Walter Payton book paints disturbing picture of Bears legend
He popped painkillers like candy and covered his body with a topical gel used on horses when he played professional football. When Walter Payton retired, he took even more painkillers.
He kept a mistress for years and had other extramarital affairs, even while he publicly maintained he was happily married to his longtime wife, Connie.
At his Hall of Fame induction — which should have been a highlight in his life — his wife sat in the front row. And his flight attendant girlfriend sat in the second. His longtime assistant was in charge of keeping them apart. Payton was miserable.
And in retirement, he constantly told friends he wanted to kill himself, at one point even holding a gun while telling his agent of his dark plans.
So claims a new biography of the Chicago Bears’ legend,Sweetness: The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton,which is scheduled to be released next week .
The book paints a startling picture of the career and post-retirement days of the NFL’s one-time leading rusher and one of the game’s all-time greats.
But best-selling author Jeff Pearlman also lays out a far more complicated portrait of a man who many in Chicago still idolize 12 years after his death from a rare liver disease — a portrait that is at times poignant and heart-wrenching and at other times unflattering and salacious.
“He was addicted to laughter,” Kimm Tucker, former executive director of Payton’s foundation, says of her boss in the book. Payton would often insist on first playing catch with kids who asked him for autographs and then offer them words of inspiration.
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