Sweetness (28 page)

Normally, when a rookie comes to terms late with an organization, he reports to training camp and begins the arduous process of catching up. Payton, however, didn’t have such an opportunity. On June 1, 1975, two days before Payton signed with the Bears, John McKay, USC’s legendary coach, selected him to be on the fifty-four-man College All-Star football squad that would play the world-champion Pittsburgh Steelers in an August 1 exhibition at, coincidentally, Soldier Field.

At the time, the NFL considered the annual game to be a vital outreach tool, and any man chosen to play was required to do so. As a result, Payton would miss three full weeks of Bears’ training camp to work with the All-Star team at Northwestern University.

On Wednesday, July 9, Payton arrived in Evanston, pulled his gold Datsun 280ZX up to the front of the swank Orrington Hotel and checked in. Though by now most everyone knew of his existence, there was still an element of mystique to small-school superstars. Among his fifty-three teammates were many of the biggest names in college football—the three men picked ahead of him in the draft (quarterback Steve Bartkowski, defensive tackle Randy White, and offensive guard Ken Huff), as well as marquee stars like USC quarterback Pat Haden, Ohio State defensive back Neal Colzie, and Penn State defensive lineman Mike Hartenstine (the Bears’ second-round selection). Two Jackson State peers, linebackers Robert Brazile and John Tate, also took part.

While lip service was paid to beating Pittsburgh, most of the All-Stars came to Illinois anxious to party. Dave Wasick, a defensive lineman from San Jose State, arrived at the Orrington one day after Payton. Strolling through the lobby, he was greeted by the sight of Dennis Harrah, the Miami offensive tackle, lugging three cases of Budweiser toward the elevator. There was Russ Francis, the tight end from Hawaii, serenading a gaggle of young women with his guitar. “Every night was all-out craziness,” Wasick said. “Randy White, Steve Bartkowski, Dennis Harrah, myself—we’d hit the town, stay out until three or four in the morning. One night we went to this bar, and these two enormous bouncers wouldn’t let us in. Well, both of the bouncers ended up being punched out cold. It was wild.”

The tone was set during the first official team meeting. With his fifty-four players sitting quietly, McKay strode to the front of the room and played a video from a practice session of the 1973 College All-Star team (the 1974 game had been cancelled because of an NFL players’ strike). Instead of preparing for their matchup against the Miami Dolphins, the reel showed members of the team playing volleyball with a football, using one of the goalposts as a net.

“That was the last time this game took place, and there’s no way we’re doing things that way again,” McKay said. A hushed silence blanketed the room. The coach smiled—“That’s because this year we’ll make sure to get you guys a real volleyball!” The players burst into laughter.

The initial practice was held on a Friday afternoon at Northwestern’s Dyche Stadium. Bartkowski was one of the first to arrive, and he took the field early to warm up with Pat McInally, the wide receiver/punter from Harvard. While leisurely tossing the ball, Bartkowski spotted something that stopped his arm, midmotion. It was Walter Payton—and he was walking on his hands. “But not just a few feet,” Bartkowski said. “Walter exited a field house on his hands, walked a hundred yards to the field on his hands, walked all the way around me to the far goalpost on his hands, and walked back on his hands. I’m talking about three hundred yards, easy.”

Brazile and Tate had four years of freaky Payton athleticism under their belts. The other All-Stars did not. Payton leapfrogged coaches and dunked basketballs and tossed eighty-yard spirals. He stuck out his tongue and, somehow, turned it 180-degrees upside down. “He was a gymnast,” said Louis Carter, a running back from Maryland. “He would bounce around, fall down, bounce right back up.” Said Larry Burton, a Purdue wide receiver: “Walter was pulling out these handstands and backflips, and we were all like, ‘What planet does this guy call home?’ ”

In an effort to impress his more famous teammates, Payton spent the first week of practices pulling out all the stops. He threw his forearm shiver at White and Wasick and every other defender naïve enough to step in his way. His stiff-arm froze defensive backs like Colzie and Texas A&M’s Tim Gray. He held kicking contests with McInally, who went on to a Pro Bowl punting career with the Cincinnati Bengals, and launched bombs alongside Bartkowski and Haden. “Walter was always the last guy to leave practice,” said McInally. “He would hang around and shag our kicks, and he’d run them all back forty yards at full speed.”

