Sweetness

by Jeff Pearlman

  Yours truly,

  Christopher Cash, Jonesboro, Georgia

  Payton wrote back, and kept the piece of lined notebook paper with Christopher’s words on his desk. When a Sports Illustrated writer came to visit him, he picked the page up and read it aloud. “Christopher says I shouldn’t be scared,” Payton said. “God will take care of me.” 23

  In early February a spokeswoman for Payton told the Associated Press that his liver disease was progressing faster than expected, and private planes had been offered to speed him to Mayo when a transplant became available. In April Dr. Joe Lagattuta, one of Payton’s personal physicians, reportedly told the Itasca Business Council in a speech that Payton had an excellent chance of receiving a new liver imminently. Once again, the information was puzzling. Within weeks of Payton’s press conference, his doctors confirmed the news many had suspected: He had cancer of the bile duct. By now, Payton—despite his hear-no-evil approach to negative news—was well aware that a transplant would not be in the cards. Though the word “cancer” was being avoided at all costs (as far as the general public was concerned, Payton was only battling a liver ailment), the disease was his greatest enemy.

  Payton began making regular trips to Rochester to undergo lengthy, nightmarish chemotherapy treatments. He often flew on an airplane belonging to Tom Wieringa, a wealthy sponsor of Payton’s CART racing team. One of his regular companions was Suhey, who refused to let his longtime friend go through this alone. It was during that time, seeing Payton at his absolute lowest, that Suhey saw Payton at his absolute greatest.

  “Walter would get his chemo at Mayo at night,” said Suhey. “And typically he would feel horrible afterward. He’d go back to the hotel and sleep. One night it was cold, and Walter and I were going upstairs to the room. This family just drove up from Chicago; they had just gotten there. And the child, who was probably ten or eleven or twelve, had cancer. He had no hair, he looked weak. It was not great. And all he wanted to do was meet Walter. I said, ‘Walter, do you really want to?’ and he said, ‘Absolutely!’ He walked outside, and it was really cold out. He met the kid, talked to the kid, and they sat down—just he and the kid went and sat down. And Walter felt just horrible, but he sat there and talked to the kid for half an hour. Right after chemo. God bless him. The family wrote me a letter, I think I still have it. It was written a year or two after Walter passed. I don’t think the child lived, but it meant a lot to him. Under very difficult circumstances. That moment really spoke to the kindness—to walk out there and spend the time with the kid. That was Walter.”

  If people assumed Payton was sitting inside his house, bemoaning his fate, they were mistaken. “I don’t feel sorry for myself, because that’s the first step toward giving up and I’m not giving up,” he said. “I know something good is going to come from this. I just haven’t figured out what it is yet.” When he wasn’t receiving treatment at Mayo, Payton fought to stay active. He took a trip with Mike Lanigan to Las Vegas, where for an hour straight he stood at the roulette table and placed chips on number thirty-four. (“It never came up,” said Lanigan. “Not once.”) He helped finalize a deal to bring Chicago an Arena Football League team in 2001. He confided regularly in his fellow Roundhouse owners. Years earlier Payton had agreed to make appearances on behalf of Bridgestone/ Firestone. Now that Payton was sick Gamauf expected him to remain in Chicago and rest. “I called him once to see how he was doing,” Gamauf said. “Walter said to me, ‘Gam, I don’t want to sit home and look at the walls. I have to stay active and keep my mind fresh. I want to keep doing engagements.’ ”

  Gamauf lined up a series of speaking opportunities. “Walter was 160 pounds when I saw him,” he said. “He needed different suits because his shoulders had gotten so small, and there were times when he was doubled over in pain. But he never walked onto the stage showing any weakness. He was the same old Walter Payton, and people loved him.”

  In particular, Gamauf treasured a trip the two took to New York in April to speak at a dealership, Wholesale Tire, on Long Island. On the night before the event, the men talked for two and a half hours inside Gamauf’s hotel room. They laughed and cried and swapped stories. Whether Payton consciously realized it or not, he was preparing to die. “Walter either let you in or he didn’t,” Gamauf said. “He let me in.”

