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Steve McMichael (Mongo) Suffering with ALS - now HOF Bound

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This is devastating.  As a Chicago native who grew up with the great Bears teams in the 80's - Steve McMichael was my football hero before I even knew Texas football existed.

McMichael was an All-American DT for Texas before being drafted by New England.  He was cut before his second season and ended up being signed by the Bears.  He spent the next 13 years in Chicago - terrorizing QB's as part of Buddy Ryan's '46' defense.  He was a huge personality who went into Pro-wrestling after finishing his football career.

If you're into that sort of thing - say a prayer for Mongo.

Also - consider donating to his gofundme.  https://gofund.me/526d272e

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

Steve ‘Mongo’ McMichael is suddenly in a vicious fight against ALS. ‘This ain’t ever how I envisioned this was going to end,’ the Chicago Bears great says.

CHICAGO TRIBUNE |
APR 23, 2021 AT 10:14 AM
 
 
 
 
Chicago Bears great Steve McMichael is now in a vicious and unwinnable fight with ALS, the progressive nervous system disease.

 

 

Brace yourself. This is not the Steve McMichael you’re used to seeing, this gaunt 63-year-old man propped up on an elevated chair in the corner of his kitchen and struggling with basic movement. It just doesn’t compute.

This isn’t the McMichael whom Chicago has known over the last 40 years as a Chicago Bears great, a rollicking presence wherever he goes, an entertainer who fills whatever room he’s in with his imposing stature, booming voice and larger-than-life personality.

Now McMichael, with his shoulders drooped and hair mussed, is craning his neck just so family friend Laurie Dimakos can spritz his face with water to refresh him. He slumps forward to wrap his lips around the long straw extending from his coffee mug.

This is no longer Steve McMichael, football warrior, a five-time NFL All-Pro who from 1981-93 played 191 regular-season games for the Bears and a dozen more in the playoffs, all in a row. Now he can barely trudge across the room to show off his new high-tech wheelchair, an advanced-hybrid model with both a “sip and puff” straw and head controls for steering.

 

This isn’t how anyone would ever have pictured McMichael, one of the beloved leaders and most colorful characters of the 1985 Bears, the only team in franchise history to win a Super Bowl. But here he is now in a vicious and unwinnable brawl against amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), often known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, the progressive nervous system disease that is disrupting his brain’s ability to communicate with his muscles.

A little more than three months after being formally diagnosed, McMichael has chosen to reveal his condition. He has lost in the ballpark of 50-60 pounds, now down near 200 and lighter than he was when he graduated from Freer High School in Texas in 1976.

 

He now needs his wife of 23 years, Misty, to feed him, help him use the bathroom and give him sponge baths.

He no longer can raise his arms or hold anything in his hands.

Full-time confinement in that wheelchair likely is just around the corner.

“I promise you,” McMichael says, “this epitaph that I’m going to have on me now? This ain’t ever how I envisioned this was going to end.”

 
 
PHOTOS

Steve McMichael diagnosed with ALS

AWC3DVGZDZAOZEKIWMSVK3TPQI.jpg

Steve McMichael, the former defensive tackle for the Super Bowl XX champion Chicago Bears, has been diagnosed with ALS.

(Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)
 
 
 
 

Among the reasons McMichael has chosen to offer a glimpse into his very intense battle with ALS: He wants the outside world to know the curtain has lowered on his time in the public eye.

There will be no more public appearances; no more performances with his band, “The Chicago Six”; no more on-air analysis of the Bears on ESPN-1000.

He never will sign another autograph. He has given his last show.

“I want everybody to realize why they’re no longer going to see me around,” McMichael says.

At some point, the disease is expected to further obstruct his breathing and could eventually steal his speech as well. Fathom that. Steve “Mongo” McMichael perhaps unable to talk one day?

“I’m pretty sure that’s the last thing that’s going to go,” Misty jokes. “Just to spite me.”

Unsurprisingly, the McMichaels still have their sense of humor. They’re also summoning incredible toughness and resolve to face each day as its own challenge. But taking on this disease is only going to get more difficult.

“I thought I was ready for anything,” McMichael says. “But man. This will sneak up on you like a cheap-shotting Green Bay Packer.”

‘This is a humbling thing, brother’

Last week, McMichael’s legs gave out in his bathroom. He took a spill and cracked a rib. Misty couldn’t pull him up off the floor and had to summon a neighbor for help.

Damn, this deterioration has been rapid.

Last autumn, when chronic tingling in McMichael’s arms continued to worsen, his concern elevated. Misty also noticed he was holding his silverware in an unconventional manner. “Started coming into a caveman grip,” she says.

For a long time, McMichael figured he was dealing with some sort of neck or spine issue stemming from his lengthy football career and subsequent five-year stint as a professional wrestler. But a September visit to a neurosurgeon at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota presented the first suggestion that he might be dealing with ALS.

The doctor there raised McMichael’s right arm and asked him to stop it from falling. The idea was to measure, on a scale of 1-10, how high McMichael could gain full control. Instead, his arm plummeted like an anvil.

“Doctor looked at the nurse (and said) ‘Zero!’ ” McMichael says. “That’s when he said, ‘I think this is about something else.’ ”

McMichael didn’t want to believe it. He sought multiple other opinions. On Jan. 7, doctors at Rush University Medical Center repeated the ALS diagnosis. That’s when it became official.

A neurologist at UIC Medical Center later surmised that the condition likely began setting in 36 months earlier.

No matter how much denial McMichael and his wife were in, eventually they had no choice but to face their reality. McMichael still can’t fully believe this is where fate has led him.

“What I used to be is the antithesis of what I am now,” he says. “This is a humbling thing, brother.”

Steve McMichael gets help from his wife Misty while eating lunch on April 22, 2021 at their Romeoville home.
Steve McMichael gets help from his wife Misty while eating lunch on April 22, 2021 at their Romeoville home. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)

The recent progression of degeneration through McMichael’s limbs has been jarring. First his right arm went dead, then the left.

Then his left leg began to weaken significantly. Now his right leg is following close behind.

“They call it Lou Gehrig’s disease. But I didn’t know that was a metaphor,” McMichael says. “Because it’s going to run the bases on you.”

McMichael still has some strength in his right leg, but that’s decreasing gradually too. The ALS is heading for home.

“It’s running the bases on me,” he says.

“And it’s running them quicker than we thought it would,” Misty says.

That leg weakness has been staggering.

“I know what it feels like to go in the weight room and do a set of three with 725 pounds on the squat rack,” McMichael says. “Now? When I get up and try to move? It feels like I’m doing 1,000 (bleeping) pounds. And it’s just exhausting straining that hard. That’s what my world is now.”

As McMichael ambles across his kitchen, almost toddler-like with his wobbly gait, he finds an opening for self deprecation.

“I’m a Super Bowl Shuffler now,” he says. “As long as I keep my legs stiff and shuffle along, I won’t go down.”

It hasn’t been easy becoming so immobile and needy so quickly. McMichael can’t emphasize enough how much he has admired and valued Misty’s ability to be a devoted caretaker through all this. Along with that, though, there’s a bit of embarrassment that can sometimes hit hard.

