League of Denial

by Mark Fainaru-Wada

  “You’re gonna pay me for my autograph?” Webster replied.

  Thus was born the Mike Webster–Sunny Jani partnership. Mike followed Sunny out of the bus station—a homeless former Steeler and his spindly twentysomething Indian guide. Jani got Webster a haircut, took him to Kmart to buy new clothes, and rented him a room for a month at the Red Roof Inn—at a discounted rate, since Sunny immediately was able to trade on Webster’s name to get a good deal.

  Sunny was using Webster, but he seemed to drain some of the sleaziness out of the transaction by being so outrageously transparent about his motives. Every day, people try to turn a celebrity or a sports star into their meal ticket, but seldom do they announce it to the world. Sunny didn’t take a percentage from the first deals he made for Webster. That was part of his strategy. “I wanted him to trust me and build up a relationship with him,” Sunny said. “My hidden agenda was I wanted to get famous. I said, ‘You know, this is my meal ticket, but I have to take care of him.’ ”

  Webster, perhaps the most guileless man in the world, especially in his addled state, wouldn’t hear of it. He insisted that Sunny get his fair share. Jani suggested a 10 percent cut. Webster countered with a 50–50 split, and there wouldn’t be any negotiating. Sunny knew it was ridiculous, unfair even. He used much of his proceeds to buy groceries for Webster or pay off some of the bills Webster was ignoring.

  Sunny secured appearance fees for Webster all over Pittsburgh: $150 to sign autographs at a bowling alley here or a flea market there, $5,000 to give a speech at Sears. Sunny once arranged an appearance in a friend’s garage, where Webster signed autographs for $10 a head. He cut deals for Webster at restaurants, persuading the managers to let the Steelers great eat for free or at a discount. He exchanged Webster’s autograph for rent, for cars, for medical expenses, for whatever he could conceive.

  “You know, now I feel bad, but I kind of whored him out,” Jani said years later.

  One client, a meter reader named Dennis, became a cash cow for Sunny and Mike. Dennis was massively overweight, and Webster was entertained by watching him inhale a meal. “He made love to food,” Sunny explained. They would go to all-you-can eat buffets at Ponderosa or a Chinese restaurant, with Dennis, of course, paying the freight.

  On occasion, Dennis would pay $300 to have Webster come to his apartment and watch a game. Sunny set up this unusual business transaction perhaps a half dozen times until Webster began to feel guilty. Because Dennis liked to hang around, Sunny recruited him into the motley collection of people he employed to keep Webster’s life from completely falling apart. Jani dubbed it Team Webster.

  Sunny had become the center of Mike Webster’s universe. Their relationship, born of exploitation, had shifted until they were now more like a patient and his deeply loyal caretaker. Webster often needed help just getting through the day, his body and mind deteriorating rapidly in opposite directions: Physically, he was an old man. Mentally, he was becoming a child.

  As much as Jani tried to keep Mike’s life stable, Webster remained perpetually on the move, as if he couldn’t sit still. He spent hours driving all over the Midwest, sometimes sleeping in the homes of old friends, or in his cluttered Suburban, or in bus or train stations. By 1996, Webster would estimate he had spent about a year and a half of the last five sleeping in his car.

  Webster made the drive from Pittsburgh to Wisconsin and back dozens of times without incident. But suddenly it became an adventure. He was practically living out of his truck, hauling around all his belongings, mainly clothes and books. To the very end, Webster loved to read and write, and the truck was filled with piles of books: Louis L’Amour novels, historical tomes on JFK, Winston Churchill’s works, Patton’s greatest quotes, which he used to prop up his flagging moods. “He knew his story wasn’t gonna end well,” Webster’s youngest son, Garrett, would say.

  Sometimes on those drives, Webster would call Jani in the middle of the night, lost and out of gas, with no money.

  The conversations all went something like this:

  Sunny: Mike, what do you see around you? What’s the mile marker? What highway are you on?

  Webster: I see a lot of trees.

  It became such a regular occurrence that Jani started hiding money—$20 here, $50 there—inside different books. He always put the money on page 52, Webster’s number with the Steelers.

  “Mike, I put $50 on page 52 of Remembering JFK,” Jani would tell him.

