-four pro football writers voted) was never revealed.
“I have mixed emotions,” he said. “I want to make the Hall of Fame unanimously. I try to be the best I possibly can be. If I do something, I want to do it all the way. If I got in unanimously, it means I was recognized as the best at what I did. If I didn’t get in unanimously, it means I wasn’t the best by all people’s standards. That would bother me.” Here was the crowning moment of a football player’s career, and he couldn’t enjoy it.
One week later Payton, citing a general aversion to ceremony, called Pete Elliott, the Pro Football Hall of Fame director, to tell him he wouldn’t be attending the formal introduction of the Hall’s Class of 1993 at the Pro Bowl festivities in Honolulu. “He was very sincere,” a baffled Elliott told the Chicago Tribune. “He said it was a great honor, but he couldn’t make it.” In the thirty-year history of the Hall, this was the first time anyone could remember a living inductee skipping out on the introduction. (Around this same time, Payton also turned down an invitation to a dinner in Baltimore for the All-Time Black College Football Team. Of the twenty-two honorees, seventeen attended—including Deacon Jones and a former North Carolina A&T quarterback named Jesse Jackson.) A couple of days later Payton groused to the Tribune how hurt he was that, after news of his induction, so few former teammates called with warm wishes. “The only athlete who sent his congratulations was Michael Jordan,” he said. “He sent a fruit basket and a card. Nobody else contacted me.”
As the July 31, 1993, Hall of Fame induction ceremony approached, Payton struggled. Initially, the difficulty was in choosing a presenter. The first person to come to mind was Jim Finks, the former Bears general manager who used the fourth selection in the 1975 NFL Draft to pick an undersized running back from Jackson State. Payton actually asked Finks, who was honored by the request. When the sixty-five-year-old five-packs-a-day cigarette smoker was diagnosed with lung cancer, however, he had to decline. Bud Holmes, his longtime agent who was responsible for much of Payton’s success, was next to be considered. Holmes quickly deferred. “Walter,” he said, “nobody cares about me. Pick someone else. Pick a family member.” Finally, after much deliberation, Payton settled on Jarrett, his charming, boisterous, twelve-year-old son. “Man, when Dad told me he wanted me to do that . . . I was nervous as a kid can be,” said Jarrett. “My housekeeper, Miss Luna, helped me write the speech, and we went over it and over it in the kitchen. I wanted it to be perfect, because I knew how much this day meant to my dad.”
Many of those who knew Payton relatively well were shocked by the anxiety he seemed to be experiencing in the lead-up to the ceremony. He was having trouble concentrating, and was short and curt with anyone who dared strike up a conversation. Normally jovial with fans and autograph seekers, Payton wanted no part of it. He demanded quiet and solitude. Some were under the impression that Jarrett’s speech was burdening Payton; that his nervousness and apprehension had to do with a twelve
-year-old standing before thousands of people and speaking glowingly of his father.
They had no idea.
Shortly after he learned of his acceptance into the Hall, Payton spoke with Lita Gonzalez, the New Jersey–based flight attendant who he was dating. “I’m coming to the ceremony,” she said. “There’s no way I’d miss it.”
It had now been almost five years since she first met Walter, and Gonzalez’s patience was wearing thin. Theirs was a relationship of extremes—either passionate romance or nonstop screaming and threats. Lita insisted they go to couple’s therapy, and Walter begrudgingly agreed. “It was to pacify her,” said Quirk. “Only a few visits.” Lita demanded a commitment from Walter, and he finally made one, presenting her with a one-carat diamond “promise” ring that, he said, signified his love for her. Lita was momentarily placated, especially when he had her attend an increasing number of his races on the Trans-Am circuit. But just as the relationship seemed to be going well, something always interfered. Lita wanted to relocate to Chicago—Walter told her not to. Lita wanted Walter to finally divorce Connie and devote himself to her—Walter made one assurance after another, but never committed. Lita wanted Walter to take her to public events and have her on his arm—Walter couldn’t. (He did, however, take Lita’s father, Javier, to the 1988 Super Bowl in San Diego.) “It was a very hostile pairing,” said Quirk. “I could never fully understand Lita’s lack of common sense, because Walter made it clear through his actions that he wasn’t going to commit fully to her. She gave herself to him, and he wouldn’t give himself back.”
