Sweetness_ The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton - Jeff Pearlman [90]
Despite every possible reason for his men to pack it in (No money. Games in Orlando’s dilapidated Tangerine Bowl. Putrid facilities. A schedule that changed week to week. Minimal fans.), the Blazers kept playing, reaching the WFL title game before losing to Birmingham. When Jim Finks heard of the unpaid group of journeymen and their feisty coach, he knew who he wanted to replace Gibron on the Chicago sideline. “It was more of a gut feeling than anything else,” Finks said. “We looked for something deeper.”
Now, as Pardee arrived in Lake Forest each morning not knowing whether Payton would be on the field or in the trainer’s room, he doubted the rookie’s toughness and commitment.
But not his talent. Throughout his month in camp, Payton was the talk of the Bears. The hype began shortly before his arrival, when O’Connor, the new running backs coach, interrupted a team meeting one day to show a film clip of Payton at Jackson State. “I think it was done to inspire us,” said Berl Simmons, a rookie kicker out of Texas Christian. “Walter must have run over or around all eleven defensive people, and we were just amazed. It was probably unusual for them to show that, but Walter was an unusual player.”
On his first day of working out, Payton hung with the other running backs and receivers, fielding punts from Bob Parsons. When it was their turn, players waited for the balls, stepped to the left, stepped to the right, moved in, moved back—then made the catch. “Not Walter,” said Jim Osborne, the veteran defensive lineman. “Bob kicked these beautiful punts, big spirals high into the sky, and when the ball finally came down Walter would catch them behind his back. I’d never seen anyone do that before.”
In the NFL, great athletes are the norm. Everyone is either incredibly fast or exceptionally strong, so much so that the remarkable can often appear mundane. There was nothing mundane about Payton. “He had a gluteus that I’ve never seen on another person in my life,” said Ken Valdiserri, the Bears’ longtime media relations coordinator. “His ass was chiseled. It was the most unique thing I’ve ever seen. And if you walked into the locker room it was like, ‘How can a guy have an ass like that?’ The curvature and the depth and the definition of it.”
“He was like an acrobat,” said Tom Donchez, a backup running back. Ross Brupbacher, a Bears linebacker, called him, “A muscle.” Don Rives, the ornery linebacker, said tackling Payton “was like tackling a barrel. I hit him as hard as I could in practice and he shed me like I was Little Bo Peep.” Said Doug Plank, the team’s twelfth-round pick from Ohio State: “At first I thought it weird that Walter was always flexing. Then it hit me—he’s not flexing. He’s made of rocks.” Payton walked on his hands, flipped up, and landed in a split. He stood below a regulation basketball hoop, jumped up, and dunked with ease. “The punters were practicing one day, and he decided to give it a try,” said Dave Gallagher, a defensive end. “He walked over, picked up a ball, punted it sixty yards, and walked away. No biggie.”
“Genetically, he seemed to be just like a rubber ball,” said Larry Ely, a linebacker. “When he got tackled, four . . . five . . . six people would have his legs, his neck, his arms, and he’d bounce back like a rubber ball to the huddle. How in the world did his ligaments and muscles take the pounding and bounce right back? You looked at him and wondered how any human being could be blessed with such a body.”
“He took up golf one day with the Bears,” said Bo Rather, a receiver. “He picked up an eight or nine iron and told us, ‘See that light post out