Sweetness (62 page)

“Three years high school, four years college and thirteen seasons here,” he said, “I’ve worn the same thigh pads.”

He took off his wool hood, then he took off a blue sweatshirt and a white T-shirt. And wearing only his jockstrap, he walked to the shower room. When he returned with a smudge of soap near his left ear, Bill Gleason, a longtime Chicago sports columnist, was waiting at his locker. “You going to miss me?” Gleason joked.

“You going to miss me?” Payton asked.

“Absolutely,” said Gleason, who waved at the swarm of notebooks and asked, “Are you going to miss this?”

“No, not too bad,” Payton said, smiling. “But I’ll miss you. What do you remember most?”

“How much fun you were,” Gleason said.

“That’s the main reason why I was playing,” Payton said. “It was fun.”

Sitting at his locker now, Payton put on knee-high black socks, gray jeans, a long-sleeved turquoise sports shirt and polished black cowboy boots. Quickly, he reached for a towel and wiped the boots. “Got to look the part,” he said, smiling. Turning up the left sleeve of his shirt, he pulled a small bandage off his elbow, revealing a bloody scrape. He tossed the bandage onto the floor and walked to the trainer’s room.

“I need another bandage,” he said. “This one has too much Vaseline on it.”

Payton retreated to a tent across from the locker room and answered a couple of questions. Yes, he was sad. No, he wouldn’t reconsider retirement. Sure, he wished the game could have ended differently. “Overall, it’s been a lot of fun,” he said. “When you take away the fun, it’s time to leave. That’s why it’s so hard to leave now. It’s still fun. God’s been very good to me. I’m truly blessed.”

With those words, Payton called it a career. Bundled in a black cardigan sweater with a shawl collar, he walked alone into the frigid Chicago air.

What, at the age of thirty-four, would he do now?

The greatest running back in NFL history hadn’t the slightest idea.

PART FOUR

RETIREMENT

Tim Ehlebracht, Chicago Bears wide receiver, 1981 and 1982 training camps

I was cut by the Bears in 1982, and the only player I kept in any kind of touch with was Walter. Just casually, nothing regular. Well, in the early 1990s the daughter of one of my close friends got pancreatic cancer. Her name was Stephanie Motzer. We had a hundred-hole golf marathon to try to raise money and get her the best possible treatment. Along with the marathon we did an auction, and because I’d been with the Bears I was put in charge of getting stuff. I called Michael Jordan’s PR firm and asked if we could get an autographed basketball. I told them it was so a nine-year-old girl could get treatment for cancer. They told me they get too many requests, so they don’t give out balls to anyone. Then I called Walter’s office and explained the whole situation—about the girl and her cancer and what had happened with Jordan. He told me I should give him a couple of days and he’d put something together. Two or three days later I went to his office. He had one of his jerseys autographed, he had signed photographs of all the current Bears, he had a baseball bat from Bo Jackson.

And he had a basketball autographed by Michael Jordan.

CHAPTER 22

NOW WHAT?

FOR THE LAST THIRTEEN YEARS, WALTER PAYTON’S LIFE HAD BEEN A WELLORGANIZED, well-patterned ode to the predictability and routine of the professional athlete. During seasons, the Chicago Bears made certain all his needs and wants were met. Travel plans—booked. Dinner reservations—done. Car pickup—scheduled. If he desired to read a newspaper, a copy of that day’s
Tribune
or
Sun-Times
would be gently placed atop the chair before his locker. If he hungered for a hamburger and fries, a locker room kid would be sent to pick it up. If he craved a back rub, a massage therapist was at his beck and call.

Even in the off-season Payton’s life was laid out for him. The family employed a live-in nanny, Luna Picart, a heavily accented Jamaican émigré who did 90 percent of the cooking, cleaning, and child rearing. Payton had an executive assistant, Ginny Quirk, who answered all his calls, filed all his papers, scheduled all his appointments. Bud Holmes pushed his client toward eventual ownership of an NFL team, handling most of the necessary filings and contacts. His accountant, Jerry Richman, made it so Payton rarely had to think about numbers. There has always been much talk of Payton’s hands-on involvement in his charity, the Walter Payton Foundation. But, truth be told, Quirk and, later, Kimm Tucker, managed all of the day-to-day issues. Payton showed up when told, smiled when told, spoke on behalf of kiddies when told. He believed in the cause (helping care for low-income children), but rarely took the lead.

Now, because of the pampering, as an ex-football player Payton found himself burdened by a realization that had crippled thousands of ex-athletes before him:
I am bored out of my mind.

“I had no idea how to fill my days,” Payton said. “Prior to that, everything in my life was very regimental. Everything was, ‘Walter, do this, Walter, do that.’ There was not much in the way of me thinking. I was very much a creature of habit. I was the first to practice, I was the last to leave. I kind of thrived in an environment where I knew what was expected of me. Suddenly, I didn’t know what to do . . . people have no idea what an adjustment that is.”

Payton understood what it meant to be a celebrity, so he continued to play the role. In public, he laughed and smiled and waved and signed autographs. When strangers asked, he talked about how thrilled he was to be free of the burdens. “I’m not going to miss the pounding,” he told ABC’s Peter Jennings. “And the getting up at six and working out until dusk.” The words were pure fantasy. He would miss it
desperately
. In a world occupied by mechanics and plumbers and flight attendants and lawyers, nobody wanted to hear a wealthy ex-football player whine about the sudden lack of purpose to his life. But that’s what Payton was experiencing—a sudden lack of purpose. “He went from an abnormal existence as an athlete to a normal one,” said Brittney Payton, his daughter. “How does anyone do that?”

