Bob Logan's Tales from Chicago Sports by Bob Logan

Author:Bob Logan [Logan, Bob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781613212776
Publisher: Sports Publishing
Published: 2012-06-05T00:00:00+00:00

Soldier Field — Payton s Place

So much has been written about the way Walter Payton lived and died. Little of it did the man and the legend total justice.

There’s not much I can add, except to note I share the frustration that his life got cut short at 45. When liver failure claimed Payton on November 1, 1999, it closed the door on a list of amazing accomplishments.

The saddest part was that the best was yet to come. When Payton became an NFL owner, as he surely would have, his fellow moguls would have been hit with a blizzard of fresh ideas, as well as an occasional whoopee cushion on their well-padded chairs. Walter s sense of humor and his fondness for practical jokes was just one facet of a complex man.

His Sweetness nickname belied an awesome total of 16,276 career rushing yards over 13 seasons with the Bears. Along the way, he became the playing symbol of the team, the way George Halas was the coaching symbol.

The crowd around Payton was so deep during my years as a backup Bear writer that I seldom got a chance to go one-on-one with him. Still, I saw enough of his blend of outward affability and inner sense of protecting his privacy. The way he blended those conflicting traits, never letting either interfere with the business of carrying the football better than anyone else, past or present, convinced me “Sweetness” was the right label for this package of talent. A brief nugget from a college football story proves my point:

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