On November 1, 1999, the Bears lost Walter Payton, the greatest player ever to wear the uniform. Six days later, they went to Lambeau Field and beat the Packers 14-13.
This morning, Walter’s son, Jarrett Payton, broke the news that Mike Ditka had died. It’s Packers Week. The Bears are headed to Lambeau this Sunday. The outcome … TBD.
Digging through ESPN’s archives, I found what Ditka said the day Walter died.
“It’s really sad to me,” Ditka said of the man he coached for six years with the Bears. “But the first thought I had of him was not of sadness. It was of all the great things he meant to the city of Chicago, the Bears, and the fans. To watch him play was pretty special.”
Ditka was in New Orleans that day, coaching the Saints, and the first thing he reached for was what Walter meant to Chicago. Fitting, because for most of our lives, nobody embodied Chicago the way Ditka did. When you think of the city, you think of the food, the lakefront, the architecture, and the Bears. And when you think of the Bears, you think of him: the slicked-back hair, the mustache, the sweater vest, the aviators, the cigar. The hard-nosed, never-say-die attitude of a city full of hard-working, middle-class people who carry a chip on their shoulder and a lot of pride in where they come from.
He went from the player who reinvented the tight end position in Chicago, to the head coach of the ’85 Bears, to a living, breathing stand-in for the franchise and the city itself…
FULL STORY: Mike Ditka Was Chicago, Ben Johnson Is the Closest Thing Since (via Patrick K. Flowers)
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