“Honestly, I think Lita provided Walter with a motherly inner sanctum,” Holmes said. “He could sit and talk to her and fantasize to her and he wouldn’t get any resistance from Lita. Connie, on the other hand, always kept busy and had things to do besides listening to Walter ramble on. Lita was like a bottle to Walter’s alcoholism. She provided what he needed. An ear.”
In Payton’s offices—first in the back of Studebaker’s, then in complexes in Arlington Heights and, finally, Hoffman Estates—his fights with Gonzalez became the stuff of legend. Through the thin walls, he could be heard screaming, cursing, threatening over the phone. On countless occasions she returned the promise ring, swearing she was no longer interested. “Inevitably,” said Quirk, “she would come back to him. She always came back.” Walter told Lita she was his only love, and she believed him. Little did she know he was using the same line on countless others. “The number of women was dizzying,” said Linda Conley, Walter’s longtime friend and the kitchen manager at Studebaker’s. “I loved Walter, but I’d always tell his girlfriends, ‘He’ll never be yours, so why waste your time?’ He knew he was doing wrong, but it was a challenge to him: How many women could he land?
“My daughter Tyra was really into football, and she just adored Walter. Well, one day we walk into Studebaker’s and there he was, kissing some blond girl. Tyra couldn’t believe it. She was devastated. But that was Walter—you either accepted his behavior or you moved on.”
At one point, Lita became so upset that she removed the promise ring from her finger, placed it in a FedEx package, and shipped it to Payton’s office. Upon receiving the item, Payton brought it to his personal jeweler and had him replace the diamond with a replica. “He sent it back to her without saying a word,” said Quirk. “They made up, of course, but he never brought it up. She probably still has that fake ring.”
The last thing Payton needed was to have his Hall of Fame weekend complicated and compromised. But Lita, who rarely followed up on her demands of Walter, was following up on this one. She would be coming, dammit, and she expected to be treated as his girlfriend. “She was insisting she be seated in the front row,” said Kimm Tucker, the executive director of Payton’s charitable foundation. “We said, ‘Lita, are you insane? We’re marketing this man as a family-friendly spokesperson. His whole image is based around decency. You will ruin him.’ ” Although Walter hadn’t lived at home for nearly five years, Connie was coming, too. She was, after all, his wife. She had stuck by him through the tough early years; had left the comforts of Mississippi for the Windy City; had endured his moods and his mischief; his intensity and his infidelity. To the press, she had never once uttered a foul word about her husband. As far as the world knew, he was committed, charming, dedicated Walter.
There was the image of a marriage to uphold, and Connie was not about to inspire stirrings of “Where was his wife?” should she not attend. It also so happened that her son would be giving the biggest speech of his life.
How could Connie Payton not be there?
A couple of weeks before the ceremony, Payton called Holmes at his home and—having just gotten off the phone with Gonzalez—said, “I’m ready. I want you to help me get a divorce from Connie.”
“Walter,” Holmes replied, “if you do this, it’ll ruin your ass. Your whole image is built as this great, wholesome family guy. You leave Connie, that dies.”
Said Holmes: “Honestly, I believe Walter knew what I would tell him, but he wanted an excuse to give to Lita as to why he wasn’t leaving Connie. He was a real mess.”
Walter didn’t know what to do. He felt the ceiling crumbling and the walls caving in. There was no escape. After keeping Lita at bay for so long, how could he deny her a moment? After keeping Connie around for so long, how could he deny her a moment? “I can tell you that, without any question or doubt, his knowing both women were going to attend was first and foremost on his mind,” said Quirk. “That was more of an issue to him than the event itself. What he feared most was coming to fruition. He had to face the music, and what a shit-ass time for that to happen. Talk about tainting a weekend. The induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame is supposed to be the greatest moment in his life. And the truth is, it was probably the worst moment in his life.”
