Sweetness_ The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton - Jeff Pearlman [144]
He was born on October 18, 1939, in Carnegie, Pennsylvania, the grandson of Ukrainian immigrants who changed the family name from Dyzcko (pronounced ditch-co in Polish) to Disco to, finally, the rugged-sounding Ditka (writer’s note: imagine Mike Ditka as Mike Disco?). The oldest of four siblings, young Mike grew up in a government-subsidized housing project in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, and inherited his famed work ethic from his father, Mike, Sr., a former marine who made ends meet as a steel and mill worker. “We played sports day and night,” Ditka wrote in his autobiography. “In the spring, it was baseball until the sun went down. Football was the same way. Our fingers would crack and break open from playing basketball on the cold and wet court with a wet basketball. It didn’t matter. That’s all we had.”
Like Walter Payton, Ditka was a late bloomer whose childhood was filled with church, mischief, and beatings. Once, as a third grader, he bought a pack of Luckies, marched out to the woods behind his house, took a puff or two, then tossed the cigarette to the ground. When his father returned home from work that night, he asked his wife, Charlotte, why the woods no longer existed.
“You’ll have to ask our son,” she said. “He burned them down.”
The beating that followed was conducted with an old leather marine belt. It was the worst Mike Ditka ever received.
As a sophomore at Aliquippa High, Ditka stood five foot seven and 130 pounds. He tried out for the junior varsity football team as a defensive back, but was kicked off the practice field by coach Carl Aschman after absorbing one too many thumpings. He was ordered by the staff to prove his worth by cleaning the locker room latrines—an indefensibly cruel assignment that motivated the boy to come back stronger, faster, meaner. That summer he grew three inches and gained thirty-five pounds, then made the varsity as a middle linebacker. As a senior, Ditka—a muscular 185 pounds—emerged as one of the state’s top players. “My whole life was based on beating the other guy, being better, being equal to, or just showing that I could be as good as anyone else,” Ditka said. “I don’t know if that’s good or bad.”
Ditka went on to the University of Pittsburgh, where he punted and played linebacker and tight end from 1958 to 1960. Were there more talented and polished players across the United States? Unquestionably. Was there a more driven one? No. Pitt’s coaches stopped scrimmaging Ditka during the week, for fear that he would knock out teammates in the lead-up to a big game. “Pound for pound, Mike was as tough as any man I ever saw,” said Jim Traficant, a Pitt quarterback who later went on to become a Democratic congressman from Ohio. “Tough and intense. He’s the only visiting player I ever heard of who got a standing ovation at Notre Dame after rubbing a lot of Irish noses in the dirt.”
Nicknamed “Pinhead” by teammates for his marine-styled crew cut, Ditka was respected for his soft hands (playing in an offense that rarely passed, he totaled forty-five receptions over three seasons) and feared for his Tasmanian Devil temper. When the Panthers trailed Michigan State at halftime during Ditka’s senior year, a cornerback named Chuck Reinhold tried giving a spirited locker room pep talk. Ditka grabbed Reinhold and slammed him against a locker. “Whattaya mean, we’ll get ’em?” he screamed. “You son of a bitch, if you hadn’t missed that damn tackle we wouldn’t be in this goddamned fix!” According to teammates, during another game Ditka punched out two Pitt players in the huddle. “You had to be a winner playing with Ditka,” said Dick Mills, a teammate. “He would have it no other way.”
Selected by the Bears in the first round of the 1961 Draft, Ditka emerged as Chicago’s type of guy, winning the NFL Rookie of the Year award and, two seasons later, helping the team to the league title. He was all black-and-blue, with the crooked nose and blood-splattered jersey to prove it. In 1962, the editors of Look magazine searched for an NFL player who defined ruggedness. In a four-page