by Rich Cohen
“After one practice, a bunch of us were just sitting around Mr. Halas,” Fencik said. “He was showing us how to hold a football so you wouldn’t fumble. He asked for a ball, put his index finger over the point, and said, ‘Here’s the way!’ It was such a perfect detail. You weren’t really expecting it out of the owner of the team.”
Mike Singletary: “I remember one day, after a miserable game, Halas just roared at our offense: ‘This is football. Hold on to the fucking thing!’”
“The game had passed him by,” said Avellini. “Is it sacrilegious to say that? One time he called me on a Friday and I’m in bed and everything, and he says, ‘This is Coach Halas.’ I said, ‘Yeah, right,’ thinking it’s one of my friends. ‘No, this is Coach Halas.’ ‘Okay, Coach, what’s up?’ He said, ‘I want you to run this play.’ Well, his play was something out of the 1940s. I’m sure you’ve seen it on film—in black and white, never in color. You take the ball and toss it backward to a guy like Gale Sayers and he just outruns the defense. But we were playing the Cowboys that week and I said, ‘Boy, Coach, I don’t know. Too Tall Jones could catch that ball in the air his arms are so long.’ ‘No, no,’ he said, ‘just run the play.’ The result was Walter Payton having the most unbelievable run for a two-yard loss I’ve ever seen.
“I went to his apartment in the city,” Avellini went on. “If you’re from Chicago, you’d know it. A pink building around the 5600 block North, off Lake Shore Drive. It was one of these old buildings. I go up, and there’s Halas sitting with Sid Luckman. And Sid starts telling me how to throw the ball. He says, ‘You gotta throw it from your shoulder.’ I said, ‘Mr. Luckman, if I do that, I’m going to hit these guys in the head. I got to release the ball higher.’ And the old man says, ‘What do you know? You’re a rookie. This is Sid Luckman!’”
“He came to our meeting room one day in my sixth or seventh year,” Plank told me. “This was in Lake Forest, and he said, ‘I’d like to talk to the team, share a few memories.’ He then gave one of the most detailed breakdowns of the game I’ve ever heard any coach give. He goes to the blackboard, draws the field, [then divides it into sections]. He points with the chalk, saying, ‘This is the red zone, this is the blue zone, this is the white zone.’ It was the first time I’d ever heard the term ‘red zone.’ Think about how often ‘red zone’ is used today! He tells us what you do in each area. These are the plays you call, this is the strategy that works, here’s how many yards you need per attempt. He backed it all up with an incredible breakdown of statistics. Here was a man who founded the league, who excelled as a player, a coach, and an owner, and he was sharing this knowledge with us. Come on! You’ve got to be kidding me.”
* * *
In the spring of 1982, Halas was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He hadn’t felt right for a long time. Knowing the name and prognosis of the disease—six months, a year—pushed him downhill. Patrick McCaskey realized his grandfather was near the end when, after his eighty-eighth birthday, he suddenly stopped swearing. He never again said a bad word about anyone. No more cocksuckers, no more motherfuckers, no more pop-off artists. A profane voice had retired from the scene. He stopped drinking, he stopped yelling. He was in and out of the hospital, where he sat, propped on pillows, meeting friends and coaches. “I went to the hospital all the time,” Ditka said. “He was very lucid. He asked about the draft and about the players. I told him he would like [Jimbo] Covert because he was just like Joe Stydahar. He would smile and say, ‘That’s good.’” A few months before he died, Halas sent Ditka a bottle of Dom Perignon with a note: “Mike, don’t open it till you win the Super Bowl.”
Virginia and Ed McCaskey wanted the team to be run by their oldest child, Michael. “Halas, who thought his grandson lacked the toughness to run the club, rebuffed them,” Jeff Davis wrote in Papa Bear. “As unfair as it may have been to Michael, in many ways the eldest grandson paid the price for his grandfather’s enmity toward the senior McCaskey.” The story turned monarchical, Tudors and Romanoffs, words whispered outside the room of the dying king. According to Davis, Halas spoke these words shortly before he died: “Anybody but Michael.”
