A few years ago, I read a particularly affecting book. It's called Wilt: Larger than Life, and was written about Wilt Chamberlain, one of the most titanic presences in NBA history. The book was written by Robert Cherry, and does an incredible job of dismantling the façade and showing who Wilt was as a person. It helped me gain a unique admiration for Wilt, and has lead me to regard him as the greatest athlete who ever lived. Thanks to Cherry's chronicle of an athlete whose prime I wasn't alive for, I kept in the back of my mind that it would be nice to read about athletes in other sports that I might gain a similar admiration for.
In my search, I came across a book called Sweetness, whose title reveals that its subject is Walter Payton, who earned the nickname as one of the most fearsome and greatest running backs the NFL has ever seen. Written by Jeff Pearlman a few years after Payton's death, Sweetness is an exhaustively-researched analysis of a man who was known by millions but understood by perhaps no one but himself. I went into the book hoping to gain that understanding, assuming that I'd gain the same level of admiration for Payton as I have for Chamberlain.
There's a saying about making assumptions that's supposed to go right here, but I just can't remember it right now.
Sweetness begins with Walter Payton's childhood, a look at the systemic racism that Payton was forced to deal with from birth. It's sickening how many situations Payton was put into that feel like they could have happened at any point in American history, and are still happening today. Still, it details how Walter became the uniting force in a town in the process of desegregating. We also see the beginning of his football prowess, propelled by a work ethic described consistently throughout the book as other-worldly. It segues into his choice of college, where Payton spurns Kansas State to stay close to home at the prestigious HBCU Jackson State (they've been in the news recently, hiring Hall of Famer Deion Sanders as their head football coach in 2020). Payton quickly became a mythic figure at Jackson State, nearly winning the Heisman trophy despite receiving little to no media attention for the majority of his tenure.
Where Sweetness truly begins to carve into Payton's character, however, is when we reach his NFL home, the Chicago Bears. Here, Pearlman highlights Payton's frustrations as the team struggled for the bulk of his career, despite his herculean efforts. Payton's childish nature is explored through the often immature pranks he played on teammates, his moodiness towards the media, and pouty tendencies when things didn't quite go his way. As I read through these sections, I was taken aback; after all, this kind of behavior would not have endeared to name their Man of the Year Award, given each year to the NFL player whose charitable and community service rose above the rest of his peers, after. Still, as anecdotes poured in about his behavior that assuredly would have been labeled as "diva-like" in today's NFL, I assured and reassured myself that eventually I'd see the side of Payton that the world remembers him most for.
I was met with more of Payton's failings. Throughout the glorification of Payton's gridiron greatness, Pearlman also brings the reader face-to-face with quite a few demons. You're brought into the public events he frequently attended and subsequently used to gain the attention of the most beautiful women Chicago had to offer, while his wife was at home. You'll hear about the moodiness that made its way from the football field into his everyday life, as his friends and family detail the up-and-down, constant swings of his mood. Of course, you'll also be balanced out with anecdotes of Payton stopping to speak to sick children in hospitals, sign memorabilia for charity auctions, and be genuinely kind to everyone among the droves of people who would stop him in the streets. And then you'll read about the most egregious of Payton's mistakes: the child he conceived as the result of an affair, provided support for discreetly, and never publicly acknowledged. It's a rare case, but not one that's particularly new to those in the spotlight; people like Bartolo Colon, Drake, and likely countless others have done the same thing. Still, after reading so much about his upbringing, his drive, his attempts to be as good a man as he could be (or at least to appear to be), it's difficult not to be disappointed learning about this unfortunate blemish on a once-immaculate record.
In some ways, Payton's decision to abandon his son conceived out of wedlock was a consequence of the times he lived in. Had this happened now, in 2021, in a world defined by social media, there's simply no way this would have remained a secret. But Payton's prime playing career stretched from the 70s into the mid-80s, and even at the time of his death in 1999, the world as we see it today was not even hinted at. Of course, social norms have changed since then, too, and having a son with a woman other than his wife wouldn't have been as damning today as it would have been nearly 50 years ago. Many public figures who are universally beloved, like Shaquille O' Neal, Tom Brady, and several others have children from different mothers, and those family dynamics are nearly never brought up in the discussion of those men's legacies, so I'd say it's fair to assume that Payton's situation would have been handled differently and accepted more readily.
All that said, Payton still made a mistake, and based on Pearlman's recollection of the events, he regretted it deeply. While most people only learned of this fumbled situation long after Payton was dead (Sweetness was first published in 2011), it will certainly change the way people see him and revere him. This proved to be a difficult predicament for as I was reading. How was this the man whose name dons the NFL's Man of the Year Award? It just felt that, for a lot of the middle part of the book, it broke down this pillar of excellence to someone who maybe didn't deserve all of the praise he received.
Later on in the book, however, Pearlman offers a very poignant line: "Had I so desired," he writes, "I could have written a seven-hundred-page consisting solely of You're-not-gonna-believe-this stories of Payton's goodness." It's important to note that this goodness Pearlman refers to is laced throughout Sweetness, but based on how interesting the subject was, and how skilled the author proved himself to be, I'm a little disappointed we didn't get more. Still, those stories are likely more readily available about Payton, and it's clear Pearlman's intent was to flesh out parts of Payton's life that people didn't necessarily know. It's important to consider both, obviously, as no person should be judged solely by their failures, or solely by their successes.
As I considered the line mentioned above, that's when I realized that Payton does deserve to have his namesake on the Man of the Year Award; not because he was a flawless man, not even because he was a flawed one, but because even as his mistakes are listed and piled up, he never stopped trying to be good to those around him. Walter Payton understood the importance of his status as one of the NFL's greatest players (and perhaps its all-time greatest running back), and strived to use it for the betterment of himself and those around him. He may have been moody, difficult to be around, and unpredictable, but he was also caring, open-minded, and generous with his time dedicated to those less fortunate than he was. Just ask the countless defenders who were left battered after battles with Payton throughout his career: when Walter Payton put his mind to something, he was unstoppable. He was the kind of person we should all strive to be, and yes, he wasn't always great, but he was always trying to get better. If nothing else, Walter Payton left us with that lesson, to never stop working to make things around us better.
I cannot recommend Sweetness enough. It is an intensely-researched book, and Pearlman's recollection of Payton's life is wildly fascinating. I'd happily lend my copy to anyone looking to read it.
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