Sweetness

by Jeff Pearlman

  Finally, with his team carrying but two healthy ball carriers (Davenport and Nuu Faaola), Dolphins coach Don Shula told the media he was preparing to hold an open casting call for available running backs. Among the first to be auditioned would be George Swarn, a twenty-five-year-old Miami of Ohio standout, and Kerry Goode, a Buccaneer reject who had played at the University of Alabama. This was hardly Eric Dickerson and Marcus Allen.

  Having stopped following the day-to-day goings-on of the NFL, Holmes had no inkling of Miami’s woes. So, when Payton called his home one evening, his high-pitched voice spitting out a hundred words a second, Holmes demanded his longtime client slow down and explain what in the world he was talking about.

  “I want you to talk to Eddie Jones [Miami’s vice president of administration] and tell him I’m interested,” Payton said. “Tell him.”

  “Interested in what?” Holmes replied.

  “Interested in playing for the Dolphins,” he said. “They’re not that far off from being a Super Bowl team. Tell him I’ll come in and block, run—whatever they need.”

  Holmes was at a loss. Ever since Payton had retired at the conclusion of the ’87 season, the two men worked tirelessly to make his post-football adjustment as smooth and seamless as possible. Though, years later, Payton blamed Holmes for encouraging him to hang up his uniform too early, the truth was he made the final decision on his own. “Nobody forced Walter to stop playing,” Holmes rightly said. “It was his call.”

  Now, Payton was making the call to try a comeback. “Walter, here’s what we’ll do,” Holmes said. “Sleep on this, and let’s talk tomorrow morning. If you still want me to contact Eddie, I will.”

  The night came.

  The morning arrived.

  Holmes called Payton. “Well?” he said. “Are you still interested?”

  “Interested in what?” the legend responded.

  “In the Dolphins,” Holmes said. “In returning to the league.”

  “Oh, that,” said Payton. “Nah—forget it. I just got a little emotional. It’s probably a bad idea”

  Holmes was relieved.

  “There’s no way Miami would have taken Walter at age thirty-six,” he said. “And if they did, it would have been a disaster. He was meant to retire a Chicago Bear, not a Dolphin. The way he went out was the right way.”

  At the same time Payton was thinking about Miami, he was also thinking about St. Louis. When he retired after the ’87 season, the prime motivating factor was life after football likely including his becoming the first minority owner in league history. That’s the way Holmes had phrased it—that while he would no longer enjoy the euphoria of crossing a goal line, Payton would know how it felt to become a legitimate trailblazer.

  In the waning days of his career, Payton was told that the NFL badly wanted to return a team to St. Louis, which had been vacated when the Cardinals relocated to Arizona after the 1987 season. Not only was St. Louis the nation’s eighteenth largest television market, and not only was it centrally located, and not only was it home to a good number of Fortune 500 companies, but it was a genuine sports hotbed. When Bill Bidwill, the Cardinals’ owner, moved his franchise west, it wasn’t because St. Louis was incapable of supporting football. No, he moved because the city—loathe to support a man considered to be miserly and not civic-minded—refused to fork over the two hundred million dollars necessary to build him a stadium.

  Before Pete Rozelle, the NFL’s legendary commissioner, retired in November 1989, he spoke with Payton on numerous occasions about St. Louis. It was, the commissioner believed, a perfect match: Here was a market in need of a team. Here was a league in need of diversity. Here was an iconic figure—beloved, intelligent, African-American—who had nobly represented the NFL and who excelled at bringing disparate people together. Plus, Chicago and St. Louis were separated by a mere three hundred miles. Though not exactly a local, Payton was close enough to travel back and forth with little hassle. “I always felt that Walter was one of the half-dozen real class players during my time in the league,” Rozelle explained. “I have a great deal of respect for him. I think he would be a valued asset to any group.”