  Not long after he met Webster, Jani got married; he and his wife had a baby girl. But Webster came to consume so much of Jani’s life that Jani was perpetually on call. He finally gave Webster the garage code to his home so that Webster could let himself in and sleep in the basement. Other times, Webster could be found sleeping in the back office at the Blue Eagle.

  “You love Mike more than you love me,” complained Jani’s wife, Marsha. Whenever Mike called, Sunny jumped.

  Soon Jani was divorced.

  “We built up a great relationship of trust and love,” Jani said.

  He was talking not about his wife but about Webster.

  So much of Mike’s life was coming apart in 1996. In May, Pam, with little choice, filed for divorce; Webster was so out of it, he didn’t realize until years later that his marriage had been dissolved. The IRS slapped him with a $250,000 tax lien. His health continued to get worse. In the six years since his retirement, Webster had experienced fainting spells. He was hospitalized with heart problems and colitis. During one inexplicable stretch, he lost 20 pounds in three days. Doctors informed him he had lymphoma—until it turned out to be an infection; no one was able to explain why it occurred or went away. Even a minor cut on his leg wasn’t simple. Where a Band-Aid would suffice for anyone else, blood spurted out of Webster’s leg to the point that he began applying Super Glue to stanch the bleeding.

  When Webster showed up at the offices of Dr. Stanley Marks on September 5, 1996, Marks, who had treated him for years, reported that his patient’s life had “really deteriorated.” Marks continued: “He has had major problems with depression and obsessive compulsive behavior and is currently being treated with Ritalin and Paxil.… He also has frequent stress headaches.”

  One morning that summer, a manager at the Amtrak station in downtown Pittsburgh called the Steelers’ offices: Webster had been there all night. Joe Gordon, the team’s longtime public relations director, said he would be right over. The Rooneys had hired Gordon in 1969, the same year they had hired Chuck Noll, in an effort to upgrade the previously dismal franchise. Gordon was a Pittsburgh native who had played varsity baseball at Pitt and whose hard-knuckle attitude fit perfectly with the brawling team. In the days preceding the 1976 AFC Championship Game against the hated Raiders, Gordon decked an Oakland TV reporter. Asked the next day if his team was ready, Noll said, “I don’t know, but Joe Gordon is.”

  Gordon had developed great respect for Webster during his 15 seasons with the Steelers. Like everyone, he was wowed by the center’s work ethic and was well aware of the brutal childhood that drove him. As the PR director, Gordon also was impressed by Webster’s generosity.

  “He was always very accommodating, never ever turned down an interview request or to visit a sick kid or go to Children’s Hospital,” Gordon said. “Mike was always there.”

  When Webster earned $500 for doing a print ad that Gordon helped set up, Webster tried to give him half the money.

  “If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have had this opportunity,” Webster said.

  “Mike, that’s part of my job,” Gordon replied.

  Before Gordon left for the train station, he stopped by owner Dan Rooney’s office to tell his boss about Webster. Gordon said he planned to take $200 out of petty cash to help Iron Mike. Rooney agreed that was a good plan. Gordon found Webster sitting at a counter, hovering over a pile of photographs of great athletes such as Muhammad Ali and Mickey Mantle. Webster looked messy, his clothes wrinkled, but Gordon didn’t think he appeared all that different
from the way he often did. When Webster saw Gordon, he seemed unsurprised that the two old friends were meeting in the train station or that one of them seemed to be sleeping there.

  “It was just like I’d seen him two or three days ago,” Gordon said. “It was a normal meeting with him.”

  Webster explained that he had acquired the rights to distribute the high-quality photos of sports greats. He told Gordon he was going to make a fortune. Gordon quickly deduced that the business, or at least its prospects, was a figment of Mike’s imagination.

  “Well, come on, you’ve got to get out of here,” Gordon said. “Where are you staying?”

  “I’ve got a place to stay,” Webster said, mentioning the Red Roof Inn.

  Before home games, the Steelers stayed at the Hilton, and Gordon suggested that the team could put him up there for the weekend. Webster agreed. He stayed on through the weekend and well beyond that, with no one pressing him to leave. Occasionally, Gordon would stop by, and it appeared as if Webster never left the room. Clothes, towels, candy wrappers, the remains of two-day-old room service were strewn everywhere. Webster assured Gordon he would let the maids clean up. Finally, three days having turned into three months, Rooney had to put his foot down: Webster couldn’t live on the Steelers’ dime indefinitely. The bill had reached more than $8,000. Gordon was dispatched to tell Webster he had to move on.