In early February of 1988 Payton flew to Hawaii to preside over the opening coin toss at the Pro Bowl (he found his first taste as a has-been to be depressing, and didn’t stay for the game), with a brief stop in San Diego to meet with Pete Rozelle, the NFL commissioner, about the possibility of one day owning an expansion franchise. He accepted a (largely nominal) position on the Bears’ board of directors, was named winner of the World Book James Arneberg Award for outstanding service and was honored by Columbia High School with the retiring of his uniform number (still bitter over his father’s death, he refused to attend the ceremony). It was all nice and dandy, but mind-numbingly dull. Once you’ve played in nine Pro Bowls, where’s the thrill in being an attendee? Once you’re honored 8,000 times, what’s 8,001? Once you’ve had fifty thousand fans chanting your name . . . well, how does a person move beyond such a thing?

When, four years earlier, Walter and Connie built their dream home on five and a half acres in South Barrington, the idea was that it would serve as an oasis from the real world; that the shooting range in the basement and home theatre system and pool tables and lounge chairs and fishing pond would make 34 Mudhank Road (Walter created the house number himself) seem like a luxury address, not merely a house at the end of a street. Yet now that he had nothing to do and nowhere to do it, the home felt mostly like a prison. When he was there, Payton spent countless hours on the couch, thinking, wondering, hoping, napping. He would call people at all hours of the day and night, looking to chat, longing for ideas. Though he had just recently played his final game, a feeling of irrelevance came quickly. Off-season newspaper articles about the Bears no longer dealt with Payton. Sports radio mentioned him sporadically, if at all. When asked, Payton told people that he was still working out and staying in tip-top shape. Not true. When the final whistle blew, Payton’s obsessive devotion to fitness died. He made regular pilgrimages to the nearby Bob Evans for bacon and eggs with a huge side helping of sausage. He gorged on Benihana whenever possible.

Once, while flying to an event, Payton sat next to a woman in first class who turned toward him and said, “Do I know you from somewhere?” Payton leaned close and said, “Actually, I’m one of the world’s most famous male strippers. You’ve probably seen me perform.” Payton rose, removed his jacket, and pretended to begin his routine. The woman was mortified until a boy approached and said, “Mr. Payton, can I have your autograph?”

She laughed uproariously. “Oh my God,” the woman said, cackling. “That’s the best trick anyone has ever played on me.” An executive with Wendy’s, she handed Payton a card that provided him a lifetime of free hamburgers. “Let’s just say they knew him at the Wendy’s drive-thru,” said Tucker, who worked with Payton after his retirement as the executive director of his charitable foundation. “He loved those free burgers.”

Walter Payton was a man who was recognized all over the country, yet he suddenly found himself very much alone. He kept in regular contact with none of his ex-teammates or coaches, and had long ago established a distant relationship with his older brother, Eddie. “When Eddie would call, a lot of the time Walter pretended he wasn’t there,” said Quirk. “He didn’t have much to talk with his brother about. The bond was iffy.”

While Walter and Connie remained married, it was a union solely in name and finances. “I started working for Walter in 1987,” said Tucker. “I didn’t even know he was married until probably a year later. I just thought Connie was the mother of his kids.” Shortly after his retirement, Payton—a spokesperson for Inland Property, a real estate firm—was provided with a free fully furnished two-bedroom apartment on Chestnut Street in downtown Chicago. He eventually split his time between there, a 3,500-square foot home he purchased in the Chicago suburb of West Dundee, Illinois, and the family house at 34 Mudhank (depending on when he wanted to be at the house with Jarrett, now seven, and Brittney, three). Husband and wife spoke when necessary, and Walter’s dalliances were becoming common knowledge throughout Chicago. He confided in those he was close with that, when his children graduated high school, he would divorce Connie once and for all. “He didn’t want the children to go through the rigors of a celebrity divorce,” said Tucker. “He knew what the spotlight felt like when it was negative, and he hated the idea of Jarrett and Brittney experiencing any of that.”

To those he trusted, Walter claimed he had never actually wanted to marry Connie; that the pressures of being young and alone had forced him to make a terrible mistake. He didn’t necessarily hate her, but there was no love or, for that matter, like. There hadn’t been for a long time. “Walter knew that if he left Connie all the work he’d done to his image would go by the wayside,” said Ron Atlas, his longtime friend. “Connie was very well liked, and that was a problem. When they were a real couple, friends would always side with Connie when they argued, because she seemed like such a sweet person.”

Of all the people he knew, Payton’s closest confidant was, interestingly, Ginny Quirk. Irrepressibly upbeat and perky, the native Chicagoan was twenty-one years old and freshly dropped out of the University of Wisconsin–Stout when, in the late months of 1984, a headhunter sent her to interview for an executive assistant’s job with “a high-profile businessman.”

“I was told the person needed someone who could travel, someone who could take the ball and run with it, someone who could wear a lot of hats and handle a lot of assignments,” said Quirk. “Until I walked in the door to interview with him, I had no idea the businessman was Walter Payton.”