  The following morning, Payton gave one of the most moving speeches of his life. “Hell yes, I’m scared,” he told the two hundred attendees, “but I’m not going to sit here and worry about it. The Lord’s got it in His hands, and I’m going to say all the prayers I can and I appreciate all the prayers everybody else can say.

  “Now let’s talk about cars.”

  CHAPTER 26

  THE END

  ON THE AFTERNOON OF APRIL 12, 1999, MATT SUHEY PICKED UP HIS OLD teammate in his Mercedes 430 and drove him to Wrigley Field. It was the day of the Chicago Cubs’ ninety-seventh home opener, and Walter Payton was scheduled to throw out the first pitch.

  En route to the ballpark, an excited Payton turned to Suhey. “Maybe I’ll do this again next year,” he said, “when I nip this thing.”

  There was nothing for Suhey to say. When the prognosis was still in doubt, he could laugh as Payton cracked lines like, “This is gonna be another Brian’s Song—only here the brother dies in the end.” By this point, though, Suhey was well aware that, hope and prayer and optimism be damned, his friend was dying. “The cancer was severe,” he said. “His odds were not good.”

  Five months earlier, when he first learned of Payton’s illness, Suhey dedicated himself to being by his side as often as possible. Though the two had shared a nice friendship through the years, it was never an overwhelmingly close one. They spoke every so often, partnered in some business dealings, traded holiday cards, hugged when they happened to be at the same place at the same time. That was the extent. When Payton became ill, however, something in Suhey snapped. He had blocked for his friend for eight years, and now he needed to block once again. “Matt was loyal to Walter,” said Mike Lanigan, their friend and business partner. “Fiercely loyal.” Suhey accompanied Payton on many of his trips to Mayo, consulted with the physicians, served as a buffer between former teammates anxious to visit and a star determined to maintain some semblance of privacy. “Matt,” said Ginny Quirk, “was right there when Walter needed him most. What better compliment can you give a person?”

  Payton was escorted into Wrigley Field through the media gate, where he was met by a handful of club officials. They presented him with a pinstriped Cubs jersey, which he slipped over his T-shirt, as well as a light blue cap. Before delivering the pitch, Payton ran into Jerry Vainisi, the former Bears general manager, whose law firm owned a box at the stadium. By now Payton’s weight had dropped to 170 pounds. His famously chiseled physique was skin dangling off of bone. “I was stunned,” said Vainisi. “He was a shadow of the Walter Payton I remembered.”

  When Payton was introduced by Paul Friedman, the Cubs’ public address announcer, he strode to the mound, removed his jacket to reveal the jersey, crossed himself, and spun his hat backward. The 39,092 fans at the sold-out stadium stood and cheered. The sun was bright, the temperature forty-nine degrees. A gentle breeze blew across the field. Sammy Sosa, the team’s star right fielder, crouched behind home plate, pounded his mitt, and waited for the pitch. With all the energy he could muster, Payton reached back and threw a looping strike. Sosa jogged to the mound, and the men embraced in a bear hug. “Walter Payton, we’re praying for him,” Mark Grace, the Cubs first baseman, said afterward. “I hope he treats this disease like an oncoming defensive back.”

  Walter Payton wanted to believe. He was, at his core, a professional athlete, and professional athletes—as Grace’s words illustrated—are trained to uncover a way to overcome everything. It was Mike Ditka, the gritty coach, who initially greeted news of Payton’s illness by insisting his old halfback would “find a way to beat this”—as if this were an opposing linebacker moving in for the tackle.
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br />   The harsh truth, however, was now impossible to ignore. On the day after the first pitch, Payton had been scheduled to speak to the Machinery/ Materials Conference and Exposition at Chicago’s McCormick Place. That morning, he could barely lift himself out of bed. “He was too taxed to make the trip,” Quirk told the Tribune. “He had a very big day yesterday.”

  For most Chicagoans, Walter Payton standing atop the Wrigley Field mound would be a final image of the iconic hero. The summer months were harsh ones for Payton. On May 10, when his CA 19-9 levels were frighteningly high, Mayo’s doctors performed exploratory surgery. The results were devastating. The cancer had spread to his lymph nodes. “The malignancy was very advanced,” Gores later explained, “and progressed very rapidly.” Should the chemotherapy and radiation treatments he was receiving at Mayo fail to work, Payton would be dead within a half-year’s time. This, there was no debating.

