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He was Chicago.
Pro sports fans who’ve lived in this city long enough arguably have seen two athletes who combined ferocity, God-given talent and otherworldly competitiveness into unforgettable careers.
One was Michael Jordan, who won six championships with the Chicago Bulls. The other was Dick Butkus, who won zero championships with the Chicago Bears.
Pure Chicago from the start, Butkus grew up in Roseland, attended Chicago Vocational High School on the South Side, was an All-American at the University of Illinois and then forged a singular career as the NFL’s best defensive player of his era and possibly of all time. On a team that lost more than it won.
A later era might have defined his TV and movie roles after injury cut short his football career at age 31 as “going Hollywood,” but Chicagoans knew he was their own no matter where he laid his head.
He died Thursday in his sleep, in his Malibu, California, home, his family said.
Butkus was a real rarity in professional sports. Like Gale Sayers, who played with him on some of those mediocre to poor Bears teams, he was seen as an undeniable all-timer. His jarring and wince-inducing hits still are appointment viewing on YouTube and are lovingly replayed by NFL Films.
Fans in Chicago — indeed all around the country — continue to wear Butkus jerseys to games. Football’s annual honor for the nation’s best linebacker at the high school, college and pro level is the Butkus Award.
Great players on bad teams become distant memories. They show up on statistical lists, trivia fodder for stat geeks in future generations.
Butkus played such a distinct brand of football, boiling one of the most physically demanding games imaginable to its brutal essence in a way no one had until then and hasn’t since, that his legacy never dimmed regardless of his team’s performances. Most superstars need championships to achieve immortality; not so Dick Butkus. He won the league’s award as top defensive player in a one-win season!
So Chicago. So second city. We viewed him — rightfully — as one of us..
A chip on the shoulder. Laboring another day in difficult conditions. Enduring crummy weather.
But, equally, it was his bearing, the way he carried himself. The impossible-to-miss Chicago accent he kept until his dying day, despite not having lived here in decades. The wry sense of humor. The blunt honesty.
And, crucially, Butkus seemed like a gruffly gentle soul off the football field. It’s lamentable that a few who play this violent sport struggle to limit that aggressiveness to the field. No story like that ever emerged about Butkus. He was married to his high school sweetheart for six decades.
Many Chicagoans like to think of themselves in a similar vein. Tough exteriors, sure, but when you get to know us, we make up the country’s friendliest big city. Softies even.
But it all came back to what he could do on Sundays. In his ’60s heyday, chances were that the Bears would fall short (a quarterback, please! For the love of …). But Chicago took pride in the knowledge that opposing players feared — literally feared — playing against Butkus.
“I want to just let ’em know that they’ve been hit, and when they get up, they don’t have to look to see who it was that hit ‘em,” Butkus told NFL Films.
Whatever we do in life, we’d all love to be thought of in a similar way: No one else would (fill in the blank) like that.
We’ve got the jaw-dropping highlights on film. Some of us will spend this Sunday revisiting those. But Butkus left us something more important: a legacy with a lesson for all of us attached to it.
Success, as defined by those around you, isn’t nearly as important as leaving it all on the field. Doing what you do the best you can do and (if you’re lucky to find that thing you’re singularly good at) in a way few others can.
Quoth Butkus: “Some people were made to be doctors, others to be lawyers. I was made to play football.”
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