Waiting for Ditka
20.05.12
He’s a young man, big in the shoulders, solid, on a field west of the Alleghenies. His face could be the face of a miner, or a steelworker, or a welder like his dad. Here he is in college, a captain of the offense at Pitt. His hair is crew-cut, his jersey covered in mud. Cotton wads shoved up his nose keep blood from trickling into his mouth. He’s taken in the first round by the Chicago Bears, coached by the owner, George Halas, the old man, a founder of the NFL. Here’s Ditka in his rookie season, in the rumbling dark of the team plane, returning from a humiliating loss in Minnesota. Halas comes on the P.A., voice crackling: “You’re all a bunch of little cunts.” That’s how Ditka learned to be Ditka.
I love Mike Ditka. I dream about him. I dreamed about him last night. I was driving down the expressway and I saw him in the next car, signaling me to pull over. We stood on the shoulder, him yelling, telling me what I had to do: “It’s going to hurt like hell, but you’re going to learn to win.”
Source: The Atlantic