Sweetness (41 page)

“Why would anyone want a dog in a locker room?” said Bob Parsons, Chicago’s punter. “Especially
that
dog.”

Three days before the Denver game, Parsons was standing in front of his locker, lifting his shoulder pads over his head. A handful of players had been messing with Sweetness, taunting the dog with food, pulling his tail, barking wildly. “Well, the dog walks up from behind me, grabs my ass, and bites me right in the butt,” said Parsons. “He broke skin. I mean, he literally punctured my skin. Boy, was I pissed off. What was Walter thinking? Why is your dog in there?”

Parsons’ mood only darkened when Payton responded to the attack by laughing. “I get home that night and the phone rings,” said Parsons. “I pick it up and it’s someone barking like a dog. It was Walter.

“I wasn’t amused.”
¹¹

• The Bears traveled to Tampa Bay on October 22, only to be humiliated by the lowly Bucs, 33–19. Payton ran for a paltry thirty-four yards on fifteen carries, but most of the blame belonged to Armstrong and Meyer. Following the game, Dewey Selmon, a Tampa linebacker, said his team knew what was coming. “When Payton lines up at fullback, ninety-five percent of the time he’s going to run,” Selmon said. “It didn’t work every time, but whenever he did that we put [linebacker Richard] Wood on him.”

Although the offense had been predictable under Pardee, it had never been
this
predictable. “When I was up in the press box getting ready for the game, I’d write down the number twenty-five and put a circle around it,” said Meyer. “That was my reminder that Walter needed to have the ball at least twenty-five times if we were to have any chance of winning.”

Through the first eight games, the Bears had opened with a run 88 percent of the time, and started every possession with a run 82 percent of the time. They scored touchdowns or field goals on 40 percent of the series that began with passes, but only on 20 percent of the series that started with runs. “One statistic is indisputable,” Pierson wrote. “The Bears have lost five in a row.”

Walter Payton’s father died on December 11. Five days later, in the name of pride and professionalism and whatever else one chooses to call it, Peter Payton’s youngest son took the field, a member of a bad team playing a meaningless game to cap a nightmarish season.

The Bears beat the Washington Redskins 14–10, with Payton’s forty-four-yard touchdown run on the first series setting the tone for a victorious day. His 1,395 yards for the year would rank second in the league, behind a Houston Oiler rookie named Earl Campbell. Yet those who followed Chicago football knew numbers were meaningless. The 1978 season had been a disappointing one for Payton and a disappointing campaign for the 7-9 Bears.

Even the glow from the win extinguished quickly. With forty-eight seconds remaining in the game and the Bears’ offense on the field, Roland Harper found himself eight yards short of one thousand rushing yards for the season. One month earlier the New York Giants were leading the Philadelphia Eagles, 17–12, with thirty-one seconds left. Instead of taking a knee, Giants quarterback Joe Pisarcik turned to hand off to fullback Larry Csonka. The ball was fumbled, and Eagles safety Herm Edwards picked it up and ran twenty-six yards for the game-winning score.

With that image fresh in his mind, Armstrong had quarterback Mike Phipps fall on the ball until the clock ran out. Harper spoke indifferently. (“Neill was a Christian, and I loved that about him,” said Harper. “Did I want the thousand yards? Of course. But I was a team player first and foremost.”) Payton, however, fumed. For all his greatness as a runner, Payton took immense pride in the crushing blocks he set to spring his dear friend. “Walter was actually a better blocker than runner,” said Hank Kuhlmann, the running backs coach. “Without him, Roland isn’t close to that many yards.” In the history of the NFL, only two pairs of teammates had run for one thousand yards in a season. Now here they were, at the end of an insignificant game, and Armstrong couldn’t even reward the team’s most selfless, most beloved player with a couple of carries? Was this some sort of cruel joke?

“We were all pissed off after that,” said Avellini. “There were plenty of times that season when Roland was supposed to get the ball on a trap play, but when we’d get to the line Walter would say, ‘Do you mind if we switch—you block and I run?’ I’d turn to Roland and ask if that was OK. And he never complained—never. He would switch. He was just a wonderful teammate. The perfect teammate. You’d do anything for him.

