Sweetness_ The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton - Jeff Pearlman [184]
Around the time Valdisseri and McGrane were finishing with Payton, Bud Holmes entered the locker room. Ever since they first teamed up before the 1975 Draft, Holmes had paid special attention to his client’s image. He knew of Payton’s selfishness and insecurities (as well as his goodness and decency), and the last thing he wanted was for a nation of football fans to see it on display now, in the glow of victory.
Holmes stormed into the tiny closet, where he found Payton sitting on a box.
“What the hell is wrong you with?” Holmes screamed.
“You know what’s wrong,” Payton replied.
“Goddamn boy, one monkey does not stop the show,” Holmes said. “The show’s gotta go on. Look, Ditka was the one who didn’t get you a touchdown. If the press wants to gut him for it, let it be their call. But if you go out there and do anything but brag on him for getting you to a Super Bowl and brag on him for letting you achieve so much, your reputation as a good guy is dead, and you’ll be remembered as the selfish sack of shit who moped after a Super Bowl.”
“But,” Payton countered, “this isn’t the way you treat a star.”
“Bullshit,” Holmes said. “Right now there are hundreds of reporters out there with sharp, sharp pencils waiting for you to blast him. Maybe they even agree with you. But if you blast him now, they’ll come back in a few days and blast you even worse.
“So do me a favor and act like the happiest son of a bitch in the world. If I can find you a straw hat and a cane, you can come out and tap dance in front of everyone to prove it.”
Payton asked Holmes for a couple of minutes to gather himself. When he finally emerged from the closet, he was shirtless, with a white towel dangling over his right shoulder. He was stopped by NBC’s Bob Costas, who requested a live interview.
COSTAS: Walter, was there ever a time during your long career, when you were performing so brilliantly and your team was at a level beneath that, that you felt this dream would never come true?
PAYTON: Well, you try not to think about it. During the off-season when you see other people playing in the Super Bowl, you wonder and you say to yourself, ‘Are you ever gonna get there and see what it feels like?’ And it pushes you a little bit harder during that off-season to work to try to get there the following year. This team had their minds made up after losing to San Francisco last year that we were going to win the Super Bowl this year.
COSTAS: Can you describe the feeling for you personally?
PAYTON: Right now it really hasn’t sunk in. I don’t feel anything. It’s one of those things where when you have it in your mind for so long what it would be like, and then after the actual event happens, it tends to take away from it. Right now I’m still a little bumped and bruised from the game. It really hasn’t happened yet.
Standing to the side, Holmes was satisfied. Payton, however, remained petulant. Instead of making plans with teammates or family members, he retreated to the empty training room. “He and I left the Super Bowl together in a taxicab, after everyone was gone,” said Fred Caito, the veteran trainer. “By the time we left the training room it was quiet and dark. He never even took a shower—just sulked.” Upon reaching the hotel, Payton was greeted in the lobby by Lewis Pitzele, a Chicago-based music producer he had known via business dealings. Payton invited him to his room. “He started telling me why he wasn’t going out, and then he started crying,” said Pitzele. “I was answering the phone for him—ABC and CBS and Good Morning America were all calling the room, trying to book him for the next day. He didn’t want to talk to anyone. We eventually went downstairs to the banquet, but he was crushed.”
Many of Payton’s teammates were perplexed and disappointed. Some were mad at the running back for his selfishness. Who cared about a touchdown in the Super Bowl? What difference did it make?