Sweetness_ The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton - Jeff Pearlman [116]
With less than four minutes on the clock, Payton took a handoff from Avellini on the Bears’ thirty-three, charged over right tackle, slashed right, and motored down the sideline. He stiff-armed two Vikings, ran over two more, and finally stepped out of bounds at the Minnesota nine. He was five yards away from tying the Juice. “We had to get it for him,” said Don Rives, a Bears linebacker. “To be that close . . .”
After gaining three yards on a sweep around left end, Payton’s fortieth and final carry of the day was another sweep, this time to the right. The run was unexceptional but also magical. Payton picked up four yards, good enough for 275.
The Bears held on to win, 10–7—“Ugly and beautiful,” said Steve Schubert, a Bears receiver. “Ugly because we scored ten points with Walter running for 275. Beautiful because Walter was amazing.”
Afterward, an exhausted Payton sat on his stool and took questions. His miniature Afro was tussled. His shoulders were slumped. Four hours earlier, he was unsure whether he was even going to play.
Can you do it again? he was asked.
“Nobody knows that far ahead,” he said. “Nobody knows what can happen. Only God knows.”
Is a three-hundred-yard game possible?
“I don’t know. You have to call Him up.”
When the pack cleared, Sports Illustrated’s John Underwood approached. “One question,” he said. “How would you defend Walter Payton?”
For the first time all day, the running back seemed stumped.
“Well,” he finally said, “the night before the game I’d kidnap him.”
Following the wins against the Chiefs and Vikings, the Bears were 5-5 and, for the first time in more than a decade, a hot team.
Their star was even hotter.
Wrote Phil Elderkin of The Christian Science Monitor: “Nobody would ever confuse running back Walter Payton of the Chicago Bears with an expensive sports car, although he often corners as well. Actually, Payton is a mini-tank, almost as apt to run over people as he is to run around them. He has the torso of a Soviet weight lifter, but the legs of Secretariat.”
Payton appeared on The Today Show. He was asked to take part in the wildly popular ABC television program Superstars, in which athletes from different sports compete against each other (it taped at season’s end). He held a conference call with seventeen national writers and laughed as two Windy City newspapers—the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times—provided subscribers with free Walter Payton iron-ons. WORLD RUNS TO PAYTON, read a headline in the November 22 Tribune, and it was hardly an exaggeration. Wrote Pierson: “Payton’s record rushing brought out a symphony Monday and he conducted it with a maturity that is growing off the field as well as on.”
Was Payton still a juvenile pain in the ass? Yes—rolled-up socks continued to soar through the air and pants were regularly pulled down from behind. He ceaselessly mocked Robin Earl for his enormous rear end (Earl: “Walter would line up behind me and scream, ‘I can’t see! I can’t see!’ ”) and delighted in sneaking up on Len Walterscheid, a rookie defensive back, and strangling him with a deathly bear hug. During a trip to Tampa, Albrecht was convinced by veteran teammates to dump a bucket of ice water atop an unsuspecting Payton as he lounged by the pool. “Walter stood up, all wet, and screamed, ‘OK, let the games begin!’ ” Hours later, when he returned to his room after dinner, Albrecht found his bed covered in ice. The next morning, Albrecht’s shoulder pads were glued to a wood beam in the locker