George Halas died on October 31, 1983, Halloween, the streets filled with goblins. At the time of his death, the franchise, which he had purchased for $100, was worth millions. It passed to his daughter, who’s watched its value grow and grow. Virginia Halas McCaskey’s net worth is currently estimated at $1.3 billion. The Sun-Times ran the old man’s obituary under the sort of banner usually reserved for declarations of war. Here’s the lead: “George Halas is dead, they say. But he can’t be. The Old Man is too tough to die.” The funeral was held at St. Ita’s on the North Side. There were twelve hundred mourners; storied figures from every era of football filled the pews: Pete Rozelle, Wellington Mara, Art Rooney, George McAfee, Gale Sayers, Tex Schramm, Lamar Hunt, Gene Upshaw. Sid Luckman was a pallbearer; he rested his hand on the lacquered wood. Halas had many sons, but, after Mugs, Sid was the most beloved, the Brooklyn boy who returned, like a dog with the kill, with title after title in his teeth. “I have vivid memories of the service,” Fencik told me. “The whole team went down on the bus. Everybody came from the NFL. The last guy in was Al Davis, the owner of the Raiders. He was in a black leather trench coat. It was very gestapo. He and Halas had fought like mad over the years, yet here he was, paying his respects.”
* * *
Virginia Halas McCaskey made the announcement eleven days after the funeral: Michael would be the new president of the Bears. Mike McCaskey, who, at thirty-three, was nearly as young as some of his players; Mike McCaskey, a preppy, the product of Notre Dame High School and Yale; Mike McCaskey, once a member of the Harvard faculty and the author of a book on management; Mike McCaskey, a consultant who’d studied the art of corporate warfare; Mike McCaskey, who seemed to have everything but the one thing that mattered: the old zipperoo. He was, in fact, a fascinating, even brilliant man. Once upon a time, he wanted to be a priest. He served in the Peace Corps after college, teaching science and English in Ethiopia. But he was erudite and refined in a way that set him apart in the hypercharged world of the NFL. Despite the team’s success in McCaskey’s first years at the helm, he would never be truly accepted by the players. In his relationship with his grandfather, McCaskey stands for my generation in our relationship to the tough old America: we inherited a country we did not build.
* * *
As Halas sickened, Ditka, along with Jim Finks, Bill Tobin, and Jerry Vainisi, assembled the pieces of what would become the 1985 Bears. It was done via trades and the draft, the players appearing one after another, each taking a turn on the screen, smiling or sneering as a narrator fills in the backstory: this one because he can shoot the whiskers off a mule; that one because he can throw the blade.
Dan Hampton, six five, 264 pounds, a monster who could kill you with a single halfhearted blow, was drafted in 1979: the anchor of the defensive line, the thumping bass that made everything rock. In twelve seasons, he would break every finger and destroy every joint. He had at least a dozen knee operations. I worked out at the same gym and once saw him with his leg on a massage table, stretching. Sweat beaded his hairline, there was agony in his unfocused eyes, but you knew he’d be back out there on Sunday.
Otis Wilson, a linebacker from Brownsville, Brooklyn, was drafted in 1980, as was Matt Suhey, a fullback from Penn State. Suhey’s grandfather played for the Canton Bulldogs against Halas in the industrial days of the NFL. Keith Van Horne, a key on the offensive line, was drafted in 1981, as was Singletary. He showed up late to camp his rookie season, part of a negotiating strategy. Singletary was of mixed parentage: African American and part Cherokee Indian. His features have an almost Asian cast. Buddy Ryan was all over him that first summer, running him, breaking him, calling him “the fat Jap.” “You’re nothing, 50,” he’d shout. Singletary was known around the league for his grunts and curses, the intensity of his eyes. (When I asked former Eagles quarterback Ron Jaworski abo
ut the ’85 Bears, he said, “I still see Singletary’s eyes.”) Plank gave Singletary his nickname. It happened on the sideline, when Buddy asked the safety why he hadn’t run the play he sent in with Singletary. ’Cause I couldn’t understand a word he said. That guy sounds like a fuckin’ samurai.
Jim McMahon was Chicago’s top selection in 1982. The Bears had not used a first-round pick to take a quarterback since 1951, but Mac was special. Ditka saw in him the leader of the Bears as Terry Bradshaw had been the leader of the Steelers. He was small for a QB, his arm was questionable, and he had a bad eye, but he knew how to win. Ditka was always less interested in where a prospect ranked than in what he had inside. In McMahon’s junior year at Brigham Young, he led the Cougars to one of the great comebacks. It was at the Holiday Bowl in 1980. BYU was down 42–25 with four minutes left. Fans were streaming from the gates. McMahon got into a shouting match with his coach, who threw up his hands, turning the game over to the QB, who somehow, just like that, led the team to two quick touchdowns, then, with time running out, beat SMU with one of those high, arching Hail Marys that is everywhere a sign of desperation. It’s still known as the Miracle Bowl.