“We couldn’t wait to hit the bars and drink,” said Jim Obradovich, USC’s tight end. “Meanwhile, Walter would be working his ass off.”

Midway through his three weeks at Evanston, a seemingly irrelevant life-altering moment took place. Known as “L’il Monk” at Jackson State, with the All-Stars Payton was referred to as either “Walter” or “Walt.” One day, during an otherwise unremarkable practice, Payton was carrying the ball when he approached Colzie, the hard-hitting defensive back. Smiling ear to ear, Payton yelled, “Your sweetness is your weakness!” then stutterstepped, lifted one leg high into the air, and burst down the field.

“What did Walter say to you?” Colzie was asked by teammates.

“Some nonsense,” he replied, “about my sweetness being my weakness.”

A nickname was born. From that point on, Payton was “Sweetness.” After a lifetime of imperfect monikers that never quite worked, here was one that fit perfectly. The smiley, goofy, soft-spoken Payton was a sweet person. The cutting, dashing, swiveling Payton was a sweet runner. “We had a big blackboard in the middle of our locker room,” said Ralph Ortega, a linebacker from the University of Florida. “Every single morning Walter would walk in and write SWEETNESS EQUALS WALTER PAYTON across the board. I thought, ‘Who is this clown?’ ”

Two weeks into workouts, Payton was having the time of his life. McKay was the anti–Bob Hill, limiting practices to an hour and a half (and usually watching from the stands, a cigar wedged between his lips), refusing to enforce a curfew, and often returning to the hotel as intoxicated and redeyed as his players. “My best times with Walter were racing through the streets of Chicago in his Datsun, him driving like a madman,” said Richard Wood, a USC linebacker. “He was absolutely giddy.”

Unfortunately, on the afternoon of July 19, the fun ended. While carrying the ball during practice, Payton tripped and fell to Dyche’s artificial turf on his right elbow. A fiery pain shot through his arm. Within minutes, his elbow swelled to the size of a large grapefruit. By day’s end, it looked like a coconut. “It was twice the size of what it should have been,” said Kurt Schumacher, an Ohio State offensive lineman. “The thing was enormous.”

McKay pulled Payton from further workouts and enlisted Allen Carter, his halfback at USC, as an emergency replacement. (“The joke was that McKay turned us into the USC All-Star team,” said Walter White, a tight end from the University of Maryland. “Which he pretty much did.”) The Bears sent Fred Caito, the club’s longtime trainer, to Evanston to investigate the matter. Payton was suffering from bursitis of the elbow—his bursa, a fluid-filled sack that serves as a cushion between skin and bone, had become inflamed, and the elbow was infected. “I went to Walter’s hotel and introduced myself, and told him we were going to see a doctor,” recalled Caito. “Walter was a scared kid from Mississippi who didn’t know what the hell he was doing in the big city.” Caito brought Payton to his car, and the two began driving to the office of Dr. Ted Fox, the Bears’ physician. Thirty-five years later, Caito still chuckles at what happened next. “We’re in the car and his elbow is swelling and we have no idea what’s going to happen,” Caito said. “And Walter turned to me and said, ‘Can you stop at that Baskin-Robbins down there?’ I remember thinking, ‘What? I don’t have time for this.’ But I agreed. So we went in, and then he didn’t have any money. The kid was the highest-paid rookie in team history, and the first time we met he needed me to buy him an ice cream cone.”

Fox examined Payton’s elbow. He told him he’d have to sit out several days, and that he should wear special padding to prevent further impact. The doctor then reached for a long needle, with the intent of giving Payton a cortisone injection. Payton’s face turned pale. Sweat poured down his forehead.

“I don’t do needles,” he told Fox.

“Well,” said the doctor, “you do now.”