  Payton was interested, but skeptical. While he had earned a good amount of money throughout his thirteen-year career, he could hardly be classified as wealthy. His highest single-season salary was only one million dollars, and, thanks to a high number of dubious investments, he was not sitting on a major war chest. Payton had laid down hundreds of thousands of dollars into Studebaker’s, as well as four other nightclubs, only later to learn that he had made a tremendous mistake. Those athletes who excelled financially at the conclusion of their careers did so not by relying on their finances, but their names. When an Arnold Palmer or Joe DiMaggio was approached about opening an establishment, they would listen as long as the endeavor did not involve forking over any dough. So while Payton was indeed titillated by the idea of calling an owner’s box home, he wasn’t willing to go broke in pursuit of it.

  Which is where Jerry Clinton came in.

  Raised in a housing project on the south side of St. Louis, Clinton was a former Golden Gloves boxer who, against all odds, worked his way up from lugging cases of beer to, in 1977, becoming the president of Grey Eagle Distributors, the Anheuser-Busch beer distributorship in St. Louis County. Clinton had initially purchased 5 percent equity in the company, then turned that into 50 percent and, eventually, 100 percent. Under his watch, Grey Eagle’s market share went from 30 percent to 70 percent, and throughout St. Louis he became known as something of a financial Houdini. “Jerry was an incredibly successful businessman who came to represent our city in a lot of ways,” said Walter Metcalfe, an attorney who represented Clinton and Grey Eagle for more than twenty years. “He had been very generous with local charities, and people loved him for that.”

  Unlike Bidwill, Clinton was civic-minded, and when he first caught wind that the NFL was looking to return to his city, he wanted in. “Jerry was a huge football fan,” said Jim Otis, a friend and former Cardinals running back. “When he used to have the distributorship he’d come out to our practices and give all the players beers to crack open. I think he liked being around the game.”

  In the late 1980s, the main financial player in the expansion effort was Francis W. Murray, a Philadelphia-based entrepreneur who at one point had owned a minority share of the New England Patriots. Murray was the sort of man who people wanted to believe in, because the words that oozed from his mouth were usually appealing and complimentary. He made enticing promises, offered heaps of praise, spewed visions of grandeur that were ultimately more fantasy than reality. Growing up in Philly, he sold sodas and hot dogs at neighborhood bingo games to make money, and the stories he told about those days were uproarious and uplifting. When Fran Murray talked, people listened. “It was hard not to like Fran,” said Clinton. “He was engaging.” Rozelle approved of Murray’s involvement, especially after his option to buy a controlling share of the Patriots from Billy Sullivan had failed to pan out.

  Clinton was first introduced to Murray in 1987, and he was not impressed. They met in an office in Maryland Heights, Missouri, and Clinton was taken aback not by Murray’s awkward mannerisms or braggart ways—but by his shoes. “He had on a blue pinstripe suit and brown shoes,” Clinton recalled. “I thought that was very unusual. He was an excellent talker, an excellent motivator. I jokingly used to refer to him as Harold Hill, the Music Man.”

  For Clinton, an initial warning sign came when Murray—supposedly a multimillionaire—asked him for a three-million-dollar loan. Had he done some investigating, Clinton would have found that Murray had been successfully sued some twenty-two times for nonpayment of debts, stemming from, according to a St. Louis Post-Dispatch report, “the collapse of fast-food restaurants he owned in the 1970s.” Furthermore, Murray had been sued eleven times by various local, state, and federal government branches on tax-related charges. His lone source of credibility with the NFL was his interest in the P
atriots. The league had never properly delved into his credentials. Nor had Clinton. “I figured if my attorney brought Fran into my office,” he said, “he’d been checked.” On February 27, 1989, the two men announced the formation of the St. Louis NFL partnership. Murray owned 51 percent, Clinton 49 percent. “We’re not asking anyone for anything,” Murray said at the time—an odd declaration, considering he had just borrowed three million dollars.

  This is what Walter Payton walked into.

  Clinton approached him toward the latter months of 1989, when several NFL officials told the St. Louis folks that the bid would be enhanced with the running back’s experience, image, and ethnicity. Payton had first outwardly expressed an interest in ownership in the summer of 1986, when he mentioned to The Washington Post that he would one day like to buy a team and move it to London. Now, three years later he had already met with groups attempting to expand into Oakland and North Carolina. Both efforts, though, had drawbacks—California was too far from Chicago and North Carolina was headed by Jerry Richardson, a wealthy restaurateur with little interest in sharing the load. Holmes insisted St. Louis was the best option, and Payton agreed.

