Sweetness

by Jeff Pearlman

  “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.”

  “We were taking handoffs in a drill,” said Dennis Runck, a free agent running back in 1982. “He slaps me on the ass and says, ‘So, I hear you’re gay.’”

  “Walter didn’t practice much during training camp, but he was always there during workouts in shoulder pads and shorts, encouraging people,” said Mark Stevenson, who, in 1982, was invited to camp as a free-agent offensive lineman. “So we’re going through offensive drills, and Walter’s circling the huddle, yelling, ‘Pull it! Pull it! Pull it!’ He does this for two weeks, and nobody knows what he’s talking about. Finally Kurt Becker, another lineman, says, ‘Pull what, Walter?’ And Walter screams, ‘Pull my dick, motherfucker! Pull my dick!’ ”

  “Were Walter alive today, he’d almost certainly have some sexual harassment suits thrown his way,” said Duke Fergerson, a free agent wide receiver in camp with the team in 1982. “It’s one thing to be playful and juvenile about discovering your sexuality. But Walter would almost be sexually intimidating to these rookies. He’d make passes at guys. He may have been kidding, but coming from someone of that status, it was very intimidating. It got to the point where I didn’t want to dress around him. It was too uncomfortable.”

  Payton was steadfastly loyal (when the club cut a running back named Willie McClendon in 1983, Payton didn’t speak to teammates for a week) and steadfastly confounding. He yelled. He whispered. He comforted. He mocked. “He’d meet you a couple of times and then give you a bear hug,” said Covert.

  “Then he’d pinch you. Then he’d flick you in the ear. Then he’d pinch your ass. Then he’d pinch your neck. The he’d goose you. Rookies would come in and say, ‘Is he gay?’ No, Walter’s not gay. He’s just strange.”

  “Walter was kind of a nice guy, kind of a flaky guy,” said Jon Morris, a backup center with the team in 1978. Morris joined the Bears for the final season of a fifteen-year career. He had been around some of the game’s biggest names, from Jim Plunkett and Sam Cunningham with New England to Lem Barney and Doug English in Detroit. As far as superstars go, Morris said Payton was the daffiest. “He was distant and aloof, yet then he’d do some stupid high school and college frat stuff that made you want to strangle him. You’d take a shower and he’d turn all the lights off. He’d snap you in the rear with a towel. He was a pain in the ass, and yet he was also enjoyable. Few people were harder to figure than Walter.”

  Here’s the odd part: As paradoxical as Payton could seem to those who stuck with the Bears, he was unusually gracious and outgoing toward players brought in with little chance of sticking. Some say this had to do more with Payton’s insecurities than his large heart—a lightly regarded free agent from Bucknell or Delaware posed no threat to his job security. Others, however, maintain that he was simply good-guy Walter being good-guy Walter. Whatever the case, from the time Payton arrived in 1975 through his retirement in 1988, countless scrubs and C-listers raved about the star’s treatment. They watched in awe as he gave the Lake Forest groundskeeper a break, hopped atop the mower, and cut the grass. They stood dumbfounded as he brought them cups of water. Whenever he made appearances on behalf of the Special Olympics, Payton would tap a third-string nobody on the shoulder and ask him to tag along.

  “I was an undrafted free-agent quarterback from Northern Illinois who was invited to camp only to generate local interest,” adds Pete Kraker, a 1979 free agent. “I wasn’t going to make the team. But Walter introduced me to his wife, gave me his business card, checked in on me every day to see how I was doing. He had an extra quality about him.”

  “I was a good football player, but my real gift was being able to sing just like Michael Jackson,” said Oliver Williams, a wide receiver and Chicago’s twelfth-round pick out of Illinois in 1983. “Whenever he’d see me in camp Walter would yell, ‘Michael Jackson—come on over here and sing to me, Michael Jackson!’ He always wanted to hear ‘Human Nature,’ but he also liked ‘Billie Jean.’ I loved to sing anyway, but singing to Walter was an honor.”

  When Mickey Malham, a seventeenth-round draft choice out of Arkansas State, broke his arm during the 1977 preseason, Payton was the one who regularly bent down to tie his shoelaces. After Tommy Reamon, a former star halfback in the World Football League, was cut by the Bears, Payton promised to speak at the Tommy Reamon Football Camp in Christchurch, Virginia. (Reamon: “He came that summer and gave the kids a magical memory.”) In 1982 Jim Schletzer was a free-agent punter out of Lee-McRae Junior College. This was his fifth training camp in five years, and he had never taken the field for live action. “I’m on the roster for a preseason Monday Night Football game against the Chargers at Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego,” Schletzer said. “They brought along four other punters, and we were all supposed to rotate. Well, everyone else got in, and they passed over me. I’m standing on the sideline and Walter walks over and says, ‘Why are they skipping you?’ I shrugged—I didn’t know. From that point on, Walter was bugging the coaches to give me a shot, telling them I deserved a chance to be out there.

