by Rich Cohen
7: MIKE DISCO
On Ditka’s life and biography, I relied on the books mentioned above, that is, Ditka’s autobiographies as well as the biographies of Halas and the histories of the Bears. Each of these books takes a stab at Iron Mike’s story. I also drew on the interviews that I did with men who played with Ditka and those who played for him at varying points in his career, including Danny White in Dallas, and Jim McMahon, Jim Morrissey, and Tim Wrightman in Chicago. Then the coaches and football executives who worked for and with Ditka: Dick Stanfel, Johnny Roland, Vince and Bill Tobin. Also Brian McCaskey. And then, of course, Ditka himself. To get a sense of the terrain, I visited Aliquippa, Ditka’s hometown, and the country around it. I ate at Ditka’s restaurant in Chicago and visited Ditka’s resort in Florida. This turned into my story “Waiting for Ditka: Thirty Years After He Saved Chicago, the Fabled Bears Coach Is Everywhere—and Nowhere,” The Atlantic, December 2011. On Ditka as a new kind of tight end, see Cooper Hollow, “Ditka: A Hall of Fame Career: Desire Helped Him Break the Mold at Tight End Position,” Chicago Tribune, July 29, 1988. Teaching Ditka to catch: the numbers on the balls anecdote appears in Papa Bear by Jeff Davis: “Sid taught me to catch the ball and look at the number,” Ditka told Davis. “He wrote numbers on the ball. I had to catch it and call out the number. I had to look at it all the way in and put it away before I started to run with it.”
8: SUCKING IN THE SEVENTIES
A lot of the Chicago stuff in this chapter comes from my memory, which I corroborated or corrected by searching the archives of the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times, as well as various books, including The Encyclopedia of Chicago and Chicago: A Biography by Dominic Pacyga. On Jimmy Piersall, see Jim O’Donnell, “Jimmy Piersall Covers All Bases: No. 37 Is Still Fired Up About His Field,” Chicago Tribune, October 25, 1992. See also Frank Corkin’s column, “Frank’s Corner,” which appeared in the Meriden Record-Journal, October 8, 1981, and included Piersall’s entire comment, made during that interview with Mike Royko: “I think every ball club should have a clinic once a week for the wives because I don’t think they know what the hell baseball is. First of all they were horny broads who wanted to get married, have a little security and a big, strong baseball player.” Other sources include the NFL archives. On Sayers, see his autobiography, I Am Third. It was a basis of the movie Brian’s Song. (He’s third because God is first and family is second.) Also see My Life and Times by Gale Sayers. The jacket shows Sayers leaping over Ditka. On Butkus, see Stop-Action by Dick Butkus. This is the book that was treasured by McMichael and Singletary. Also Butkus: Flesh and Blood by Dick Butkus. On Butkus’s retirement see “Butkus Wins $600,000 Lawsuit Against Bears,” Associated Press, September 14, 1976. Sayers as a deer: it reminds me of what Coach Zuppke said about his running back Red Grange: “Red had that indefinable something that the haunted wild animal has—uncanny timing and the big brown eyes of a royal buck.” Payton was the star of my childhood, so it was a pleasure to reread the old profiles. I found the following books useful: Never Die Easy: The Autobiography of Walter Payton, and Sweetness: The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton by Jeff Pearlman. On Ed McCaskey, see Papa Bear by Jeff Davis; Bear With Me by Patrick McCaskey; In Life, First You Kick Ass by Mike Ditka; and Chicago Bears: The Complete Illustrated History by Lew Freedman. Other details come from discussions with players as well as Brian McCaskey. Also It’s Been a Pleasure: The Jim Finks Story: One Man’s Football Journey with contributions from seven award-winning sportswriters. Finks was the Bears’ general manager from the mid-’70s to the early ’80s. To further my argument about the sadness of big brothers whose little brothers surpass them, see Walter & Me: Standing in the Shadow of Sweetness by Eddie Payton. Jim Brown on Walter: “What kind of animal…?” This quote comes from an NFL Films documentary on Payton, which was part of its A Football Life series.