Payton was scheduled to spend four days in Canton, Ohio, home to the Hall. He would arrive on Wednesday, July 28, and use the time to bask in the glow, appear at various functions, meet with the media. Before leaving Chicago, he placed Quirk in charge of what, eighteen years later, she still considers to be the most miserable professional experience she has ever endured: making sure Connie and Lita were never in the same place at the same time. “Lita certainly knew about Connie, but Connie at that point didn’t have any idea about Lita,” Quirk said. “I’m pretty sure she didn’t board an airplane knowing that Walter’s girlfriend would be there, too.”
“Four full days. Four full days, and Lita and Connie were like two ships passing in the night. If Connie was scheduled to come late, I’d make sure Lita was there early. If Connie was coming early, Lita would be there late. I can’t describe the horror of that trip. It was the worst thing ever.”
Payton naïvely assumed Lita would be content sharing a room with him in the McKinley Grand Hotel, where the inductees stayed. Quirk had booked the reservation for Walter and Lita, and she also reserved a suite for Connie and the children. “I was told to make sure the rooms were as far apart as possible,” said Quirk. “So that’s what I did.” Yet Lita was hardly placated. As far as she was concerned, this was to be her coming out weekend as Walter Payton’s significant other. She brought a new dress. Had her hair and nails done. Lita dreamed of attending all the parties and functions; dreamed of being introduced by Walter to his family members, friends, and fellow inductees. “Lita had balls of steel in Canton,” said Quirk. “She said, ‘This is my time and I’m going to take a stand.’ ”
Walter had different ideas. As Fouts and Little and Noll and Walsh seized the moment by attending shindigs and accepting congratulatory wishes, Walter and Lita spent three days cooped up in the room. He only emerged every so often to make a required appearance. Occasionally he’d visit Jarrett and Brittney in their suite—but they were strictly prohibited from visiting his. Otherwise, he was MIA. He missed an important Thursday night function that left Hall officials fuming and earned the scorn of Bears legend Gale Sayers, who blasted his ho-hum attitude. R
ay Nitschke, the Packer great, issued an impassioned plea to try and get Payton’s attention. It didn’t work. “Walter mostly hid,” said Holmes. “The moment of a lifetime, and Walter’s hiding out. After it was all done he called me and asked how he did. I told him the truth. I said, ‘Walter, you did very well on stage, but I’m disappointed in you, the way you ignored your mama and your family and your kids. People don’t do that. It’s not fair.’ ”
On the morning of Saturday, July 31, Walter and Lita had a quiet breakfast in their hotel room before he, all alone, headed downstairs to the lobby of the McKinley Grand. From her room Quirk was on the phone, frantically finalizing the most awkward of seating arrangements. Because Walter and Connie were still assumed to be Walter and Connie, Quirk assigned her to the front row, alongside their children, Walter’s mother, Alyne, his brother, Eddie, and his sister, Pamela. Lita, meanwhile, was situated one row back, two down from Quirk and alongside Susan Ward, a public relations specialist who was working with Payton. “Susan was the buffer,” said Quirk. “I didn’t want to sit next to Lita. She was causing too much drama.”
Payton arrived at the front steps of the Hall shortly before the start of the event. He was visibly nervous and unfocused, and those few who were in the know had little doubt of the cause of his burden. Smooth and suave in public, Payton was terrified by the potential for center-stage embarrassment. Would Lita stand up and confront Connie? Would Lita storm off if he mentioned Connie in the speech? “Walter’s ideal was to hide Lita,” said Quirk. “But Lita wasn’t having that.”
At twelve fifty P.M., Jarrett rose to introduce Walter Payton into the Class of 1993. He felt his knees wobble and his hands quiver. This was a new level of pressure—thousands of eyes staring down upon him. His fourminute speech, however, was masterful. Nattily dressed in a beige blazer, white collared shirt, and colorful tie, Jarrett stood behind the podium and brought tears to his father’s eyes. “This is an historic event that my dad, Walter, and the other members of the Payton family will treasure for the rest of our lives,” he said in a high-pitched voice that cracked with adolescence. “My dad played thirteen seasons and missed only one game while breaking all the running back records. Not only is my dad an excellent athlete, he’s a role model. He’s my biggest role model and my best friend. I’m sure my sister will endorse this: We have a super dad.”
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