Sweetness_ The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton - Jeff Pearlman [104]
Was Pardee aware of such goings-on? No. Was Finks? Probably not. But were you a member of the team, and were you interested in getting high, there were countless places to turn. Many of the players had their own personal dealers, and were more than willing to spread the word.
“Most of the guys on that team were smoking a whole lot of weed,” said Ron Cuie, a running back selected in the fourteenth round of the ’76 Draft. “There was a local bar near training camp, and all the guys would go there and get drunk and high. But not Walter. Never saw him.”
“A lot of guys got hooked on drugs beginning with their time in the NFL,” said Earl Douthitt, a former Bears defensive back. “That’s what happened to me—cocaine abuse started when I got to the Bears. And man, was it hard to break.”
Newly married and living with Connie in a small apartment in the Chicago suburb of Wheeling, Payton had nothing to do with the drug scene. Throughout his first twenty-three years of life, he’d drank fewer than ten beers total, and never took a hit from a joint. As for snorting lines of cocaine—not even a consideration.
Yet while Payton didn’t use, the argument can be made that he was a direct victim of those who did. According to several players, drug use made the Bears a sloppy, oft-disinterested group of ballplayers that focused mildly on football excellence and intently on partying after the game. Whereas elite teams like the Steelers and Vikings played with methodical, robotic excellence, Chicago was messy. Blocks were missed. Routes were botched. Easy balls slipped through fingers. Wins were greeted happily, but losses were greeted indifferently. To watch a highlight film of the ’76 Chicago Bears is to watch NFL football played not merely at its worst, but at its most inconsistent. “That,” said Douthitt, “is what makes so much of what Walter did so incredible.”
Payton was a man on an island, expected to deliver excellence, but lacking the necessary help to get him there. Except for Harper, the bruising fullback, Payton found few friends among his teammates. He laughed at their jokes and pulled colorful pranks and patted them on the rears in the aftermath of good plays, but for the most part the connection ended there. When Jerry Muckensturm, a Chicago linebacker, said, “I liked Walter, but I never felt like I got to know him,” he spoke for the majority of teammates. Walter was trying to find his footing in the Windy City, but the going was slow.
Following the listless victory over Detroit, the Bears flew to San Francisco to face the 49ers, another mediocre team coming off of a 5-9 record. Because it was being played on the West Coast, and because the 49ers and the Bears both appeared to stink, and because the snoozer of week one had placed many Chicago fans in a catatonic state, the pregame buildup generated the buzz of a librarian convention. The contest lacked a single marquee name—Payton was still an unproven curiosity, and at the moment the Niners’ best player was probably their kicker, Steve Mike-Mayer.
On the afternoon of September 19, 1976, everything changed.
With the skies clear, the Candlestick Park wind unusually still, and a crowd of 44,158 fans eagerly anticipating the home debut of head coach Monte Clark, Payton stepped onto the rocky brown-and-green field (still being used by baseball’s San Francisco Giants) and pummeled the 49ers. Behind a mediocre offensive line, with a mediocre quarterback and a mediocre scheme, Payton ran for 148 yards and two touchdowns, the best game of his career. “He was incredible . . . just incredible,” said Tommy Hart, a 49ers defensive end. “Before that game, the name Walter Payton meant very little to me. Afterward, I couldn’t forget it.”
Chicago received the opening kickoff, marched down the field, and scored on a twenty-yard Payton run that, more than thirty years later, Hart still struggled to comprehend. Immediately after taking the handoff, Payton was met head-on