“I feel like a baby lying there whining,” he says. “ ‘Help me! Waaaaaa!’ ”

Misty says she regularly is having difficulty with her own neck and back. She also never fathomed having to properly fit her husband with an external catheter before bed every night. But this is just life now.

In the saddest moments, McMichael hates what he’s putting his wife and daughter through, and the sense of helplessness that comes along with that.

“I’m not the provider anymore,” he says. “I’m just one of the animals. I’m last in line behind the chihuahua. We’re both waiting in line to go to the bathroom.”

‘We scream. We holler. We cry’

The mental toll over the last four months has been significant. First, Steve and Misty had to work past their resistance to accepting the diagnosis. Then they had to deal with McMichael’s frustration, the kind that would come on suddenly when he tried to reach for something but realized he couldn’t.

On the bad days, the agitation can boil over.

Says Misty: “We scream. We holler. We cry.”

The tears have been frequent.

“A good cry helps me clear my nose out,” McMichael cracks.

Steve McMichael signs autographs for fans before the unveiling of the statues for Hall of Famers Water Payton and George S. Halas outside of Gate O at Soldier Field on Sept. 3, 2019.
Steve McMichael signs autographs for fans before the unveiling of the statues for Hall of Famers Water Payton and George S. Halas outside of Gate O at Soldier Field on Sept. 3, 2019. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)

The McMichaels also have had to begin envisioning the future, planning for survival with this ailment and the challenges it brings.

As much weight as McMichael has lost, he still is north of 200 pounds and difficult for Misty and their 13-year-old daughter, Macy, to move if he has fallen or otherwise needs help.

“I can’t pick his ass up by myself,” Misty says. “Macy and I managed to pick him up together one time. But if one of us is crying, we get weak, and now we need the neighbors.”

As much as anything else, Misty knows she has to find the family a new handicap-accessible home. Or a builder who can rapidly construct a handicap-accessible home. Amenities the family never would have thought about before — ramps, widened doorways, a roll-in shower, a toilet lift, track-lifting systems — suddenly are must-haves.

The McMichaels rent their current residence in Romeoville. As such, they are unable to make any extreme modifications or renovations.

“I know we need to move before his legs go out fully,” Misty says.

The clock is ticking.

“Calling all Bear Fan realtors,” McMichael says. “Mongo needs a handicap-equipped house.”

‘We’re all still in shock’

Dan Hampton and McMichael have been close friends for 40 years, Bears teammates for 10 seasons and buddies long after they both retired. Hampton hasn’t been able to wrap his brain around McMichael’s rapid decline.

“We’re all still in shock, a state of total disbelief,” Hampton says. “I look out my window and shake my head.

“I don’t know how many times I’ve looked at my wife and said, ‘I can’t believe this. I truly can’t believe this.’ ”

Steve "Mongo" McMichael performs with other members of "The Chicago 6" in Grant Park on July 25, 2019.
Steve "Mongo" McMichael performs with other members of "The Chicago 6" in Grant Park on July 25, 2019. (Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)
Hall of Fame Bears defensive lineman Dan Hampton performs with other members of "The Chicago 6" in Grant Park on July 25, 2019.
Hall of Fame Bears defensive lineman Dan Hampton performs with other members of "The Chicago 6" in Grant Park on July 25, 2019. (Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)

In 2013, when Hampton revived “The Chicago Six” band, he brought McMichael on board as a guitarist and vocalist. Now, Hampton thinks of the last show the group did — in September at the Centennial Park West Summer Concert in Orland Park.

“It’s hard to believe that last show is the last time Steve will ever sing with us,” Hampton says. “We’re heartsick about this.”

Around the time of that final show last fall, Hampton heard McMichael complaining about the tingling and occasional numbness in his arms. McMichael also shared how he was having abnormal difficulty even twisting the plastic tops off Coke bottles.

“We were concerned,” Hampton said. “But Steve had complained for years about a neck injury. And maybe I was deluded into thinking that was it. …. We all know the predominant attitude of a pro football player is that we’re indestructible and nothing can stop us. Obviously this is a cold slap of reality.”

As word of McMichael’s condition has circulated slowly and privately through the Bears fraternity in recent weeks, the shared shock has been pronounced.

Former Bears offensive linemen Tom Thayer and Jay Hilgenberg visited McMichael this month and were jarred to see him in the state he was in, thin and unsteady and so incredibly vulnerable.

“And you know what they did?” McMichael says. “They looked at me, then looked at each other and they got ready to double-team me. Just like, ‘I think we can take him now.’ ”

“Mentally,” Thayer says, “he is still fit as a fiddle. But then you see the other stage of what the disease does to you. That’s the hard part to take.”

‘There is no cure for this’

Thayer has made it a point in his time with McMichael to talk about the old days, the good times, to provide at least a temporary distraction from his current ailments. The old stories always provide a healthy dose of laughter and feel-good vibes.

“It’s more just trying to get access to the good times,” Thayer said, “instead of what he’s living through.”

So many of McMichael’s former Bears teammates still love him as much as always. Maybe more now. Dennis McKinnon has visited on multiple occasions to provide company and support.

Keith Van Horne, Richard Dent and Jim McMahon continue to reach out.

Gary Fencik and his wife are scheduled to pop in next week.

“There is no cure for this,” Fencik said. “It’s just a matter of not if but how long it takes before this (disease) really starts bringing its terrible consequences. And it has already begun.

“Steve has this. He’s acknowledging it. And there’s no reversal. This is going to be a cruel, cruel existence going forward. But he has a great attitude, and all we can do is hope he keeps that.”

 
 
PHOTOS

Steve 'Mongo' McMichael

Steve McMichael

Steve McMichael played in 191 games during 13 seasons with the Chicago Bears and retired second on the Bears' career ...

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(Bob Fila / Chicago Tribune)
 
 
 
 

Former Bears defensive back Leslie Frazier can’t even comprehend the idea that an athlete as burly and seemingly indestructible as McMichael is now so exposed.

“When I first heard about his condition, my heart dropped,” Frazier said. “You think of Steve as this strapping, physical specimen. He was a guy who would go hard all the time. And you never fathom he could be in this state. It’s been hard for me to wrap my mind around.”

McMichael always called Frazier ”Corn” because he came to the Bears from Alcorn State. And while the two couldn’t be more different personality-wise, they always had a bond as teammates and a respect for one another’s work ethic and purpose.

Frazier knows all the 1985 Bears will forever share that deeper connection, forever attached by their triumph and the fun they had on the way there.

“To this day,” Frazier said, “it’s still a brotherhood. And I really believe all the guys feel the same way. When one guy is hurting, everybody feels the pain. This has not been an easy thing to process … I still picture Steve in our locker room posing and kissing his muscles. He’d say, ‘Corn! I know you see these muscles. You may want them. But you can’t have ‘em.’ ”

‘A man needs to know he was loved’

Don’t think McMichael doesn’t feel the love. The visits from former teammates always bring laughter and wise-cracking and a chance to relive the glory days and talk ball.

But it goes deeper than that. The visit from Hilgenberg and Thayer reminded McMichael of how sincerely his Bears brothers care about him.

When Hampton stopped over two weeks ago, he built a ramp from the laundry room into the garage.

“That type of compassion renews your faith in humanity,” McMichael says. “It does. A man needs to know he was loved. So he can be proud of himself and know that he mattered.”

