Payton Was Supposed to Live Forever

Some things make no sense.

Just take the way Walter Payton played, for instance. Season after season, game after game, down after down, he destroyed folks. He did so as a running back for the Chicago Bears, and he spent 13 years as one of the most explosive hitters ever at any position, despite wrapping just 200 pounds around his frame of 5-foot-10. After he would belt a heftier defender toward the parking lot with his famously potent stiff arm, he would return to his preferred status of mellow.

Which brings us to the way Payton lived. Only a power higher than all of the former and present NFL commissioners combined knows the true essence of a man's heart. But to mere mortals, Payton wore a halo as well as a helmet. He was eternally polite, and he was a constant giver. To charities. To strangers. To society as a whole. I mean, did he have any enemies? If he did, they were invisible, or they were just teasing along the way to wrapping loving arms around the guy called "Sweetness" for a reason.

Then there was the way Payton died.

This really made no sense. The way Payton played and lived, he was supposed to become a modern-day Elijah and Enoch, and never experience death. Instead, Payton died, all right, and he died at 45. Sunday will mark a decade since terminal liver disease became about the only thing Payton could not overcome.

Then again, upon further review, everything involving Payton did make sense, but only if you understand this: Never has an athlete so extraordinary been so ordinary.

The way Payton played and lived, he was supposed to become a modern-day Elijah and Enoch, and never experience death.
As for the extraordinary, see the paragraphs above. Now add to that Payton's journey past Jim Brown for more rushing yards than anybody in history (a record that stood until Emmitt Smith came along). And, for the bulk of that stretch, Payton had no offensive line, no quarterback, no head coach -- and no team worth mentioning. He never complained. He even kept his mouth shut when he was inexplicably slighted by Coach Mike Ditka after the Bears got powerful enough at the end of Payton's career to shuffle their way to a blowout victory in the 1985 Super Bowl. On a short touchdown plunge, Ditka gave the ball to a gimmick (William "Refrigerator" Perry) instead of to a legend (Payton).

In addition, Payton never got hurt, and he never greeted the public with much less than a smile. He also never lost the hidden strength of a bulldozer that he still possessed during the early years of his retirement after the 1987 season.

"It was like shaking hands with a brick," said my brother, Darrell, chuckling and recalling his occasional lunches with Payton after the NFL Hall of Famer stopped wearing a No. 34 Bears jersey on a regular basis and switched to business attire. They worked in the same office building in a Chicago suburb. While Darrell was a regional marketing manager for his company on the third floor, Payton was operating as Payton on the fourth. From there, he sought to bring a team to St. Louis, which was NFL-barren at the time. He would have been -- and should have been -- the first primary owner in the league who was African-American.

He oversaw his slew of charities. He ran a couple of Chicago nightspots. He also tried to enter the world of auto racing as a driver and an owner.

According to Darrell, his office had as much NASCAR stuff as NFL stuff.

What else?

Darrell chuckled again. He was about to give the ordinary side of Payton, and the ordinary side still made Payton bigger than life. Said Darrell, "He could have had a pink elephant in his office for all I know. That's because, whenever you talked to Walter, you didn't look around, because he gave you this great eye contact. He always was focused on every single word that you said. I can't recall meeting too many people who listened to you as intently as he did, and it didn't matter how well he knew you. He was passionately involved with every conversation. And at times, it almost was as if he could tell what you were going to say before you even said it.

"But the biggest thing was that no matter how often I talked to Walter, I couldn't believe how pleasant he always was to you. He was one of the nicest persons I've ever met, and that's why it was such a shock about his death.

"Actually, it was more shocking to find out he was sick."

How does a Walter Payton ever get sick? He was more durable than Dick Butkus and certainly Gale Sayers, the other sainted Bears who reached national fame despite the darkness around them. At best, Payton's nearest challengers as an iron man came from the leather-helmet days of Red Grange and Bronko Nagurski.

I'm mentioning Bears history, because Bears history is as good as it gets when it comes to football history regarding toughness, and nobody from any team or from any era tops Payton in that category. In fact, if you find any footage on NFL Films that shows Payton running for the sidelines, it will be the first.

He was the anti-Franco Harris.

Then, out of nowhere, you had Payton's version of Lou Gehrig's farewell speech at Yankee Stadium and Magic Johnson's announcement about contracting HIV.

February 2, 1999. With pounds leaving Payton's body faster than one of his old dashes through somebody's front seven, tears flowed from everywhere and from everybody inside a Chicago-area restaurant. Payton called this news conference to address rumors about his rapidly failing health. Near the end of his talk, with dark shades in place and family members all around him, Payton said with emotion, "To the people that really care about me, just continue to pray. And for those who are gonna say what they want to say, may God be with you also."

Nine months later, Payton was gone, and it didn't make sense.

Terence Moore is a national columnist and commentator for FanHouse. He is a frequent panelist on "Rome Is Burning," an ESPN show hosted by Jim Rome, that is seen Monday through Friday at 4:30 PM ET. Moore spent more than three decades working for major newspapers, including 26 years as an award-winning sports columnist for the San Francisco Examiner and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He resides in Atlanta.