“Against Washington, everyone on the bench knew how close to one thousand yards Roland was, and if Neill didn’t, well, shame on him.”

Harper wound up with 992 yards and with that, the Bears’ disastrous 1978 season came to an end.

Payton did his best to forget the whole year.

CHAPTER 16

THE UNBEARABLE BEARS

WAY BACK IN JANUARY 1975, A COUPLE OF WEEKS BEFORE WALTER PAYTON was drafted by the Chicago Bears, Bud Holmes received a call from Charles Burch, the father of a member of the football team at Petal High School in Petal, Mississippi.

“Bud,” Burch said, “I have a small favor to ask.”

At the time, Holmes was best known as the agent of Ray Guy, the splendid Oakland Raiders punter who had starred at Southern Miss. Petal High was planning on holding a barbecue for its graduating seniors, and Burch wanted to know if Holmes—a big Petal High supporter who was hosting the event on his spacious lawn—could have Guy stop by and say a few words.

“Ray’s busy,” Holmes replied. “I’m sorry.”

He was then asked if perhaps Bobby Collins, the soon-to-be-named head football coach at Southern Miss, was available. Holmes checked, to no avail.

“Bobby’s busy, too,” he said.

Was there anyone, Burch wondered, who might serve as a capable speaker?

“Well,” said Holmes, “I have this one kid who’s about to be drafted into the NFL. I can bring him.”

“Great,” said Burch. “We’ll see you there.”

Four days later, Walter Payton pulled up to Holmes’ house, only to be greeted by two hundred or so high school seniors, all white, all dumbfounded by the sight of their black marquee guest. “So they’re assembled, eating their hot dogs and hamburgers,” Holmes said. “And Walter got up there and started talking, and he told a joke or two and they didn’t laugh. And the more he talked, the more silent they were. I was like, ‘Damn, these sons of bitches sitting here are being rude to Walter because he’s black.’ I was ready to run each and every one of them out of there. They come and eat my food at my place and they act like that? It was terrible.”

Just when Holmes was about to snap, an amazing turn of events took place. Instead of cowering or slinking off, Payton talked smack. The Steelers and Vikings were scheduled to meet in the upcoming Super Bowl, and he was rooting for Pittsburgh. “One thing I know,” Payton told the crowd, “is those Steelers are gonna rip apart the Vikes.”

The kids started hooting.

“No?” Payton said. “You don’t agree? Who here says Pittsburgh’s gonna kick some ass?”

A bunch of hands went up.

“Well, who thinks the Vikings are gonna kill ’em?”

More hands.

“Within five minutes of him finishing that talk, those kids—all white—were shaking his hand, asking for his autograph,” said Holmes. “I sat right there and said, ‘I don’t know how well this boy can run a football, but he has a unique charisma about him that you don’t teach.’ Just like you don’t teach someone to run a football, you can’t teach that skill of reading people. You might show them a little bit, but you can’t teach it. I recognized right there that Walter had a certain gift from the Lord for communicating and reading people.”

Over the ensuing four years, Holmes watched as his client blossomed socially. The same man who would be moody and shy and awkward and dismissive when placed in an undesirable setting (talking with the press, accepting criticism from a coach or teammate, being told by Connie what to do) morphed into a bolt of lightning when the spirit moved him. It was almost as if Payton were two different people—the one who brooded at the most insignificant slight vs. the one whose goal was to make everybody feel wanted. Charlie Waters, the standout safety for the Dallas Cowboys, never forgot meeting Payton for the first time at the 1976 Pro Bowl in New Orleans. “We’re at practice, and nobody really knows each other that well so the conversations are sort of stilted,” Waters said. “Well, after practice ended Walter wanted to play a game of touch football, so he rounded up a bunch of the athletes and we played touch. He was the Ernie Banks of football. All fun, all joy.”

Following the 1978 season, Payton—momentarily interested in becoming a commodities broker—interned at Heinold Commodities, Inc., in Chicago. The company’s employees expected a dumb, disinterested jock going through the motions. Instead, Payton was the life of the party—taking coworkers out for lunch; telling loud, rollicking stories; laughing uproariously. “He lit up many a room,” said Holmes. “That was Walter.”