Former player Steve McMichael and his wife Misty by his wheelchair at their Romeoville home.
Former player Steve McMichael and his wife Misty by his wheelchair at their Romeoville home. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)

The McCaskey family has vowed to cover the cost of the fully loaded wheelchair McMichael needs.

“Bears fans should be proud of the way they’ve stepped up,” McMichael says. “In my entire life, I haven’t paid as much for a car as that thing is going to cost.”

McMichael remains eligible for substantial financial aid from the NFL. His application for funding from the league’s “88 Plan” — named in honor of Pro Football Hall of Famer John Mackey — is under review and should open the door for up to $144,000 annually for medical and custodial care. The plan provides assistance for former players diagnosed with ALS, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease and dementia.

That funding will help, no doubt.

“But I don’t have that yet,” Misty says. “And Steve is degenerating much quicker than we thought. So we have to start fundraising now.”

Misty has been floored by the cost of the medical bills and specialist visits and medications and estimates for what Steve’s long-term care will require. The itemized-expense list seems unending. Misty recently had to purchase a new Chrysler Pacifica, equipped with a mechanical ramp, to help Steve get in and out of the car in his wheelchair.

The family savings have eroded rapidly. They’re also house-hunting during a seller’s market when inventory disappears rapidly.

“It’s unbelievable how fast homes are going right now,” McMichael says. “It’s like people are (bleeping) looting toilet paper.”

A Go Fund Me page has been set up, a means, according to the site, “to help defray the mounting cost of Steve’s daily care and medical needs.”

This weekend, Obvious Shirts founder Joe Johnson will begin selling “Team Mongo” T-shirts on his popular website, promising to devote all proceeds to Steve and Misty. (Naturally, McMichael’s shirt will be personalized to read “Me Mongo.”)

Information on future fundraising events and additional “Team Mongo” gear can be found at the official “Team Mongo” website, www.TeamMongo76.com.

The McMichaels and their team also have reached out to the Team Gleason Foundation, established by former Saints safety Steve Gleason after his ALS diagnosis, hoping to receive assistance in eventually getting McMichael an augmentative communication device, a computerized method of speaking for those who lose their vocal ability.

That’s still impossible to comprehend. Steve McMichael without his booming voice, without that Texas drawl and emphatic inflection.

“I look at it like this,” McMichael says. “I’ve already said it all anyway.”

‘They know they’re playing for real’

Even as his body deteriorates and his muscles wither, McMichael vows to draw on an inner-strength and resilience that will help him and his family persevere. His desire to fight has smothered any temptation to surrender.

“That’s the ‘it’ they’re all looking for at all those scouting combines. That fight,” McMichael says. “You’re never going to stop bringing that.”

When Macy heard from one of her father’s doctors that the life expectancy of a patient with ALS averages around two to five years after onset, she interjected and told him they didn’t know what they were talking about.

“She’s a strong girl,” Misty says. “And she knows her mom is going to keep her daddy alive until she’s grown.

During a visit with the McMichaels earlier this month, Hampton came away thoroughly impressed by the sense of resolve Steve and Misty have found.

“I was struck by their ability to focus and face this with a no (B.S.) attitude. They know they’re playing for real.”

Hampton knows that response isn’t universal and shouldn’t be taken for granted.

“If I was to be afflicted with this? I don’t know. I really don’t,” he said. “I don’t know that I could chuckle or laugh. I’m just being honest. I’d be destroyed. But Steve has found a way to accept this and say, ‘This was the hand I was dealt.’ For that, you shake your head and say ‘Wow! What amazing courage.’ ”

McMichael sees it as a combination of perspective, perseverance and gratitude.

“I’m not in a depression, brother,” he says. “This disease came onto Lou Gehrig when he was still playing baseball. At least it waited until I was an old man. I’ve lived so long that I’ve seen and done things I want to forget.”

‘Hell yes, I would do it all over again’

McMichael has long taken great pride in his philosophical reflections and sharp one-liners, boasting that he combines the deep contemplations of Forrest Gump with the humorous invective of Don Rickles.

For years McMichael has joked that he should take all his musings and beliefs — “Mongoisms” — and fold them into a book or at least one of those one-a-day calendars.

“They flash across my mind like neon,” he jokes. “Why would I want to keep them? That just means there’s not enough room for the next one.”

Among his most recited pearls of wisdom: Every man lives, but not every man really lives.

To that point, McMichael always has had a profound appreciation for how football and his place on the Bears changed his life.

Two years ago, the Tribune named McMichael the 18th greatest Bears player of all time. That kind of recognition still means something to him. The Super Bowl triumph of the ’85 Bears, of course, tops his achievement list. He always will be remembered as a key figure on an iconic team.

 

The sport he loves did so much for him. It opened doors. Gave him a stage. Allowed him to be a showman. Best of all, it inspired him to test his limits and see how much greatness he could squeeze out of his talent.

So no, McMichael won’t allow himself to feel bitter toward football or question whether its brutality helped lead him to this current state. (A 2012 published study from the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology noted that NFL players with at least five years of experience in the league were four times more likely to die from ALS than those in the general public.)

Says McMichael: “One neurologist I saw suggested to me that ‘Maybe the damage you did to yourself opened the door for what’s happening (now).’ But there are other people who get this where it just opens the door itself and kicks their ass.”

More than two dozen former NFL players have come forward with their ALS diagnoses, a group that includes Gleason, Dwight Clark, O.J. Brigance, Kevin Turner, Wally Hilgenberg, Orlando Thomas and Tim Shaw. Former Raiders running back Steve Smith, now 56 years old, has been battling the disease since the summer of 2002. His wife, Chie, has now become one of Misty’s most trusted resources and confidantes.

Forever, McMichael has told anyone who would listen that the joy of his career and the passion it brought out of him was worth every last ache, pain and bruise, surgery and long-term debilitating setback. But that’s a question worth revisiting now that the brutality of ALS has taken over.

Would he still do it all over again knowing this misery was waiting?

“Hell yes, I would do it all over again,” McMichael says. “Because it’s that journey that’s the reward. It’s that climb and how hard it was to substantiate yourself as out of the ordinary. That kind of achievement isn’t just given to you.”

Not that McMichael has any say in turning back time or reversing his condition. At this point, ALS has wrested control of his life. And McMichael is the first to admit he doesn’t want the hordes of Bears fans and other admirers to have their lasting memories of him be as a fragile man on the decline, weak and confined to a wheelchair.

Sure, he’s going to miss the adoration and the chance to entertain.

“But the dancing chicken is ready to be entertained himself,” he says. “I want to see someone else on that hot plate dancing around.”

In a more solemn moment, McMichael uses his bottom teeth to bite his upper lip and nods. He has one last message for those who may soon be concerned about him and his family.

“Say a prayer,” he says. “Say a prayer.”

 

 

 

Edited by Hiphopopotamos
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To be honest, he may be better off if he goes quickly once it reaches a certain stage.  Losing the ability to control swallowing scares the hell out of me.  Thankfully every case is different, not everyone suffers through some of the worst potential issues.  But witnessing extended ALS and Parkinson's converted me to supporting euthanasia choice.

Best wishes to him and his family.

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torre

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A great one !   Thanks for posting.   Thoughts and prayers for Steve and his family.    