  “The lowest moment came after that diagnosis,” said Quirk. “Dr. Gores told him there was a three-week protocol where he was supposed to be at Mayo Monday through Friday for different treatments. At the start of the third week Walter called and said, ‘Ginny, get me out of here. I’m coming home.’ He kind of threw in the towel. It was too much.

  “When I spoke with Dr. Gores about Walter’s decision, he cried. I’ll never forget that.”

  Payton’s final public appearance came on July 25, when he attended a ceremony at the Destiny Church in Hoffman Estates (Walter stayed for fifteen minutes, leaving when the pain became too great). He forced himself to eat, and when his appetite gave out he was fed intravenously. His weight dropped by the day, and his optimism crumbled with it. Payton became increasingly downcast and despondent, and a man known for his moodiness turned even moodier. Not that anyone could blame him. The trips to Mayo for chemotherapy and radiation were excruciating, and Suhey still cringes at the memory of Payton’s suffering. “For a guy who could take so much pain on the football field, this was a real test,” Suhey said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Just nightmarish.”

  Payton reassured people that he was on the waiting list for a new liver, and he expected the pager to go off “any day now.” Truth be told, there was no pager. There never had been a pager. “He didn’t want us feeling sorry for him,” said Scott Ascher, his restaurant partner. “He wanted everyone to think he would be all right. It wasn’t about him. It was about us. Making us feel better.” One day, while sitting at home, Rick Telander, a noteworthy Sun-Times columnist, was surprised to receive a call from Payton. He was hosting a dinner for a handful of former Bear teammates at the Roundhouse, and wanted to know if Telander had an interest in attending. When the guests—Telander, Suhey, Calvin Thomas, and Thomas Sanders—sat down, Payton pulled up a chair next to the writer. Telander was nibbling on a plate of french fries. “Can I just have one fry?” Payton asked. Telander pushed the plate his way. “Walter tasted it, but he couldn’t eat it,” Telander said. “It was crushing.”

  Payton held a couple of more dinners for old Bears, and while it was never stated, the purpose was to say good-bye. “I was there with about thirty other guys,” said Jimbo Covert, the star offensive lineman. “Walter took time to go around to everybody personally and grab you and say, ‘What are you doing?’—just getting the down-low on how you’d been. Can you imagine how strong of a person he had to have been to do that? He knew he was going to die. He absolutely knew . . .”

  By late July, Payton’s health took a terrible turn. He had been living at his home in West Dundee, but when his kidneys began to fail, Payton moved back into the house at 34 Mudhank, which—even after leaving ten years earlier—remained the most comfortable place he’d ever known. Because of the presence of Jarrett and Brittney, Walter never fully divorced himself from the residence. He came and went as he pleased, still used the fishing pond and the shooting range and a cozy zebra-print chair. In particular, Payton enjoyed the garden room, which was located in the basement and filled with plants. “It was a great place to meditate,” said Ken Gallt, the designer of the room. “When Walter died Connie let me know how much he loved it in there.”

  In the ensuing years Connie has told warm stories about those final months, when the family came together as one. The recollections are, at best, gross exaggerations. Walter had to be convinced to return to 34 Mudhank, and initially did so because he knew Luna Picart, the beloved nanny, would once again be cooking his meals (and if anyone could get Walter to eat, it was Miss Luna). Walter never shared a bed with Connie, instead alternating between the rooms of Jarrett and Brittney. “He would migrate,” said Jarrett. “At the time I didn’t get it, but now I think it’s so cool. He wanted to share himself with us.” Walter spent many of his first few full-time weeks back at the house either napping or sitting on the front porch alongside Quirk, his omnipresent assistant. “It was really a strange time,” Quirk said. “Walter was in and out. He was coherent, but he wasn’t the normal Walter. We’d sit out there in the summer sun. We’d sit in two chairs and he kept saying, ‘I don’t know what you’re so worried about, Ginny. I don’t know what you’re so worried about.’ ”

  Quirk fought to hold back the tears. Payton’s insistence of no negative news had left him in the dark when it came to details—but not to the grand picture. He certainly grasped the bleakness. “Because this is serious, Walter,” she would say. “Because . . .”