Ditka and Finks supplemented their draft picks with trades and free agent pickups. Gary Fencik was invited to camp after being released by the Dolphins in 1976. Emery Moorehead came over from Denver in 1981. Steve McMichael was signed after the Patriots cut him. “[The general manager in New England] called me into his office and said, ‘McMichael, do you know why we’re cutting you?’” McMichael remembered. “‘’Cause we think you’re the criminal element in this league.’ Thank God an old criminal in Chicago was still alive. When I met Halas, he said, ‘We want you to be the person you are.’”
And what sort of person was Steve McMichael?
Big and scary. Fat now but made of iron then, a screw-loose sort of guy you approach with extreme caution. They called him Mongo after the Alex Karras character in Blazing Saddles. They also called him Ming the Merciless after a Flash Gordon villain. He was a bruising, durable defensive tackle who often led the rush on the quarterback. He would make over a hundred consecutive starts for the Bears. It usually took two linemen to stop him. He never seemed to be having anything less than a fantastic time. When McMichael first came to the Bears, Hampton picked him up at O’Hare. He had a single piece of luggage, a burnt orange garment bag emblazoned with a University of Texas logo—that’s where Mongo grew up, where he played college ball and studied to be a dentist.
The early days in Chicago were a struggle. He made little money. One afternoon, when he was on the practice field, his car was repossessed from the parking lot. He wore his helmet high, his fists were bloody. He did not win all the awards, but the players in the league feared him. Not long ago, McMichael told Chicago interviewer Mark Bazer that he’d been playing a role in those years, a character named Mongo. “I’d go stand at the fifty-yard line and stare at the other team before the game,” he explained. “I wouldn’t warm up with the guys. I would just stand and stare. Wade Wilson, a quarterback from that time, looked me up at a convention. The first thing he said was, ‘Steve, do you remember me?’ I said, ‘I remember you, quarterback. I’m like a vicious predator on the Serengeti. I remember all the wounded gazelles.’”
Drafting is an art. Those with the genius are able to discern not only who is good but who will be good. It’s soothsaying, intuition. An acceptable draft might yield a player or two who stick. A great one might bring in two or three long-term starters. But now and then, a team will hit the daily double. In 1983, the Bears drafted seven starters, including four future All-Pros: Jimbo Covert, a guard from western Pennsylvania; Willie Gault, an Olympic sprinter who became the Bears’ deep threat; Mike Richardson, a cornerback from East Los Angeles; Dave Duerson, who played safety; Tom Thayer, an offensive lineman from Joliet. In the eighth round, they took Richard Dent, a skinny defensive end with bad teeth. As part of Dent’s contract, the Bears agreed to pay for his orthodontia. He started gaining weight as soon as his teeth were fixed; it had always hurt him to eat. He put on fifty pounds in two months. He’s now in the Hall of Fame. Mark Bortz, also taken in the eighth round, started for eleven seasons in Chicago.
When I asked Bill Tobin what explained this success, he said, “Well, we looked for character. Character is huge. It’s a saying we had: When in doubt, bet on character. That’s why we ended up with the Leslie Fraziers and Jeff Fishers and Ron Riveras and Mike Singletarys. When your best players are also your best people, you got a lot going for you. We had some ornery kids but we didn’t have any bums.”
“It was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle,” Ditka told me. “You’ve got to get those missing pieces. We needed a quarterback, we drafted McMahon. We needed a left tackle, we got Covert. We needed a speed receiver, we got Gault. We already had Singletary, Otis, Fencik. We got Duerson and Richardson for the secondary. We had Hilgenberg and Van Horne. We got Thayer. We had Suhey and Payton. We didn’t have any tight ends, so we brought in Emery Moorehead.”
