Sweetness_ The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton - Jeff Pearlman [220]
By the time Payton arrived at the hotel, Connie and Lita had parted ways. He was shocked to learn of the meeting, but not entirely surprised. Canton was a small town, and the McKinley Grand wasn’t so grand. If anything, Payton felt a quiet sense of relief. After tiptoeing around for four days, the truth had finally come out. And while Connie seemed to hate him for being a skirt-chasing dog and Lita seemed to hate him for the speech, it was almost time to pack up and return to Chicago.
CHAPTER 24
DEPRESSION
ON AN EARLY MORNING IN THE FALL OF 1992, BILL WANDRO, BOYS BASKETBALL coach at Hoffman Estates High School, was told there was a man in the hallway who was looking to volunteer his time.
“He’s waiting to talk to you,” a secretary said. “He wants to help.”
How often had Wandro heard this one? At this upscale suburban high school of 1,995 students, every other father seemed to fancy himself the next John Wooden, itching to impart his (usually flawed) knowledge upon the fifteen boys who played for the Hawks. The profile was a familiar one: middle-aged, bored, overly competitive, convinced he knew more than the head coach did. Nonetheless, Wandro went to meet the aspiring coach. “So the guy starts talking to me and he says, ‘I’d really like to lend a hand,’ ” said Wandro. “I asked if his son attended the school and he said no, but he loved basketball and understood the game. We’re talking for two or three minutes before a kid comes up and says to him, ‘Can I have your autograph?’ He signs and I look at the name on this scrap of paper.
“ ‘Holy cow,’ I say. ‘You’re Walter Payton!’ ”
When Wandro asked why the Walter Payton would want to grace a mediocre suburban high school team with his presence, Payton explained that while football was his trademark, basketball was his love. The truth was a tad more complicated. Having been pulled over for speeding yet again (Payton was stopped for driving above the speed limit more than fifty times during his years in Chicago, yet almost always drove off with merely a warning), Payton was ordered by an unsympathetic judge to partake in six months of community service. Two weeks later, after undergoing a background check, Payton was introduced to Wandro’s dumbfounded players as the newest volunteer assistant. Was this merely the case of a celebrity putting in his time? Hardly. “He came to every practice six days a week, two hours per day, plus every game,” Wandro said. “He also coached the junior varsity team. He was a great coach—he really related with the kids. He was genuine with them.” Payton encouraged the players to embrace wins with euphoric giddiness and take losses as experiences to learn from. He told stories of his Bears days, but never, it seemed, as bragging material. There was always a lesson. A moral. He convinced Wilson, a corporation he endorsed, to spring for new uniforms for both the varsity and JV squads—flashy royal blue-andorange duds that, according to Wandro, “had our kids feeling like a million bucks.”
Inside Hoffman Estate’s gymnasium, Payton seemed to take pride in not behaving as a typical superstar athlete. When someone tossed a towel on the floor, he picked it up. When the janitors showed up to start sweeping, he grabbed a broom. Toward the end of every practice he and an assistant coach named Dan Davis engaged in spirited games of H-O-R-S-E. “We’d play two hundred thousand dollars a shot, and I got him down one-point-five million,” Davis said. “One day he comes in and writes me a check for one-point-five million dollars. All the kids are going ape. I put the check in my pocket and we practice. When practice ends he comes up to me and says, ‘Hey, Dan, don’t forget about giving that check back.’ ”
Throughout the 1992–93 and 1993–94 seasons, Payton was heavily involved, plotting