 

As a UT senior in 1979, McMichael anchored the front line of a defense that ranks among the best in school history. He had 13 tackles in that year’s win over Oklahoma, making 1978 Heisman Trophy winner Billy Sims his personal assignment. He caused 11 fumbles and had 30 sacks for the Longhorns. McMichael is a member of the Longhorn Hall of Honor, the Texas High School Sports Hall of Fame and the Chicagoland Sports Hall of Fame.

https://www.burntorangenation.com/2009/12/7/1189774/steve-mcmichael-tough-guys-get

 

 

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Damn.  I loved watching Bam Bam when I was a freshman.  He wasn't real big, but was freakishly strong and quick.  Watching him, and the rest of the defense, dominate Billy Sims in the 1979 oklahoma game is one of my great memories of Longhorn football.  He always seemed a bit superhuman to me.  Hopefully, with the rest of the time he has left on earth, he'll see how much he's loved.  Hook 'em, Bam Bam.

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Machinator

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Wishing the best for Steve and his family.

From The Athletic, a great article on McMichael and Dan Hampton from their days with Da Bears:

https://theathletic.com/1882388/2020/06/22/the-king-and-ming-dan-hampton-and-steve-mcmichael-were-the-bears-dynamic-duo/

The King and Ming: Dan Hampton and Steve McMichael were the Bears’ dynamic duo

Spoiler


Thirty-nine years ago, Bears scout Jim Parmer asked defensive lineman Dan Hampton for a favor. Could he pick up a free agent from the airport who was coming in for a tryout?

Hampton found Steve McMichael curbside at O’Hare.

By this time Hampton already had been an All-Pro after the Bears chose him with the fourth pick of the 1979 draft. He knew of McMichael but never met him. McMichael had been a third-round pick in New England who was cut because of nonconformity.

Hampton’s Bears teammate Brad Shearer had given him some background information. Shearer played with McMichael at the University of Texas and they met in a stairway in an Austin watering hole when Shearer was the big man on campus and McMichael was an incoming freshman. McMichael, on the step below Shearer, looked up at him and said, “I’m taking your job.”

Shearer and McMichael ended up playing next to one another and becoming allies. Shearer later named him the godfather to his daughter.

In the car, Hampton and McMichael talked about their mutual friend. Instead of dropping off McMichael at his hotel, Hampton drove to a bar in Highwood, The Screen Door.

There, they discovered they had much in common. Both were country boys from the south. Hampton had lost his father when he was 13. McMichael lost his stepfather, the only father he ever knew, when he was 19. Both had Native American blood in them. They both played in the Southwest Conference. Hampton was named the conference’s defensive player of the year in 1978 by the Houston Post while playing for Arkansas. McMichael won the award from David Campbell’s Texas Football Magazine in 1979.

They hung out all afternoon, and that night they went to a charity event at Lou Malnati’s. That’s where Hampton saw McMichael chug a pitcher of beer for the first time.

“I’m thinking, ‘Well, looks like he’s found the right spot,’” Hampton said.

Alone, each had been accomplished. They were college All-Americans who played on some of the best teams in the nation.

Together, though, they could become something more, something that no one had ever seen, and something no one has seen since.

“The King,” they called Hampton. Like Elvis.

“Ming the Merciless,” is the name Hampton gave McMichael, after the tyrant from Flash Gordon who ruled ruthlessly and without remorse.

If one image told the story of the Bears of the 1980s, it was the King and Ming, hands on hips, staring down offensive opponents between a play. They stood there regally, brothers in arms, bare arms, the twin pillars on which the great Bears teams of the 1980s were built.

They were mythic figures as much as football players — hell-raisers, gatekeepers, tone setters, torchbearers and vanquishers.

Hampton wore a neck roll and was all arms, legs and attitude. His wrists, hands and fingers were wrapped in white tape.

McMichael’s jersey stretched so tight across his chest that it looked like a number was missing between the 7 and 6.  He hiked up his pants just below his nipples and was forever tightening his belt. The pant legs reached only to the top of his knees, and he pulled his socks as high as possible so not all of the stripes were visible.

“It was to make my legs look as long as his,” McMichael said. “He looked like the dining room table, and I looked like the coffee table.”

At 6-foot-5, Hampton had three inches on McMichael. He was part defensive end, part defensive tackle. McMichael was pure defensive tackle.

Explosive strength was their calling card. Both could power clean 400 pounds, rare even in today’s game.

The King and Ming both were ferocious, relentless competitors. Hampton recalls a game in the early 1980s when the Lions were driving on the Bears. The runner was stopped in a pileup. Then he heard screaming. McMichael came out with the football. As Hampton patted McMichael on the back, the man he called Ming said, “I knew he’d let go when I grabbed his nuts.”

Even though they led a defense that literally barked, the King and Ming were all about discipline, technique and savvy. After every game, Hampton played back the tape of each play to find out what teammates did, but he never had to watch McMichael. He knew he was doing just what he was supposed to do.

They took as much pride in never allowing a “jump through” block to reach a linebacker as they did in putting a quarterback in the dirt. They embraced self-sacrifice, and then made sure the beneficiaries knew about it.

After every road game, the King and Ming took the exit row on the team charter. Everybody knew not to sit in the row in front of them, because they pushed those seats forward and created a man cave at 36,000 feet. They iced their knees, played bourré and blackjack, blasted Hank Williams, and enjoyed the liter of Crown Royal that always had a place in their carry-on.

A few rows in front of them sat middle linebacker Mike Singletary, known as Samurai. The banter went something like this.

McMichael: “Hey Samurai, looky here.”

Singletary: “Yes?”

McMichael: “You know why we have this ice on our knees, Hamp?”

Hampton: “Hey, you got to hold the jump through.”

McMichael: “Yeah, Singletary on the tackle. Singletary with another tackle. And another.”

Hampton: “Did they call your name Ming?”

McMichael: “Nope.”

Hampton: “Didn’t call mine either. But Singletary’s? Isn’t he wonderful? Look at those eyes.”

Even though they both did dirty work, they could rush the passer and they both did it similarly. They fired out with an arm under rip and then progressed with a slap counter.

The way they ran stunts gave them advantages that seemed almost cruel.

“Most guys, the ball is coming up to the line of scrimmage and you want to run a line stunt, you gotta look at ’em and use some fake word the offensive line doesn’t understand,” McMichael said. “Me and him just looked at each other. We got a symbiotic thing.”

In 1984 and ’88, Hampton played defensive tackle exclusively next to McMichael. Between them, they had 41 1/2 sacks.

“No two defensive tackles ever played it like that,” McMichael said.

Together, they helped the Bears set NFL records for sacks (72 in 1984), fewest yards allowed (3,863 in 1984), and fewest points allowed (187 in 1986). During the 10-year reign of the King and Ming, the Bears defense led the league in fewest yards allowed and fewest rushing yards allowed.

“Those two guys at the point of attack were as good as anything I’ve ever been around coaching or playing,” former teammate and current Redskins coach Ron Rivera said.

Ed O’Bradovich, the great Bears defensive lineman from the 1960s, became a mentor to the duo. After games, the three of them often had dinner along with former Bears legend Dick Butkus. O’Bradovich understood them like few others.