9: READY, FIRE, AIM
Personal interviews were hugely helpful assembling these pages, especially those with Danny White, who played with Ditka in Dallas, and with Ditka himself. Other details come from books mentioned above on Ditka and the Bears. Ditka to the Eagles: the Eagles were actually coming off a decent season when Ditka showed up. They had gone 9–5 in 1966 but would finish 6–7–1 in Mike’s first season with the club, and 2–12 in his second. On player statistics and team standings, see The Football Encyclopedia as well as pro-footballreference.com. Ditka’s comments on his coaching tactics, specifically his instruction about hitting in the solar plexus, appear in his autobiography Ditka. He made similar comments to Sports Illustrated at the time. On Ditka’s letter: I interviewed Neill Armstrong and got the sense that he felt Ditka had done him dirty with the letter. His anger at Halas is evident. When I asked him if Halas was tough, he said, “I’d say so. He fired me.” On Mugs, see “George Halas Jr. 54, Dies in Chicago,” New York Times, December 17, 1979. A legal battle followed the death. Halas’s first wife suggested the death might have resulted from foul play, or else negligent medical care. Mugs’s body was exhumed for a second autopsy in 1987, which showed nothing. (See Charles Mount and Rudolph Unger, “Judge OKs Halas Jr. Autopsy,” Chicago Tribune, August 6, 1987.) Jerry Vainisi was the team’s treasurer from 1972 to 1982. When Jim Finks left the team after Mugs died, Vainisi took over as general manager. Vainisi left the team after 1986 and later worked for the Detroit Lions. He retired from football altogether in 1995 and works as a lawyer in Chicago. He’s known to many as the man who got rid of the Bears’ cheerleading squad, the Honey Bears. (See Rich Lorenz, “Bears Say Cheerio to Cheerleaders,” Chicago Tribune, November 16, 1985.) Vainisi’s comments on Halas’s plans appear in Papa Bear by Jeff Davis. On Ditka’s first practices as the Bears coach: every player I spoke to told me his own version of the story. Especially helpful were Brian Baschnagel, Doug Plank, and Bob Avellini. The letter sent to Halas by “The Chicago Bears Defensive Team” was reprinted in The Daily Herald on Sunday, December 27, 1981 (“Halas Rewards Defensive Staff; Ryan Stock Grows”), as was the old man’s response. In addition to books mentioned above, details in this section—the garbage bags and so on—come from interviews. Ditka versus Avellini: these stories appear in Ditka’s book In Life, First You Kick Ass. I got more from interviews with Ditka and Avellini. On the last days of Halas, see Papa Bear and Bear With Me, as well as tributes and obits that filled the newspapers. (See Dave Anderson, “The Bear Who Really Was One,” New York Times, November 2, 1983.) “Anybody but Michael”: it sounds like a line from The Godfather. It’s reported by Jeff Davis in Papa Bear and in several other books, including The Best Chicago Sports Arguments: The 100 Most Controversial Questions for Die-Hard Chicago Fans by John “Moon” Mullin (Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2006), who adds the following: “Whether or not that actually happened has become almost superfluous; those were the sentiments of millions of Bears fans, if not precisely the founders.” On Michael McCaskey, see “How the Chicago Bears Fumbled Away a Fortune,” Forbes, September 13, 2010. On drafting the ’85 team, I referred to articles, the book about Finks, and interviews with Ditka and Tobin, the men most responsible. I had dinner with Finks when I was an eighteen-year-old Tulane freshman, a wonderful night during which I plied him with questions, the answers to which have shaped my views. He told me, for example, that fans watching the 1979 draft booed when he took Hampton first, which shows you what people know.
10: THE FRIDGE
Much of the blow-by-blow on the San Francisco and Dallas games comes from interviews with, among others, Danny White, Gary Fencik, and Otis Wilson. When I asked Wilson to name the biggest hit he’d ever delivered, he said it came a season later, when he clotheslined Steelers receiver Louis Lipps, who was coming to make a crackback block: “It’s easy to knock somebody out with a helmet,” Otis told me, “but to get them with a forearm, that’s impressive.” I also watched these games. Again and again. Ezra Pound defined literature as news that stays new; to me, the game played by the Bears and the 49ers in 1985 is literature. Rick Telander’s roof: Brian McCa
skey told me this story, and it’s been widely reported. Ditka’s drunk driving: the coach writes about it in his first autobiography. McMahon writes about it in his book, too. I also got the story in interviews from McMahon, Moorehead, and others. As for the ticket, I saw it with my own eyes in the hallway at New Trier. Ron Jaworski dedicated a chapter of his book Games That Changed the Game: The Evolution of the NFL in Seven Sundays to the 1985 Dallas game, which he describes as the most violent he’d ever seen. See also every other book ever written about the ’85 Bears, especially Calling the Shots by Mike Singletary. I got still more from interviews with Jaworski and his cowriter Greg Cosell at NFL Films, in New Jersey. The Everson Walls anecdote appears in Steve McMichael’s Tales from the Chicago Bears Sideline. On Danny White’s second knockout: the quarterback recently had surgery on his spine, which, he said, was a direct result of Wilson’s hit, delivered almost thirty years ago. Jim Brown’s quote—“the Bears beat people up”—appears in Da Bears! How the 1985 Monsters of the Midway Became the Greatest Team in NFL History by Steve Delsohn. On Dallas coach Tom Landry, see Tom Landry: Man of Character by Donnie Snyder, also Tom Landry: An Autobiography. On Bill Walsh, see The Genius: How Bill Walsh Reinvented Football and Created an NFL Dynasty by David Harris.