  Then, with Webster’s condition rapidly deteriorating, it was announced he had been elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

  The announcement, of course, was not unexpected; Webster was one of the greatest linemen in NFL history. But it presented an uncomfortable dilemma. Webster’s struggles had become an open secret in Pittsburgh and parts of Wisconsin. As preparations for the induction ceremony unfolded, those closest to Webster wondered how he would get through it.

  In early July 1997, weeks before the ceremony, ESPN aired a story that laid bare Webster’s postretirement life. The story noted the loss of his home, his car, and “most of his worldly possessions.” Pam was quoted saying, “As good as times got, they got bad. We’ve gone through times when we didn’t have toilet paper, where we did not have heat in the house.”

  Webster said doctors believed he might have Parkinson’s disease or a form of post-concussion syndrome. During a subsequent interview in which he suggested that the ESPN story had overstated his problems, Webster described visiting a doctor in Philadelphia who ran tests that revealed head and chest problems.

  “Have you been in a car accident?” the doctor asked Webster. “Have you been hit lately? And how often?”

  “Oh, probably about 25,000 times or so,” Webster responded.

  By the time Team Webster arrived in Canton for the Hall of Fame induction ceremony, the tragic tale of the fallen hero had been published across the country:

  Houston Chronicle:

  WEBSTER’S INDUCTION COMES AMID CHAOS

  Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

  HUMBLED HERO; WEBSTER FIGHTS TO OVERCOME DESPAIR

  Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

  A LIFE OFF-CENTER

  St. Petersburg Times:

  A MAN OF STEEL CRUMBLES

  Still other papers picked up a story from the Associated Press titled “From Super Bowls to Sleeping in Bus Stations”—a story in which Webster insisted, “I’m not as bad off as people say.”

  Of course, he was worse. But as humbling as it had been to see the demise play out so publicly, Sunny and Team Webster viewed the Hall of Fame induction more than anything as a business opportunity. At signings, Sunny could now eliminate the word Future from Hall of Famer; that had to be worth more money. Webster was in no mood to celebrate, not that he ever was. He had come to view the Hall as a sick ward inhabited by former players discarded by the league, their bodies and minds left to wither and rot, just as his were. He approached the event with two main objectives: dispel the rumors that his life was a train wreck and persuade several other Steelers Hall of Famers to join him in a new business venture. They would market themselves collectively: merchandise, signings, personal appearances.

  “This was gonna be his big weekend: ‘Hey, I’m not a loser. I’m not a homeless guy living under an overpass like everyone says and addicted to pain medicine,’ ” said his son Colin. “That and ‘Here I am. Look, I made it.’ It was gonna be his weekend and the start of a new era.”

  But none of his former teammates would sign on to his business plan. Some wanted to help, but no one was going to go into business anytime soon with Webby, not in his current state. Webster asked Bob Stage, the pilot, if he would introduce him before his acceptance speech. Stage was touched, but he thought the choice was a reflection on how sick Webster was. “Mike, I’m honored, but you need somebody who had an impact in your career, not Joe Blow,” he said. Webster asked Stage if he thought Bradshaw would do it. Of course he would, said Stage.

  In fact, Bradshaw did more than that. During the weekend, the retired Steelers quarterback pulled Webster aside and handed him a check for $175,000. Webster tore it up. “Nooooo!” Sunny cried. “Mike, we need it!” Webster’s pride in such matters was as erratic and malleable as his mental state. One minute he was living in the Pittsburgh Hilton on the Rooneys’ dime, and the next he was ripping up a $175,000 check from his quarterback of over a decade. As the years went on, Webster repeatedly rebuffed offers from his friends and former teammates, eventually alienating many of them. He developed an irrational loathing of the Steelers, blaming the team for a variety of his ills.

  The ceremony on July 26, 1997, was delayed by rain; it was sticky and humid, with temperatures reaching the eighties. Webster was the last to be inducted into a class that included Raiders defensive back Mike Haynes, New York Giants owner Wellington Mara, and Dolphins coach Don Shula, who, tanned and youthful, looked like he had just arrived from the Bahamas, especially compared with Webster, sitting next to him, who was pale and disheveled.