“They provided the heat and fire of that team,” he said. “There was nobody in the league who could block those two consistently. There is nobody in the league today like those two. I’ve been watching football since the 1950s, and they were the best one-two punch in the history of the game.”

Anyone who wanted to be a Bear in the 1980s had to do more than impress coach Mike Ditka. He had to impress the King and Ming.

In Neal Anderson’s rookie training camp in 1986, McMichael gave the first-round running back a hard time, yapping at him, tackling him more violently than he was supposed to, and giving him a little extra after the whistle. Anderson protested.  Eventually, Anderson had enough and took a swing at him, hitting him in the side of his helmet. The practice came to a halt, and everyone nervously waited for McMichael’s response.

McMichael stood there for a second eyeing Anderson.

“That’s what I wanted to know,” he said. “He’s not just gonna bark, he’s gonna bite. You’re gonna be all right, kid.”

It wasn’t just rookies who were tweaked by the King and Ming. Singletary said of all the players he called teammates, only Hampton challenged him. He did it all the time, and Singletary subsequently didn’t care for him during their careers. But when Singletary got the call telling him he had been inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the first teammate he shared the news with was Hampton.

Hampton thought quarterback Jim McMahon was soft. He told him as much, and he shared the opinion with the media.

When death threats were made against McMahon after he had been accused of calling the women of New Orleans “sluts,” most of his teammates kept their distance from him during an outdoor practice leading up to the Super Bowl. The King and Ming did not.

“Don’t worry about that death threat,” Hampton told him. “But if you don’t play well on Sunday, the two of us will kill you.”

When Rivera ran out to the field for his first start in 1986, he was a bit over-enthused. Jumping up and down, he tried to get his teammates fired up while they waited for the snap. Then Rivera noticed Hampton and McMichael paying no attention to him, calmly talking to each other. When he asked them what was up, he found their discussion was about a brunette and a blonde, but the point they were trying to make was about composure.

“Chico,” McMichael said, “the game ain’t even started. Calm the fuck down, son.”

He did as he was told.

“You had to be accepted by them,” he said. “You had to earn their respect. Everything went through them.”

Said Hampton, “He and I were the arbiters of who on the defense was able to join our club. That’s the way we ran the deal. It took a while for Richard (Dent) to get in, this guy, that guy.”

They ran the show from their locker suites at the end of the row at Halas Hall. They were given two lockers each, directly across from one another.

Outsiders didn’t get a pass either. When an NFL security man came to Halas Hall to address the team, he ranted about staying away from gambling, bars, and groupies. If they didn’t, he warned them, “Your ass is grass, and I’m the lawnmower.” Hampton heard enough, stood up from his seat in the front row, asked him who the hell he thought he was. No one, he said, would talk to the Bears that way.

“Come on guys,” he said, leading them out, “we’re not listening to this shit.”

It was the King and Ming who invented the Gatorade bath, dousing Ditka after the team won the NFC Central in 1984. It was McMichael who impaled a chair into a blackboard, and Hampton who smashed a projector the night before Super Bowl XX to put the Bears in a frenzy.

It was the two of them who arranged for both Ditka and defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan to be carried off the Superdome field after the game. And it was the two of them who raided Ditka’s private stash of cigars, wine and cognac when he was on medical leave with a heart attack after they heard his doctor say the coach should not smoke or drink.

Bears offensive linemen sometimes resented the two because they practiced harder than protocol suggests. What they didn’t know was offensive line coach Dick Stanfel often prodded them to “get after their asses today.” When the blockers complained to coaches, Ditka amped it up another notch, yelling, “OK then, make it all live!”

The pinky on his left hand is permanently curved like a banana. The middle finger is a dogleg right. On the other hand, the middle finger is hunched over, like the spine of an old man. The right pinky is shaped like a field hockey stick. None of them are as misshapen as the right ring finger, an ugly carrot even in this bunch.

Each of Hampton’s fingers was broken, torn apart and dislocated except one — the ring finger on his left hand. It is that finger which is the most important for a right-handed bass player. “The good Lord has been wonderfully judicious,” said Hampton, whose guitar is his passion. “On my right hand, all I need is my thumb.”

The exalted status that Hampton and McMichael enjoyed in the Bears locker room was neither given nor taken. It was earned. Painfully earned.

Hampton had 16 knee surgeries. Eighteen if you count two knee replacements. Every offseason from 1984 through the end of his career, he had one or two operations that left him on crutches for three months. There were several hand and finger surgeries. He played with a fractured vertebra, a fractured sternum and a left wrist that was broken five times.

“You gotta put more tape on it,” he said.

McMichael had eight knee surgeries. Neck surgery is coming. Between three bulging discs, torn ligaments in his right shoulder and elbow, and hand and finger injuries, the right side of his body is pretty useless these days.

“If he needed knee surgery and played on it, you think I’m gonna sit that game out because I needed surgery?” he said.

Those who were there never will forget the sight of the two of them side by side on training tables with furrowed brows, still fresh from the battle with dried blood on their torsos and helmet marks on the foreheads, wearing bags of ice like sacks of potatoes on all four knees. The aroma of victory cigars mixed with the smell of sweat, beer and Brown’s chicken, making everything right.

McMichael remembers Hampton being pinned at the bottom of a pile when the football came loose. All he could do was extend his arm to try to bring in the ball. “Do you reach your arm out there knowing it will get crushed?” McMichael said. “He did it. That takes some fuckin’ will, baby.”

McMichael once tried to enliven a listless locker room before a game by smashing his helmet into his face.

“The blood was trickling down,” Rivera said. “He licked it off, then said, ‘That’s right boys, I’m ready to play football.’”

Jim Steiner, who was the agent for both players, recalls a phone conversation with Hampton during his last training camp in which he sounded as if he were in so much pain that he wouldn’t be able to make it to the first game of the season, let alone the last. But counting the playoffs, he played 16 games that year.

Survival and supremacy rarely have blended as well. Hampton is one of only four Bears in team history who played games in three decades. McMichael played in 191 games for the Bears, a franchise record at the time.

They had their ways to get through it. The night before every game, the King and Ming met in the hotel bar for two Crown and Sevens. “We could get opioids, but I was never a big pill head, and neither was Dan,” McMichael said. “So a couple of drinks the night before the game was a pain killer, something to help you sleep.”

Then the next morning, each had their own pot of coffee at the team breakfast, and all they left were the grounds.

“Those guys were two of the toughest, grittiest guys I’ve ever been around,” Rivera said. “They had grit, true grit.”

When Hampton was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2002, he quoted John Wayne’s character in the movie “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” when talking about McMichael. “He’s the toughest man I ever met south of the Picketwire … next to me,” he said.

McMichael points to Hampton as the King walks in the door at Mongo McMichael’s in Romeoville.

“Look at him,” he said. “The older he gets, the more he looks like John Wayne.”

Or one of Wayne’s nemeses. Hampton is part Cherokee. His great, great, great grandfather George Washington Russell walked the Trail of Tears and settled in Oklahoma City, where he was born. McMichael says he has a tinge of Blackfoot blood in him.

“We both come from people who could live on the desert without water for days at a time,” Hampton said. “I do believe a lot of my ability to play through pain and injury, I was kind of equipped with that.”