11: A RACE TO THE QUARTERBACK
The bedrock of this chapter is my interview with Gary Fencik. He talked about Buddy Ryan and the workings of the 46 defense. This interview was supplemented by others, especially those with Plank, namesake of the 46. Plank checked over all the formations drawn for this book and sent me his own rendering of the 46 defense. I also spoke to Jim Morrissey, Otis Wilson, Tyrone Keys, and Neill Armstrong, who claims a variation of the 46 was being played in Canada years before. I spoke to several quarterbacks who had to play against the 46, including Joe Theismann, Danny White, and Ron Jaworski. Cris Collinsworth gave me the wide receiver’s point of view. See also Rex Ryan’s DVD, Coaching Football’s 46 Defense (Monterey, CA: Coaches Choice, 1999). Two books lay out the 46 better than most others: Blood, Sweat, and Chalk: The Ultimate Football Playbook by Tim Layden and The Games That Changed the Game: The Evolution of the NFL in Seven Sundays by Ron Jaworski. I interviewed Jaworski and Cosell, and both were extremely helpful. On Buddy’s bio, I referred to interviews and the books mentioned above. See also Play It Like You Mean It: Passion, Laughs, and Leadership in the World’s Most Beautiful Game by Rex Ryan. Jeff Fisher’s quote—“Buddy had a grading system”—appears in Da Bears! How the 1985 Monsters of the Midway Became the Greatest Team in NFL History by Steve Delsohn. Dave Duerson’s quotes on Buddy are included in The ’85 Bears: Still Chicago’s Team, compiled by the Chicago Tribune. Fencik talked about Al Harris and Todd Bell. Also see Brad Biggs, “Hard-Hitting ex-Bear Bell Dies of Heart Attack at 47,” Chicago Sun-Times, March 17, 2005. Also Steve McMichael’s Tales from the Chicago Bears Sideline. Plank told me he met Fencik before practice on the way to Lake Forest. Fencik’s car had broken down, and he was hitchhiking. Plank picked him up. Plank believes he inspired Fencik, schooled him in the art of the big hit.
12: SHANE COMES TO THE METRODOME
This chapter is based on repeated watching of the Bears/Vikings game, as well as interviews with Ditka, McMahon, Steve Zucker (Mac’s agent), Brian Baschnagel, Gary Fencik, and others. The event was extensively covered in the local papers. I saved a bunch of these stories for years and used them here. See also Ditka’s In Life, First You Kick Ass and Ditka. A key text is Mac’s autobiography, McMahon! The Bare Truth About Chicago’s Brashest Bear. Details on McMahon’s childhood come from these books, as well as my interview with the QB. His DUI was covered in the Florida papers (“McMahon ‘Wasted’ While Driving,” Associated Press, November 10, 2003). Also of great help were the series of articles by John Branch in the New York Times about Derek Boogaard, the New York Rangers enforcer, who suffered from CTE and died of a drug overdose in 2011. The first piece, “A Boy Learns to Brawl,” was published December 3, 2011. See also Alan Schwarz, “Duerson’s Brain Trauma Diagnosed,” New York Times, May 2, 2011. Alan Schwarz did groundbreaking work on CTE for the Times—a good place to start for anyone interested. See also Ben McGrath, “Does Football Have a Future? The N.F.L. and the Concussion Crisis,” New Yorker, January 31, 2011. On Michael Vick’s contract, see “Scoop Jackson,” “The Meaning of Michael Vick’s $100M,” ESPN.com, September 7, 2011.