  “Well, in the fourth quarter—thanks entirely to Walter—they put me in. I got in the huddle, walked back a few yards, stood to punt—and just before the snap Mike Ditka called a time-out. I never punted. But how can I ever forget Water’s level of compassion?”

  Fans gravitated toward Payton, and he soaked in the affection. On road trips he would always find state police officers and trade Chi
cago Bears gear for one of their hats. Just for fun, he approached random people on the street, extended his hand and said, “Hi! I’m Walter—Walter Payton.” During training camps he handed out large quantities of wristbands and gloves. He rarely (if ever) turned down autograph requests, even when fans interrupted a meal or private conversation. “He understood his celebrity,” said Ron Atlas, his friend. “He got the responsibility that came along with it.”

  Beginning in 1977, at the conclusion of every season Payton appeared on behalf of Buick at the Chicago Auto Show. Standing on a platform alongside a Regal or LeSabre, he would sign one autograph after another until his hand cramped. The payoff was excellent—Payton earned a couple of hundred dollars for four or five hours of work, plus the new Buick of his choice. But his attendance genuinely was not about the money. Here, greeting his fans in his adopted city, Payton was in his element. Besides a signature and a quick word, nobody wanted anything of him. There was no pressure. No expectations. No hangers-on. As myriad C-list celebrities robotically went through the motions—sign, next, sign, next—Payton charmed away. He kissed grandmothers on the cheeks and wrapped Bear diehards in massive hugs. He looked people in the eye and gave each question serious consideration. When he signed a photograph, his name was usually accompanied by a Bible verse.

  Yet, as Holmes notes, “there was a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to Walter.” Just in case flashy new automobiles weren’t enough of a draw, all of the participating car companies hired a bevy of attractive young models to stand alongside the product. With rare exceptions, the women fit a familiar mold—early twenties in age, white skin, blond hair, large busts, blinding smiles.

  Like Payton, they worked for hours, waving, grinning, pointing toward a motor or steering wheel.

  At age twenty-five at the beginning of 1979, Payton remained awkward and goofy around members of the opposite sex. Even with Connie, now his wife of three years, conversation was generally stilted, and only went so far. Throughout his boyhood Walter’s mother was responsible for cooking and cleaning and keeping things in order, and he expected Connie to fulfill a similar role. He didn’t care what she thought about football or his contract or, frankly, much of anything. He spent his Saturday mornings soaking in cartoons—a ritual Connie failed to appreciate. (The one thing Payton never watched? Football. “For me to watch a football game at home,” he said, “makes about as much sense as a secretary going home and spending her nights typing.”) “Connie was very quiet, very sweet, very helpful,” said Jenkins. “She seemed to adore Walter, though I did get the impression it was a typical pro jock marriage. Everything revolved around him and she was there to serve.”

  The couple now lived in a modest house in Arlington Heights, and while Walter apparently loved Connie (When asked to name his extravagances in a 1979 interview with the Tribune, he responded, “My wife.”), he didn’t seem especially interested in her. During his rookie season, when the two were apart, Walter desperately craved her company. But that was loneliness talking. In person, Walter and Connie formed a strange union. The things they had in common—dancing, Jackson State, Southern heritage, quirky humor (they attended the Bears’ 1978 team Halloween party as the black Coneheads)—only extended so far. Connie struggled to adjust to Chicago (“[It] just seemed like this cold, faraway, miserable place with these little birdcage houses,” she later said.), and they rarely took trips that weren’t related to football. Conversational topics were limited. Social engagements were few. When they dined with couples, Walter’s time would be fully devoted to the other male. There was little cuddling or hand-holding, and she struggled to grasp his unpredictable moodiness. Smiling, laughing Walter morphed into frowning, brooding Walter with a snap of the fingers. “Connie was real quiet and subdued, which Walter really wasn’t unless he got in a funk,” said Holmes. “She was not a real forceful person, and back then she was petrified of Walter. Not in a violent way, but in not wanting to get on his bad side. I never got any indication from Connie that she had any interest in going out and partying or drinking or cutting up behind his back. But the marriage was what it was. Connie was very tight with her first cousin Hazel [who was married to Rickey Young, Walter’s former Jackson State teammate] and Cookie Brazile [the wife of Robert Brazile, another former JSU player]. I remember all three girls in the office one day and they were talking—‘Honey, I’ll tell you one thing. He can have all the hos he wants, as long as I get the money.’ They all died laughing. But they knew what it was to be married to an athlete, and they surely accepted it.”