They came off the snap like wild dogs on the scent of rabbit. But they didn’t stop when the quarterback lay bleeding. They kept going, to Mother’s on Division St., to Donisi’s in Platteville, to Pat O’Brien’s on Bourbon St., and points beyond.

“They both had a wild side to them which made them what they are,” Shearer said. “It was their edge.”

That edge was evident whether they were wearing spatted cleats or black ostrich-skin cowboy boots. Neither All-Pro blockers nor last calls could slow them.

McMichael rented a house a block from Halas Hall. He threw some memorable parties there that no one can clearly remember. After one such all-nighter, the two of them showed up to practice looking somewhat worn. That’s when Ditka started calling them “The Night Riders.”

One night as they rode from Chicago to Arkansas, McMichael pulled out a .44 Magnum and began shooting signs along the road.

WELCOME TO ARKANSAS

THE NATURAL STATE

Boom!

On one Fourth of July in Arkansas, McMichael used Hampton’s diving board as a launch for skyrockets and other fireworks.  The next day, the board had the consistency, color and smell of burnt toast.

On another night, Hampton was invited to get together with some good old boys in Arkansas. McMichael, who didn’t know anyone, came along. They got a few looks when McMichael stepped out of the Hampton’s Dually truck with a gallon of Crown Royal and a .45 in a holster.

“I’m a Longhorn,” he said. “Without him with me, I would have heard the banjo start playing.”

The King and Ming will tell you they never were in a bar fight. Most of their physical confrontations were of the boys-will-be-boys variety. Shearer and the King once used the hood of the King’s BMW as a wrestling mat. Steiner remembers them dangling him upside down by his ankles late one night.

They took particular delight in tormenting safety Gary Fencik. On more than one occasion, Fencik recalls being body slammed.

“One time Dan picked me up and threw me and I hit the wood floor pretty hard,” Fencik said. “Steve helped me up and turned to Dan and said, ‘Hey Hamp, you’re gonna hurt the little guy.’”

At about 2 one morning at the Silver Dollar in Highwood, Fencik pointed out that if he were as big as those two, he would be capable of doing to them what they had done to him in the past. With that, they dragged him by his feet out of the bar and around the asphalt parking lot until he was a bloody mess.

“You learned not to shoot your mouth off too often with those guys,” Fencik said.

When Rivera was a rookie, Ryan told him he was in charge of his elder Hampton, who Ryan called “Big Rook.”

“He said, ‘Chico, when you go out with Big Rook, you’re in charge,’” Rivera said. “‘If I find out he got in trouble and you were there, it’s gonna be your ass.’ So whenever I was with him, I kept one eye on him.”

It was almost impossible not to keep an eye on him.

“Dan’s energy would sweep up everybody,” former Bears defensive end Trace Armstrong said. “If you went out with Dan, it was going to be a big night. Everybody in the city knew who he was. He was a giant, good-looking guy with charisma and a ton of presence.”

Curfews could present more significant challenges than many offensive linemen for the duo. Once during training camp at Lake Forest College, they headed to The Lantern after their meeting ended at 9:15 p.m. They raced back to make the 11 p.m. curfew. Hampton decided to take a shortcut on campus and drive off the street and onto walking and biking paths. As they tore through the college, they saw Stanfel with a flashlight. The King steered straight at the old offensive lineman, who shuffled his feet and lunged left and right like a good blocker would.

The next day at practice, they complimented him on his quickness and technique, which might have influenced Stanfel’s decision to let them get away with their tardiness.

It was the Chicago version of North Dallas Forty.

The King and Ming were many things to the other — battle buddies, running partners, co-conspirators, soul mates.

As is the case with most relationships, theirs had ebbs and flows.

When he came to the Bears, McMichael was just trying to prove he belonged. By the post-Super Bowl years, he had established himself as one of the best defensive linemen in the game, a man who should have taken a back seat to no one.

He had 95 sacks in his career. The only pure defensive tackles in history with more are Hall of Famers John Randle with 137 1/2 and Warren Sapp with 96 1/2.  Neither Randle nor Sapp ever had to concern themselves with keeping blockers off linebackers. Armstrong, who was teammates with nine Hall of Famers in his career, considers McMichael the best player and pro he ever lined up with.

The King, however, usually stood between Ming and the spotlight.

Early on, McMichael had hired Steiner as his agent on Hampton’s recommendation. But he cut ties with Steiner in the late ’80s.  Steiner said it was partially because McMichael thought he spent too much time with Hampton.

“Steve had grown,” Hampton said. “For a while, people kind of considered him as Robin and I was Batman. Now he thought he was Superman. He didn’t want to be known as the sidekick. He wanted to be his own guy. The bottom line is we still played excellent football together side by side. We knew that together we had more power and ability to affect things positively.”

When the team honored Hampton before his final regular-season practice, it was McMichael who gave the speech.

“I don’t know why we’re doing this, but this is for you,” he said with his trademark sarcasm as Ditka drove up in an orange and blue golf cart with Hampton’s number 99 on the hood. The King choked up.

After football, McMichael reached the height of his celebrity traveling the country hitting oily men on their platinum blonde heads with a steel briefcase. He even had his own action figure.

When wrestling ran its course, he returned to the southwest suburbs of Chicago, a short drive from where Hampton lived.

Seven years ago, Hampton wanted to bring back a new version of The Chicago 6, which had its first run in the late ’80s.

“The first person I thought of was Steve because he’s got a good baritone voice,” he said.

The King and Ming first sang together publicly in the late 1980s at the town fair in Platteville during training camp.

“The band was so shitty we had to get up there and do something about it,” McMichael said. They livened up the fair with, “Up Against the Wall Redneck Mother.”

These days, the duo harmonize on songs like “Suspicious Minds,” “Gimme Three Steps,” and “Courtesy Of The Red White And Blue.”

“You have to work on it and develop harmony,” Hampton said. “It’s just like back in the day, we do it over and over and over again.”

They have played about 120 gigs together. Not long ago, they practiced in Hampton’s driveway, mixing work with laughs and cold beverages.

What remains after all the songs, the sacks, the triumphs, the losses, the ice bags, the empties, and the roguery?  Appreciation, respect, and gratitude.

“Do you remember what Brad Pitt said to Leonardo DiCaprio at the Oscars when he won for best supporting actor earlier this year?” McMichael said. “I’ll ride your coattails anytime, pal. If I was on a team without him, I would have sucked on that double team every play.”

McMichael, of course, drew his share of double teams as well.

The King and Ming. They completed one other.

McMichael punctuates many of his statements with the word “brother.” But it means something different when he is talking to Hampton. In his book “Steve McMichael’s Tales from the Chicago Bears Sideline,” he called Hampton his big brother and his best friend in the game.

“He still is like my big brother,” he said. “You might have problems like any family. But it’s been like having a big brother in the school ground, helping you, directing you, watching out for you.”

Hampton, who is less than one month older than McMichael at 62, never saw him as his little brother.

“It was like we were contemporaries,” he said. “That’s the kind of respect I had for him. That’s why I said he’s the toughest man south of the Picketwire next to me. What John Wayne was saying about Liberty Valance was they were two of a kind.”

Like many blood brothers, they have an unconditional, enduring commitment. They understand one another in a way few others could. They speak each other’s language.