In 1984, the Bears used their first pick on linebacker Wilber Marshall, perhaps the best athlete on the team. In 1985, they took William Perry, a huge, gap-toothed tackle from Clemson. Perry was 220 pounds in seventh grade, 13.5 pounds at birth. “I was big even when I was small,” he said. After collapsing during an early practice, Perry was placed in a dehydration tank. “He’s just a big overweight kid,” Buddy Ryan told the press. “He was a wasted draft choice and a waste of money.”
“I thought he was one of the most dominant college players I watched,” said Ditka. “He could dunk a basketball. He had a great vertical leap. He had great explosion. He was fast for twenty or thirty yards. He had no endurance to run a mile, but he could do those other things pretty damn well.”
Perry was listed at 310 pounds, but when defensive tackle Dan Hampton saw him at camp he laughed and said, “That kid’s a biscuit away from 350.” This explains Perry’s first nickname on the team: Biscuit. His second was also credited to Hampton, who, seeing Perry without a shirt, said “It looks like a mudslide.” But the nickname that stuck had been given to him in college by a teammate who, feeling trapped when Perry squeezed into an elevator behind him, said, “My God, he’s like a refrigerator.”
10
THE FRIDGE
William “Refrigerator” Perry spiking the ball during Super Bowl XX
In 1983, I made out with Christine Conner on the grass behind North School. In the summer of 1978, I canoed the rivers of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. That August, I walked through Charlevoix from the hardware store to the lake in bare feet, eating an ice cream cone. In 1981, I set the high score on Defender at Big Al’s in Glencoe. In 1990, I drove all night from New Orleans to a town in South Carolina, where I ate bacon and eggs and slept on the beach. In 2005, my oldest son was born. In 1977, my tickets to Bozo’s Circus arrived in the mail. On July 30, 1975, I saw a cool big-kid bike parked in front of my house. When I asked who owned it, my mom said, “You!” It was my birthday. In 1983, in Eagle River, Wisconsin, I threw a wild punch that connected, felling a bully who’d been terrorizing the kids at my camp. For several weeks, I was regarded as a hero. In 1988, I dated a girl many of my friends considered out of my league. Each of these is a wonderful memory, a treasured moment in time. But looking back, it’s clear that none of them stands up to the collection of memories that accumulated from the fall of 1985 to the winter of 1986, when the Chicago Bears came into their own.
The team had been getting better every year. They went 8 and 8 in 1983 but finished with five wins in six games. So bad a few seasons before, they were rising quickly through the ranks. They went 10 and 6 in 1984, winning the division—their best showing since 1963, when Ditka led them to an NFL Championship. The Bears had died after Iron Mike left, and with Iron Mike they were being reborn.
The team made the playoffs that year, but no one expected much from them. In the first round, they faced the Redskins, who were favored. The Bears were minus McMa
hon, who had lacerated his kidney in the fifth week of the season. Without Mac, the offense resorted to its old playbook: Walter right, Walter left, Walter up the middle. He ran for 104 yards. The crucial score came on a trick play that Ditka probably thought up in the shower: quarterback Steve Fuller pitched to Payton, who cavorted down the line, turned, and threw a wobbly pass for a touchdown. Chicago, 23–19.
As the Bears turned their attention to the NFC Championship, everyone in the city seemed to have the same realization: they could actually go to the Super Bowl! At the end of the week, the team went to San Francisco to play Bill Walsh’s 49ers, one of the great powers of the era. I watched on the kitchen TV, my hands balled into fists, waiting for the offensive release that never came. I was all knots inside. The defense kept the Bears in it long after the offense quit. Finally, in the third, worn out by all those minutes on the field, each brilliant stop made futile by another offensive failure, the defense broke. That’s sports: you have a hero, knowing that, at some point, you’ll see that hero fail. I sat by myself, tears streaming down my face as Fencik gave futile chase to a 49ers rusher who burst into the end zone as Candlestick Park exploded with noise. In the fourth quarter, the San Francisco fans seemed to be laughing at the Bears, mocking the team’s inability to do anything with the ball.
In the last seconds, Joe Montana handed off to a 264-pound offensive guard named Guy McIntyre, who lined up at fullback. Bill Walsh called it the “Angus formation.” To a fan, it might seem like another big man killing the clock. To Ditka it was a coded message sent sideline to sideline—the 49ers coach saying, “I don’t even need a real running back to beat you.” “I thought it was just Bill Walsh being a jagoff,” Hampton said. “But Ditka didn’t forget.”