  Payton heard none of it. “Relax,” he’d say. “I’ve got it covered.”

  Suhey stopped by on most days, and often took Payton on drives around the neighborhood. With the windows rolled down, Payton could lean back and soak in the breeze. Sometimes, they’d sit together in the car and listen to The Monsters of the Midday, the show he had cohosted with Dan Jiggetts and Mike North. “He even called in one time,” said Jiggetts. “Just to say hello.”

  On occasion Suhey or Quirk or Mark Alberts, a business partner, or even Connie would take Walter to Dairy Queen or Kentucky Fried Chicken. He liked heading to Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago and seeing the cow statues. “One time we got stuck in traffic and he started getting pains in his stomach,” said Alberts. “Walter would try and rock himself until the pain went away. That time, I had to turn off the expressway and take side streets back to his home.”

  Every so often, on Payton’s good days, a surprise guest was allowed to enter the house. Sometimes it’d be Scott Ascher, one of his co-owners of the Roundhouse. Other times Mike Lanigan, a business partner, might appear. Jay Hilgenberg, a teammate for seven seasons with the Bears, came once. “A bunch of the guys stopped by, and Walter and I talked a little golf,” he said. “Walter asked me why I wasn’t coaching with the Bears. I said, ‘Walter, how about you just get that liver and get healthy, and we’ll play some golf together?’ ”

  Payton scowled. “Hey,” he snapped, “I’m healthy!”

  He wasn’t.

  “I felt about this big,” said Hilgenberg, holding an index finger and thumb less than an inch apart. “That was the last time I ever saw him.”

  Payton’s illness did at least lead to an important reconciliation. Ever since that day in 1985 when he confronted his teammate about his infidelities, Mike Singletary had been persona non grata in Payton’s life. Now retired as a player and working as a motivational speaker, Singletary—a devoutly religious man whose father had been a Pentecostal preacher—reached out to Payton, via Suhey, in hopes of easing his burden and reintroducing Jesus Christ into his life. By the beginning of fall Singletary was a regular at 34 Mudhank, often conversing at length with Payton about life and death and football and love and eternal salvation. Mostly, Singletary talked and Payton, lying in bed, quietly listened. “I never heard him say, ‘Why me?’ ” Singletary said. “I want to tell you, I know I would have been saying, ‘Why me? Why me? There are other guys out there killing people and doing this—why me?’ I never heard Walter say that.”

  “I need to see you.”

  The words were spoken by Rob Chudzinski, the tight ends coach for
the University of Miami football team. On the other end of the telephone line was Jarrett Payton, the Hurricanes’ freshman halfback. He was sitting in his dormitory room.

  “OK, Coach,” Jarrett said. “I’ll be right over.”

  Upon entering Chudzinski’s office, Jarrett sat down and heard the words he had hoped would never come. “You have to go home right now to be with your family,” Chudzinski said. “Your father wants you there.”

  That night, October 28, 1999, Jarrett boarded a flight from Miami International to O’Hare. He knew few of the details, only that his father was in Waukegan’s Midwestern Regional Medical Center and nearing his last breath.

  “I hated hospitals, just like my dad did,” said Jarrett. “So instead of immediately going to see him, I went home, got one of my dad’s cars, and just drove around. Before I left for college, Dad liked to drive around with me for hours. Just the two of us driving. So that’s what I did now. This might sound strange, but driving that day, all alone, I felt like he was hanging with me. It was just the two of us, doing what we loved.”

  The preceding few weeks had been rough on Walter. There were several emergency trips to the hospital. No longer able to eat, he was receiving nourishment solely via an intravenous tube. The majority of his time was spent in bed atop an enormous heating pad, and he kept his finger permanently affixed to the morphine pump by his side. “In that last week or two he looked awful,” said Quirk. “His nails were long and yellow. His beard had grown in. I had never seen him with scruff. Ever. This was a guy who would shave a couple of times per day if it fit the need. I had never seen him with a beard. It had grown in gray. He looked like a street person. He was in a hospital bed at that point. The bed was put in Connie’s bedroom, but only because he had no say.”