And that’s what made them more than just two defensive linemen who lined up next to one another. “If you look at a guy like he’s your brother and you will sacrifice yourself for him, that’s when everything works,” McMichael said.

With the King and Ming, it’s always been about the power of two.

 

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Nice Guy Eddie

Nice Guy Eddie 13,725

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Sad story. I know I would do if I was diagnosed and it progressed. A friend of mine had ALS. He was the type that never met a stranger and was the life of the party. ALS first took his speech and ability to eat/drink. It was tough to watch.

I know there are some promising therapies that appear to slow it.

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Nuge

Nuge 2,031

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I know its horrible to say but I'd probably really consider suicide.  If only to avoid the financial pit that the medical therapies would put us in.  ALS is one of the few things in life that scares the shit out of me.

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Hook1997

Hook1997 5,509

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1 hour ago, Machinator said:

Wishing the best for Steve and his family.

From The Athletic, a great article on McMichael and Dan Hampton from their days with Da Bears:

https://theathletic.com/1882388/2020/06/22/the-king-and-ming-dan-hampton-and-steve-mcmichael-were-the-bears-dynamic-duo/

The King and Ming: Dan Hampton and Steve McMichael were the Bears’ dynamic duo

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Thirty-nine years ago, Bears scout Jim Parmer asked defensive lineman Dan Hampton for a favor. Could he pick up a free agent from the airport who was coming in for a tryout?

Hampton found Steve McMichael curbside at O’Hare.

By this time Hampton already had been an All-Pro after the Bears chose him with the fourth pick of the 1979 draft. He knew of McMichael but never met him. McMichael had been a third-round pick in New England who was cut because of nonconformity.

Hampton’s Bears teammate Brad Shearer had given him some background information. Shearer played with McMichael at the University of Texas and they met in a stairway in an Austin watering hole when Shearer was the big man on campus and McMichael was an incoming freshman. McMichael, on the step below Shearer, looked up at him and said, “I’m taking your job.”

Shearer and McMichael ended up playing next to one another and becoming allies. Shearer later named him the godfather to his daughter.

In the car, Hampton and McMichael talked about their mutual friend. Instead of dropping off McMichael at his hotel, Hampton drove to a bar in Highwood, The Screen Door.

There, they discovered they had much in common. Both were country boys from the south. Hampton had lost his father when he was 13. McMichael lost his stepfather, the only father he ever knew, when he was 19. Both had Native American blood in them. They both played in the Southwest Conference. Hampton was named the conference’s defensive player of the year in 1978 by the Houston Post while playing for Arkansas. McMichael won the award from David Campbell’s Texas Football Magazine in 1979.

They hung out all afternoon, and that night they went to a charity event at Lou Malnati’s. That’s where Hampton saw McMichael chug a pitcher of beer for the first time.

“I’m thinking, ‘Well, looks like he’s found the right spot,’” Hampton said.

Alone, each had been accomplished. They were college All-Americans who played on some of the best teams in the nation.

Together, though, they could become something more, something that no one had ever seen, and something no one has seen since.

“The King,” they called Hampton. Like Elvis.

“Ming the Merciless,” is the name Hampton gave McMichael, after the tyrant from Flash Gordon who ruled ruthlessly and without remorse.

If one image told the story of the Bears of the 1980s, it was the King and Ming, hands on hips, staring down offensive opponents between a play. They stood there regally, brothers in arms, bare arms, the twin pillars on which the great Bears teams of the 1980s were built.

They were mythic figures as much as football players — hell-raisers, gatekeepers, tone setters, torchbearers and vanquishers.

Hampton wore a neck roll and was all arms, legs and attitude. His wrists, hands and fingers were wrapped in white tape.

McMichael’s jersey stretched so tight across his chest that it looked like a number was missing between the 7 and 6.  He hiked up his pants just below his nipples and was forever tightening his belt. The pant legs reached only to the top of his knees, and he pulled his socks as high as possible so not all of the stripes were visible.

“It was to make my legs look as long as his,” McMichael said. “He looked like the dining room table, and I looked like the coffee table.”

At 6-foot-5, Hampton had three inches on McMichael. He was part defensive end, part defensive tackle. McMichael was pure defensive tackle.

Explosive strength was their calling card. Both could power clean 400 pounds, rare even in today’s game.

The King and Ming both were ferocious, relentless competitors. Hampton recalls a game in the early 1980s when the Lions were driving on the Bears. The runner was stopped in a pileup. Then he heard screaming. McMichael came out with the football. As Hampton patted McMichael on the back, the man he called Ming said, “I knew he’d let go when I grabbed his nuts.”

Even though they led a defense that literally barked, the King and Ming were all about discipline, technique and savvy. After every game, Hampton played back the tape of each play to find out what teammates did, but he never had to watch McMichael. He knew he was doing just what he was supposed to do.

They took as much pride in never allowing a “jump through” block to reach a linebacker as they did in putting a quarterback in the dirt. They embraced self-sacrifice, and then made sure the beneficiaries knew about it.

After every road game, the King and Ming took the exit row on the team charter. Everybody knew not to sit in the row in front of them, because they pushed those seats forward and created a man cave at 36,000 feet. They iced their knees, played bourré and blackjack, blasted Hank Williams, and enjoyed the liter of Crown Royal that always had a place in their carry-on.

A few rows in front of them sat middle linebacker Mike Singletary, known as Samurai. The banter went something like this.

McMichael: “Hey Samurai, looky here.”

Singletary: “Yes?”

McMichael: “You know why we have this ice on our knees, Hamp?”

Hampton: “Hey, you got to hold the jump through.”

McMichael: “Yeah, Singletary on the tackle. Singletary with another tackle. And another.”

Hampton: “Did they call your name Ming?”

McMichael: “Nope.”

Hampton: “Didn’t call mine either. But Singletary’s? Isn’t he wonderful? Look at those eyes.”

Even though they both did dirty work, they could rush the passer and they both did it similarly. They fired out with an arm under rip and then progressed with a slap counter.

The way they ran stunts gave them advantages that seemed almost cruel.

“Most guys, the ball is coming up to the line of scrimmage and you want to run a line stunt, you gotta look at ’em and use some fake word the offensive line doesn’t understand,” McMichael said. “Me and him just looked at each other. We got a symbiotic thing.”

In 1984 and ’88, Hampton played defensive tackle exclusively next to McMichael. Between them, they had 41 1/2 sacks.

“No two defensive tackles ever played it like that,” McMichael said.

Together, they helped the Bears set NFL records for sacks (72 in 1984), fewest yards allowed (3,863 in 1984), and fewest points allowed (187 in 1986). During the 10-year reign of the King and Ming, the Bears defense led the league in fewest yards allowed and fewest rushing yards allowed.

“Those two guys at the point of attack were as good as anything I’ve ever been around coaching or playing,” former teammate and current Redskins coach Ron Rivera said.

Ed O’Bradovich, the great Bears defensive lineman from the 1960s, became a mentor to the duo. After games, the three of them often had dinner along with former Bears legend Dick Butkus. O’Bradovich understood them like few others.

“They provided the heat and fire of that team,” he said. “There was nobody in the league who could block those two consistently. There is nobody in the league today like those two. I’ve been watching football since the 1950s, and they were the best one-two punch in the history of the game.”