The Steelers’ All-Star game was played a week later, on a Friday night. More than fifty million viewers watched on ABC, and a near-capacity crowd of 54,562 fans (including the entire Bears roster) packed Soldier Field, anxious to see the Super Bowl champions, but also anxious to see their city’s new featured halfback. Before kickoff, the public address announcer introduced each of the players as they jogged to midfield. The last one was Payton.
And now, the first pick of the Chicago Bears—Waaaaaalllllttteeer Paaaaaayyyton . . .

“Soldier Field just lit up,” said Fred O’Connor, the Bears’ running backs coach. “And Walter jogged out, and he looked like the most magnificent athlete I had ever seen. I turned to Jack Pardee and said, ‘I think I can coach this kid.’ ”

Chuck Noll, the stoic Steelers coach, assured the media his team was here to win, and he was correct. On the All-Stars’ first offensive series of the game, Bartkowski hit McInally with a twenty-eight-yard touchdown pass. As the Harvard receiver crossed the goal line, a Pittsburgh defender delivered a decidedly late blow, breaking McInally’s left leg. “The guy was so embarrassed, he hit me after I scored,” McInally said. “They had to carry me off on a stretcher.”

The All-Stars actually led 14–7 at halftime, but played sloppily in the second half and lost, 21–14. With his elbow entombed in a white bundle, Payton paced the team with seven carries for a paltry sixteen yards. His primary goal—to prevent his elbow from exploding into a thousand pieces—was accomplished. “The whole three weeks was just a wonderful experience for Walter, for me, for all of us,” said McInally. “We really bonded as a group of guys starting our careers at the same time.”

On the day after the game, McInally found himself in Northwestern Hospital, his left leg immobilized, his spirits crushed over an injury that would wipe out his entire rookie year. He heard a knock on the door, and looked up to see a smiling Walter Payton. “He went out of his way to visit me,” said McInally, who would play ten seasons. “I’ve never forgotten that.” Payton even brought a card, which McInally continues to keep in one of his drawers. It reads: “Hang in there. You’ll make it. But take the year off and eat.”

Walter Payton arrived at the team’s new Lake Forest, Illinois–based training camp with bells on. Literally. That’s the sound many of the 1975 Chicago Bears associate with their first impression of the rookie running back from Jackson State—the jingling of bells.

Why did Walter Payton, a relatively humble young man, decide it’d be a good idea to introduce himself to teammates by tying a couple of small brass bells to his shoelaces, thereby broadcasting his attendance during drills with a jolly jingle? “I’m not sure,” said Jerry Tagge, a journeyman quarterback. “Some of the veterans thought it was incredibly cocky. Personally, I found it sort of neat. If he ran for fifty yards, you would just listen to those bells ring—
ding a ling, ding a ling, ding a ling
. There was a real rhythm to it.”

“I heard those bells and my first thought was, ‘Who is this guy, and who does he think he is?’ ” said Witt Beckman, a rookie receiver out of Miami. “But then he ran, and nobody could touch him.”

Not that Payton’s NFL beginnings were purely sweet music. With his elbow still a mess, his participation in workouts was sporadic. He practiced one session, then missed the next three. He took one handoff, cut left, juked right, and burst fifty yards down the field. He took another handoff, absorbed a hit, and fell to the ground withering in pain. At one point Payton was sent to Illinois Masonic Hospital for further treatment, missing the exhibition opener against San Diego. When Pardee was asked about his young runner, he smiled and uttered the company line. “He’s such a great guy,” he told the
Chicago Tribune
. “He went out for a pass and the ball hit him in the arm. He couldn’t fight the tears running down his cheek. But he was hurt.”

For the Bears’ new coach, the words tasted like soap.
A sensitive elbow? Are you kidding me?
Born April 19, 1936, in Exira, Iowa, Pardee was a person who, from a very early age, believed only in hard work and harder work—excuses be damned. He was milking cows on the family’s farm at age five and digging holes for septic tanks at ten. By age fourteen Pardee was jackhammering in the oil fields of Christoval, Texas, a town of roughly five hundred people near San Angelo where his family had relocated. “To live I had to work,” he once said. “Outside of football, the greatest pleasure I got was from working on our farm . . . working the tractor. I guess I’m just hyperactive, but I can’t stand sitting around doing nothing for more than two days.”