When it comes to describing Payton’s persona, the word “complicated” is frequently evoked. Jerry B. Jenkins, Payton’s coauthor on his 1978 autobiography, recalled meeting Walter for the first time at the half back’s home. “He was wearing a skimpy pair of dark green Speedos,” said Jenkins. “I thought he had just gotten out of the shower, but later I realized he did this kind of thing all the time just for shock value.” A couple of weeks later, Jenkins scheduled to meet Walter for a prearranged interview. Nobody was home when Jenkins arrived at the house, and after sitting in the driveway for ninety minutes he left. That night, when he called the Payton household, Walter’s mother answered the phone. “Walter feels bad about what happened,” she said. “He wants you to come tomorrow at the same time.”

When Jenkins knocked on the door the following day, Payton made amends. “He apologized,” Jenkins said, “and as we were talking the phone rings. He picks it up and exaggerates the falsetto quality of his already high voice and said, ‘Hello. No, this is his mother. May I take a message?’ When he gets off the phone he winks at me and said, ‘Sorry about yesterday. I forgot.’

“That,” said Jenkins, “was just the way Walter was.”

Though not officially diagnosed until later in his life, when Payton first learned of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) he knew he was one of the afflicted. Payton lacked the ability to sit still for more than a minute or two. His mind raced, his fingers twitched, his knees bounced. He could pace incessantly, and when he spoke his hands moved at 100 mph. He alternated between being a great listener and a terrible one. In 1977 Jenkins spent sixty hours interviewing Payton for the book. “While we talked he played pinball, prehistoric video games, watched TV, and painted his trophy room,” said Jenkins. “I sat asking questions in the middle of the room while he painted one wall.” Patience wasn’t a virtue. He usually slept only two or three hours per night, and not by choice. “Were it possible,” said Roland Harper, “he wouldn’t have slept at all. There was too much to do and too little time.”

“He was fascinated by physical stimulus,” said Ken Valdiserri, the Bears’ longtime coordinator of media relations. “Anything that would just charge up a moment. A cherry bomb blowing up in front of people and seeing their reaction. He was stimulated by visual and flesh and emotional stimulus all at once.”

Reporters hated dealing with him. None stated any dislike for Payton. They simply could not pin the man down. “He was as difficult to capture on paper as he was on the field,” said Ron Rapoport, a
Sun-Times
columnist. “You never really felt as if you were getting to the bottom of him. The better he got, the more you wanted to know. The more you wanted to know, the more he kept you at a distance. The tough thing was that we weren’t out to get the goods. We just wanted to know the guy and explain the guy. Here was this great player, and we had such great admiration for his abilities. We weren’t there to hurt him, but to burnish the legacy.

“There was one game when Walter played brilliantly, and afterward he blew all the writers off. We were livid, because it wasn’t the first time. Only later did we learn that he had promised an ill child some time, so he couldn’t talk. And why the stupid son of a bitch didn’t take us into his confidence and say, ‘This is what I’m doing—give me a minute,’ I’ll never know. He was one enormous enigma.”

Was Payton the dark cloud that brooded in the aftermath of insufficient carries, or was he the happy-go-lucky fool who tossed lit firecrackers at teammates’ heads and skipped around training camp wearing a sombrero? Why did he seem to take so much pleasure in slapping guys so hard on the buttocks that, come the next morning, they’d be sitting atop a black-and-blue welt? Why were his hugs, literally, suffocating? Why did he relish sneaking up behind teammates and ripping the hairs from their calves? How did he seem so aloof one moment, then remember the name of your cousin the next? “He knew things about you that you didn’t think he’d know,” said Jimbo Covert, a Bears offensive lineman from the 1980s. “Something going on with your family. The names of your nephews. Little things that no other teammate would get.” Grasping Payton’s behavior was like trying to take hold of a wet ferret. He could be the most sensitive person in the room, then turn around and say something that drew gasps and condemnation. Payton was prone to making inappropriate comments about teammates’ sexuality that some found funny and others found disturbing. There were whispers around Chicago that he, himself, was gay—understandable scuttlebutt considering his off-putting behavior. “His nickname was Sweetness,” said Arland Thompson, the team’s fourth-round draft pick in 1980. “He pinched my ass so often I thought he was sweet on me.”