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Dave Anderson, a New York Times columnist, described the scene that unfolded:

One by one, he tugged at the fingers of the gray thermal gloves and tossed them to [Haeger]. He lifted off his turf-scraped helmet, but left on a navy blue wool hood. He unbuckled his shoulder pads and pulled them over his black, curly hair. He sat down and tore the white tape off his shoes. He took off his knee pads and his striped uniform stockings, then he cut the tape off his right ankle and his left ankle. Now he reached inside his white uniform pants, yanked the thigh pads out and handed them to the equipment manager.

“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