  Perhaps eventually. But in 1979, still in the early years of marriage, Connie didn’t recognize the seeds being planted at the Buick events. Here, Walter Payton was king. The models hit on him with a jarring lack of subtlety. Female attendees slipped their phone numbers into his pocket. Walter wasn’t quite sure how to respond, but celebrity clearly came with its perks.

  Payton was known to talk up his love and commitment to Jesus Christ, and the temptations that came with NFL superstardom seemed to make him crave faith more than ever. Yet the little Bubba who attended Owens Chapel Baptist Church with his mother and siblings every Sunday was now all grown up. The concept of infidelity was nothing new—according to multiple family friends, Walter’s father wasn’t one to limit himself to his wife.

  During training camp at Lake Forest College in 1978, Harper, the Bears fullback/chapel leader, brought Payton, quarterback Vince Evans, and defensive back Mike Spivey into a dorm room. He asked the men to hold hands and bow their heads, then led them in the Lord’s Prayer. “We all rededicated ourselves to the Lord . . . being born again,” said Spivey. “I am a born-again Christian, and in my opinion Walter exemplified a strong Christian man.”

  That’s what Payton strove to be—a strong Christian man.

  “I think Walter was an idealist, and he fought to hold on to those beliefs,” said Holmes. “But the ideals got harder and harder to live up to.”

  It started with the athletic tape. Walter Payton would grab a roll and look it over. Once. Twice. Three times. There couldn’t be any blemishes on the white surface. Not even a speck.

  When the tape met his approval, Payton lifted his right cleat onto a stool, bending his knee ever so slightly. Using both hands, he pulled the tape as taut as possible, then began the slow, meticulous act of wrapping it around and around the footwear. Once the first shoe was done, he focused on the second.

  The process, known throughout football as “spatting,” was generally practiced by team trainers and equipment managers as a method of keeping shoes straight and in tip-top form. Yet Payton was particular. He also happened to be, hands down, the NFL’s best spatter. “We were together at the 1978 Pro Bowl, and Walter was my personal spatter,” said Ahmad Rashad, the Vikings receiver. “He could spat a shoe and there wouldn’t even be a wrinkle. Not a single one. The great spatters are incredibly valued. Some trainers can do it, some can’t. It’s a thing of pride. Walter could do it on your shoe and it’d be just stellar.”

  Payton’s devotion to the perfect spat reflected his devotion to brilliance. The reason he had trouble with, first, Jack Pardee and now, Neill Armstrong, wasn’t because they were bad men or even particularly bad coaches. It was because neither one seemed to chase perfection. They desired to win, sure, but Payton rarely sensed any genuine life-or-death desperation from the organization. The Bears were as content prevailing 10–7 as they were 45–3. They took few on-field chances and even fewer off-the-field personnel risks. With the sixty-sixth pick of the third round of the 1979 NFL Draft, Finks tuned out the pleas of his scouts by ignoring a Notre Dame quarterback named Joe Montana in favor of running back Willie McClendon of Georgia. “Chicago’s personnel guys will swear to you they went to work that day convinced the team would draft Montana,” said Don Pierson. “Finks just didn’t want to pull the trigger on that one. He believed in Bob Avellini, Vince Evans, and Mike Phipps.” Other NFC teams—the Cowboys and Vikings in particular—went for the jugular. The Bears did not.
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  As far as wins and losses go, 1979 was a banner year for the Bears, who went 10-6 and reached the play-offs for just the second time in sixteen seasons. Yet Payton, by now in his fifth year, wasn’t blinded by the mirage of a soft schedule and some lucky bounces (the Bears beat two two-win clubs, needed a desperation last-second play to overcome San Francisco, and defeated a Jets team lacking its star, wide receiver Wesley Walker). In what many considered to be the best sustained showing of his career, Payton rushed for 1,610 yards and fourteen touchdowns, and caught another thirty-one passes for 313 yards and two touchdowns. “Even that great year he had [1977],” linebacker Doug Buffone raved, “I don’t think he was running like this.”

  With Harper, his invaluable fullback, out for the entire season with a knee injury, Payton was still unstoppable. He opened the year with 125 yards in a loss to Green Bay, and tore up the usually impenetrable Vikings for 182 yards a week later. He killed the Cowboys for 134 yards and, in a must-win regular season finale against the Cardinals, cruised for 157 yards and three touchdowns (Chicago dominated, 42–6, and Payton clinched his fourth-straight NFC rushing title).

  Even with those magnificent showings, however, the Bears remained a bubble team that could not reach the next level. Now in his sixth year as the general manager, Finks still refused to draft or trade for a top-flight quarterback, believing he could always find some passable schlub for the position. When the Raiders offered Ken Stabler before the October 9 trading deadline, Finks barely picked up the phone. “We told [the Raiders] that we weren’t interested,” Finks said. “We felt like our quarterback situation was OK.”