  There were, though, reservations. Like Payton, Clinton was heavily involved in motor sports, having also raced on the Sports 2000 and Trans-Am Series and sharing a close relationship with Paul Newman. Payton and Clinton were first introduced at a race in Long Beach, California, by Indy-driver Willy T. Ribbs, and became teammates, driving twin Mustang Cobras and at comparable skill levels. On the morning of the day Payton flipped his car at Road America, Clinton gave him a warning at the hotel. “This is a difficult track,” he told Payton. “There are a myriad of things you have to look out for. Take four, five, or six laps at a slower speed so you can get a feel for the track.”

  Despite their shared history, however, Payton never felt especially at ease with Clinton (or Murray) as a business partner. They simply were not his preferred genre of people—loud, boastful, arrogant. He found Murray uncomfortably quirky and Clinton uncomfortably talkative. When Clinton entered a room, Payton noticed, the oxygen drained like helium from a punctured balloon. He talked and talked and talked and talked. As a racing cohort, that was fine. As a business partner—not so much. The last thing Payton desired was to join forces with a bunch of bigheaded executives with dreams of gridiron glory. Having grown up watching an aged George Halas, Payton was a fan of understated and reserved. Sure, Halas wasn’t the ideal owner. But he knew his strengths, and his concern was winning, not PR. “Jerry was just kind of an ego guy,” Payton once said. “A big name-dropper, a big egomaniac. Even though Jerry was not my type of guy, I always gave Jerry the limelight, always pushed it to him with the interviews.... Jerry wanted the prestige of being the team owner. I just wanted to get a team.”

  Payton ignored the warnings in his head and charged forward. He was, after all, being told that no money had to be put up and that his 10 percent share would be paid for out of the team’s revenues. He was also promised to be the face of the franchise. When people thought St. Louis football, they’d think Walter Payton. “Walter wanted this to happen so badly, and he saw in St. Louis the best opportunity,” said Ginny Quirk, his assistant and the vice president of Walter Payton, Inc. “Was there reason to be suspicious of some of the people involved? In hindsight, definitely yes. But when you’re in the middle of something this big, and you see such a golden opportunity, you tend to hope for the best and overlook the little problems.”

  Payton was a wayward soul in search of meaning, and here—in NFL ownership—was meaning. He wanted to remain important and impactful. He wanted to have a voice that people would listen to. He heard about so-called NFL legends from past decades sitting behind a card table in ballroom C of the McCall, Idaho, Holiday Inn, signing autographed pictures for ten dollars a pop. Attention ladies and gentlemen, now appearing alongside Tony Dow is . . .

  That would not be Walter Payton.

  So, against his better judgment, Payton jumped headfirst into the St. Louis endeavor. He spent the next three years doing one of the things he did best—schmoozing. When Payton wasn’t attending to his businesses in Chicago or racing cars at some far-off track, he could usually be found in St. Louis, talking football as the guest speaker at one rubber chicken dinner after another. The routine was mind-numbingly repetitive—Payton would stand up, introduce himself (“In case you don’t know, I’m . . . ”—laugher followed), talk for twenty-five minutes about the group’s plan to bring football to St. Louis, field the most predictable questions known to man (What did it feel like breaking Jim Brown’s record? “Amazing.” Were you mad at Mike Ditka for not letting you have a Super Bowl touchdown? “Absolutely not.”), then sign a hundred or so autographs before leaving. Payton knew that, at this point, his primary role was as a front man. There would be time later on to hire a head coach (Payton made it clear he wanted to bring in Johnny Roland, his running backs coach with Chicago) and evaluate players and man the draft and pick uniform colors and a team name. For now, he was supposed to put a face to the project while letting the experienced executives work their magic.