  Webster fidgeted through the ceremony, adjusting his gold Hall of Fame blazer and tie, which he wore over a dark blue golf shirt, its collar half up and half down. The inductees sat in a row behind the podium. At one point, in the middle of Mara’s speech, Webster got up and left, returning after a few minutes. When Bradshaw finally took the podium to a loud ovation, his introduction was more of a sermon than a speech. Bradshaw rarely had set foot in Pittsburgh after his career ended, apparently because of his resentment over the abuse he endured early in his career. But for 10 minutes—longer than even the inductees were supposed to speak—Bradshaw talked largely about himself, a homespun tale of his dream to play football and how God had not only granted him that dream but allowed him to share it with some of the greatest players ever—Swann, Stallworth, Harris, Bleier, Greene, Lambert, Ham, Kolb, Holmes.

  Finally, Bradshaw reached the powerful climax:

  “But what good is a machine if you ain’t got a center? And oh, did I get a center! I didn’t just get any ol’ center, no sirree. I got the best that’s ever played the game, the best that ever put his hand down on a football. I loved him from the first time I ever put my hands under his butt.”

  As Bradshaw continued, Webster, aware that he was about to speak, removed his tie.

  “There has never been or there never will be another man as committed, totally dedicated to making him the very best that he could possibly be,” Bradshaw continued. “There’s never been a man who was so loved. He was the background on which we were built around. He was our spine. There never has been, never will be, another Mike Webster!”

  At Bradshaw’s own induction in 1989, he had yelled, “What I wouldn’t give right now to put my hands under Mike Webster’s butt just one more time!” And so as he completed his introduction, Bradshaw reached into a paper bag, pulled out a football, and shouted, “One more time!” Webster rose, with the Steeler faithful delirious, took off his blazer, and limped over to Bradshaw. He grabbed the ball, somehow managed to hunch down as low as he ever did when he was playing, and snapped a bullet to Brad
shaw.

  The two men hugged, Webster approached the podium—and Team Webster held its breath.

  By this point in Webster’s life, Ritalin was one of his best friends, a drug he came to depend on to get him through the day. He used it to focus and take the edge off his spiraling depression. A psychostimulant, Ritalin had grown popular for treating children with attention deficit disorder. Though it sparked the release of dopamine in the brain—the chemical most associated with pleasure and reward—the drug had the effect of honing an ADD patient’s concentration. Some doctors saw its potential with Parkinson’s patients and with adults who had experienced brain trauma. It was clear to Webster that Ritalin worked for him. Before taking the podium in Canton he gulped down 80 mg.

  Even then, his rambling speech lasted 21 minutes—13 more than his allotted time. Speaking without notes, Webster was conversational, occasionally inspiring, and funny. But he was also all over the place. He opened with a slightly awkward joke: “Giving Bradshaw a forum and a microphone is like giving Visine to a Peeping Tom.” He added another later: “His dad says he was so ugly, his mom carried him around for two weeks upside down, thought he only had one eye.” Webster left the stage briefly to hug Pam, the kids, and other family members. He bounced in and out of messages about failure and success, briefly quoted Longfellow, and lost his train of thought several times.

  Sometimes it appeared as if he were giving a talk to a group of middle-school students:

  “Don’t give up, don’t be afraid to fail. No one is keeping score. All we have to do is finish the game, and we’ll all be winners.”

  Other times he sounded like a man trying to save his country, though it was unclear what he was trying to save it from:

  “I’m talking about things that are going on today that have been ignored for a long period of time. And yeah, we’re addressing them now because we have a history of only addressing them only when they jump up and bite us in the ass. And not until we do that. But we can change that. We can change, but we’re in this, we gotta care about one another, we gotta care about our kids, we gotta care about a lot of things. And we do care about a lot of things, but we gotta have enough people caring and working together. And we can get that done, it’s not impossible. Hell, nothing else is working. You know, maybe it’s idealistic, but nothing else is working, folks. And I’m just appreciative that I had the opportunity to play with these men both in Pittsburgh and Kansas City, and against the jerks on the other teams.”