13: STAR-CROSSED IN MIAMI
The stuff on the Miami game comes from interviews and books, all those mentioned above as well as Everyone’s a Coach: Five Secrets for High-Performance Coaching by Don Shula. Rex Ryan’s quote about the aura of the 46 appeared in The Games That Changed the Game: The Evolution of the NFL in Seven Sundays by Ron Jaworski. Mercury Morris served three years in prison; his conviction was then overturned on grounds he’d been the victim of entrapment. See “Morris Is Freed,” New York Times, June 13, 1986. “The Bears did not go with a nickel…”: Shula’s quote appears in Jaworski’s The Games That Changed the Game. Hampton’s comments on the Ditka/Ryan halftime fight appear in Da Bears! How the 1985 Monsters of the Midway Became the Greatest Team in NFL History by Steve Delsohn. “The Super Bowl Shuffle”: Information on this infectious song and video comes from books listed above, as well as my interviews and experience. On the scandal regarding “The Shuffle,” see “‘Super Bowl Shuffle’ Accounting Due Soon,” Chicago Tribune, July 29, 1986. Also Dan Pompei, “Gault Gets Credit for the Super Bowl Shuffle,” Chicago Sun-Times, January 3, 1986. Deadspin ran an oral history of the Shuffle in the winter of 2012. For more on “The Super Bowl Shuffle,” just go to YouTube and watch the thing.
14: THE FERGUSON HIT
The information in this section comes first and foremost from the game itself, which I watched then, watched now, and watched in between. As noted, I tried and failed to speak to Joe Ferguson, but I did get a great deal of information and insight from Ditka, Fencik, Tyrone Keys, Jim Morrissey, and Doug Plank. Ditka’s quote on the Hit—“the lick Wilber put on Joe Ferguson”—comes from an ESPN special on the Bears. Mac’s comment on the team plane returning from Detroit comes from The Rise and Self-Destruction of the Greatest Football Team in History by John Mullin, and from Tim Wrightman, who told me the same story.
15: THE YEAR WITHOUT A WINTER, AND 16: A BUNCH OF CRYBABIES
In these chapters, I relied on the broadcasts of the games themselves, the record books, and the play-by-play, as well as interviews with participants. To this, I added details from the sports stories written at the time, as well as the reporting done in books: In Life, First You Kick Ass by Mike Ditka; McMahon! by Jim McMahon; Da Bears! How the 1985 Monsters of the Midway Became the Greatest Team in NFL History by Steve Delsohn; and The Rise and Self-Destruction of the Greatest Football Team in History by John Mullin. For a description of Lawrence Taylor’s impact, see The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game by Michael Lewis. Also on Taylor: LT: Living on the Edge by Lawrence Taylor. The crackback block: it seemed to be on the verge of being banned in 2012. See “Requiem for the Crackback?” Deadspin.com, March 23, 2009, and Dan Hanzus, “League Will Consider Changes to Blocking Rules for Safety,” NFL.com, November 23, 2012. McMahon and the headband: it was a topic in every interview. See also “Headband Brand Banned? After Drawing $5,000 Fine, McMahon Wears One for Rozelle,” Miami Herald, January 13, 1986. The stuff on Chicago in the ’80s is from my life. The details from New Orleans come from articles and stories published at the time, including the Rolling Stone cover story on McMahon. The Super Bowl itself is there for everyone to see. For the misery of Payton, I’m indebted to Payton’s own account in Never Die Easy, as well as Jeff Pearlman’s account in Sweetness: The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton and my own interviews. Bill Murray on the sideline: I know how he got there. Brian McCaskey, known in the Bears’ locker room for his Murray imitation—he could do every line from Caddyshack—gave Murray his press pass, adding, “Don’t say where you got it. We’re not supposed to give these away.” Later, when a local TV reporter asked Murr
ay how he’d gotten on the field, he said, “Brian McCaskey gave me his pass.” Super Bowl controversy: on acupuncture and Mac’s butt, see Jackie McMullan, “Acupuncturist Sticking to the Silent Treatment; Shiraishi Arrives, but Chooses to Avoid Prickly Issue,” Boston Globe, January 23, 1986, and Dan Pompei, “False Story Brings McMahon Threats,” Chicago Sun-Times, January 24, 1986. On the Packers fan saved by his regalia, see “Cheesehead May Have Been a Lifesaver: Packers Fan Uses Foam to Protect Self During Plane Crash,” Chicago Tribune, November 29, 1995.