  Despite mounting hostilities between Clinton and Murray, the group somehow convinced then–Missouri governor John Ashcroft to sign a financing bill for a new stadium/convention center. Shortly thereafter, bonds to finance the domed stadium sold out in less than three days. Clinton bragged that he had lined up “potential investors” to join the team but, in actuality, “investors” was “an investor.” Clinton asked more than a dozen local entrepreneurs for a modest quarter-million-dollar advance, and a mere one—Thomas Holley, president of a chain of discount stores—put in.

  Clinton and Murray brandished Payton like a shield. He was the golden protector out front, charming the masses with his smile and his rollicking tales of gridiron glory. Payton’s desire to be the first African-American owner was sincere, but there was something disconcertingly minstrel-like in the way he was utilized. Payton sang and danced and did a little shuffle, and his involvement in the behind-the-scenes dealings was limited. He shook hands, patted shoulders, told jokes, and believed he was making valuable inroads for the group. “The demographics are there, the proven product is there,” he told Fred Mitchell of the Chicago Tribune. “Look at Anheuser-Busch and McDonnell Douglas. They are not there just for their own health. There is something in the city.

  “We have someone who is from the area of St. Louis and knows the workings. And we have a guy who has been a minority owner in the NFL already. He knows football and he knows people and he has a pretty good track record in the NFL. We have all aspects covered.”

  In spite of Payton’s efforts, though, many important public figures were concerned. Clinton was known throughout St. Louis, but his reputation was mixed. Some viewed him simply as a civic enthusiast with pure intentions. Others viewed him as a snake oil salesman. And Murray—well, he just seemed sort of crazy. “It would be like trusting a raccoon,” Chris Kelly, an influential Missouri congressman, said of Clinton and Murray.

  The St. Louis bid received a major boost in July 1990, when James Busch Orthwein, great-grandson of the founder of Anheuser-Busch and a man worth fifty-six million dollars, signed on. Of the three main financial players—Clinton, Murray, and Orthwein—Orthwein was Payton’s preferred taste in partners. Gruff, gritty, and dignified, the sixty-nine-year-old yachtsman and rabid sport fisherman joined the team when Murray promised him 12 percent of the partnership in exchange for a sizeable loan. Though born into wealth, Orthwein was, in part, a self-made man. He helped build the St. Louis–based D’Arcy Advertising Co. into an international force, then later headed a private investment firm, Huntleigh Asset Partners. Unlike the other partners, Orthwein wasn’t in this for glory. He simply saw a good financial opportunity, as well as the chance to aid his hometown. Yet as soon as he became part of the team, the problems began. Clinton was dismissive of Orthwein’s involvement, complaining that the group needed neither his wisdom nor his deep pockets. Thi
s infuriated Payton, who was always mystified by the source of the group’s hypothetical revenue. An NFL franchise would cost a hundred and forty million dollars. If Clinton was worth approximately twenty million dollars and Murray was seeking out loans and Payton was putting in nothing and investors weren’t exactly lining up, who would be paying the bills?

  In the summer of 1991, Murray—financially strapped, in debt to Orthwein for thirty million dollars, and facing further lawsuits from creditors—sold Orthwein his share in the Patriots and asked him to replace him as managing general partner of the St. Louis effort. Orthwein begrudgingly agreed, then told Clinton he needed to be the one making the final decisions. “With this amount of money I have to be in charge,” he recalled saying to Clinton. “But I think we can work together.”

  This is when the bottom began to fall out. Clinton had spent too much time and too much money to surrender control. He didn’t like Orthwein, didn’t trust Orthwein, didn’t want Orthwein involved in any manner. When Orthwein reminded Clinton of the so-called golden rule—the person with the most money makes the rules—Clinton lost it. In a meeting that took place six weeks before the NFL’s expansion vote, Clinton told Orthwein that he was an unnecessary burden, and that he, Jerry Clinton, would approach the league by himself and make a solo pitch for ownership. “You know what?” Orthwein responded. “I’m going to give you the opportunity to find another partner, to find another money partner. OK? If you don’t want me as a partner, and don’t like what I have to bring to the table, then I’m going to give you the opportunity.”

  “Great!” Clinton yelled. “I want it! I’m gonna take it!”