Anyone who wanted to be a Bear in the 1980s had to do more than impress coach Mike Ditka. He had to impress the King and Ming.

In Neal Anderson’s rookie training camp in 1986, McMichael gave the first-round running back a hard time, yapping at him, tackling him more violently than he was supposed to, and giving him a little extra after the whistle. Anderson protested.  Eventually, Anderson had enough and took a swing at him, hitting him in the side of his helmet. The practice came to a halt, and everyone nervously waited for McMichael’s response.

McMichael stood there for a second eyeing Anderson.

“That’s what I wanted to know,” he said. “He’s not just gonna bark, he’s gonna bite. You’re gonna be all right, kid.”

It wasn’t just rookies who were tweaked by the King and Ming. Singletary said of all the players he called teammates, only Hampton challenged him. He did it all the time, and Singletary subsequently didn’t care for him during their careers. But when Singletary got the call telling him he had been inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the first teammate he shared the news with was Hampton.

Hampton thought quarterback Jim McMahon was soft. He told him as much, and he shared the opinion with the media.

When death threats were made against McMahon after he had been accused of calling the women of New Orleans “sluts,” most of his teammates kept their distance from him during an outdoor practice leading up to the Super Bowl. The King and Ming did not.

“Don’t worry about that death threat,” Hampton told him. “But if you don’t play well on Sunday, the two of us will kill you.”

When Rivera ran out to the field for his first start in 1986, he was a bit over-enthused. Jumping up and down, he tried to get his teammates fired up while they waited for the snap. Then Rivera noticed Hampton and McMichael paying no attention to him, calmly talking to each other. When he asked them what was up, he found their discussion was about a brunette and a blonde, but the point they were trying to make was about composure.

“Chico,” McMichael said, “the game ain’t even started. Calm the fuck down, son.”

He did as he was told.

“You had to be accepted by them,” he said. “You had to earn their respect. Everything went through them.”

Said Hampton, “He and I were the arbiters of who on the defense was able to join our club. That’s the way we ran the deal. It took a while for Richard (Dent) to get in, this guy, that guy.”

They ran the show from their locker suites at the end of the row at Halas Hall. They were given two lockers each, directly across from one another.

Outsiders didn’t get a pass either. When an NFL security man came to Halas Hall to address the team, he ranted about staying away from gambling, bars, and groupies. If they didn’t, he warned them, “Your ass is grass, and I’m the lawnmower.” Hampton heard enough, stood up from his seat in the front row, asked him who the hell he thought he was. No one, he said, would talk to the Bears that way.

“Come on guys,” he said, leading them out, “we’re not listening to this shit.”

It was the King and Ming who invented the Gatorade bath, dousing Ditka after the team won the NFC Central in 1984. It was McMichael who impaled a chair into a blackboard, and Hampton who smashed a projector the night before Super Bowl XX to put the Bears in a frenzy.

It was the two of them who arranged for both Ditka and defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan to be carried off the Superdome field after the game. And it was the two of them who raided Ditka’s private stash of cigars, wine and cognac when he was on medical leave with a heart attack after they heard his doctor say the coach should not smoke or drink.

Bears offensive linemen sometimes resented the two because they practiced harder than protocol suggests. What they didn’t know was offensive line coach Dick Stanfel often prodded them to “get after their asses today.” When the blockers complained to coaches, Ditka amped it up another notch, yelling, “OK then, make it all live!”

The pinky on his left hand is permanently curved like a banana. The middle finger is a dogleg right. On the other hand, the middle finger is hunched over, like the spine of an old man. The right pinky is shaped like a field hockey stick. None of them are as misshapen as the right ring finger, an ugly carrot even in this bunch.

Each of Hampton’s fingers was broken, torn apart and dislocated except one — the ring finger on his left hand. It is that finger which is the most important for a right-handed bass player. “The good Lord has been wonderfully judicious,” said Hampton, whose guitar is his passion. “On my right hand, all I need is my thumb.”

The exalted status that Hampton and McMichael enjoyed in the Bears locker room was neither given nor taken. It was earned. Painfully earned.

Hampton had 16 knee surgeries. Eighteen if you count two knee replacements. Every offseason from 1984 through the end of his career, he had one or two operations that left him on crutches for three months. There were several hand and finger surgeries. He played with a fractured vertebra, a fractured sternum and a left wrist that was broken five times.

“You gotta put more tape on it,” he said.

McMichael had eight knee surgeries. Neck surgery is coming. Between three bulging discs, torn ligaments in his right shoulder and elbow, and hand and finger injuries, the right side of his body is pretty useless these days.

“If he needed knee surgery and played on it, you think I’m gonna sit that game out because I needed surgery?” he said.

Those who were there never will forget the sight of the two of them side by side on training tables with furrowed brows, still fresh from the battle with dried blood on their torsos and helmet marks on the foreheads, wearing bags of ice like sacks of potatoes on all four knees. The aroma of victory cigars mixed with the smell of sweat, beer and Brown’s chicken, making everything right.

McMichael remembers Hampton being pinned at the bottom of a pile when the football came loose. All he could do was extend his arm to try to bring in the ball. “Do you reach your arm out there knowing it will get crushed?” McMichael said. “He did it. That takes some fuckin’ will, baby.”

McMichael once tried to enliven a listless locker room before a game by smashing his helmet into his face.

“The blood was trickling down,” Rivera said. “He licked it off, then said, ‘That’s right boys, I’m ready to play football.’”

Jim Steiner, who was the agent for both players, recalls a phone conversation with Hampton during his last training camp in which he sounded as if he were in so much pain that he wouldn’t be able to make it to the first game of the season, let alone the last. But counting the playoffs, he played 16 games that year.

Survival and supremacy rarely have blended as well. Hampton is one of only four Bears in team history who played games in three decades. McMichael played in 191 games for the Bears, a franchise record at the time.

They had their ways to get through it. The night before every game, the King and Ming met in the hotel bar for two Crown and Sevens. “We could get opioids, but I was never a big pill head, and neither was Dan,” McMichael said. “So a couple of drinks the night before the game was a pain killer, something to help you sleep.”

Then the next morning, each had their own pot of coffee at the team breakfast, and all they left were the grounds.

“Those guys were two of the toughest, grittiest guys I’ve ever been around,” Rivera said. “They had grit, true grit.”

When Hampton was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2002, he quoted John Wayne’s character in the movie “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” when talking about McMichael. “He’s the toughest man I ever met south of the Picketwire … next to me,” he said.

McMichael points to Hampton as the King walks in the door at Mongo McMichael’s in Romeoville.

“Look at him,” he said. “The older he gets, the more he looks like John Wayne.”

Or one of Wayne’s nemeses. Hampton is part Cherokee. His great, great, great grandfather George Washington Russell walked the Trail of Tears and settled in Oklahoma City, where he was born. McMichael says he has a tinge of Blackfoot blood in him.

“We both come from people who could live on the desert without water for days at a time,” Hampton said. “I do believe a lot of my ability to play through pain and injury, I was kind of equipped with that.”

They came off the snap like wild dogs on the scent of rabbit. But they didn’t stop when the quarterback lay bleeding. They kept going, to Mother’s on Division St., to Donisi’s in Platteville, to Pat O’Brien’s on Bourbon St., and points beyond.

“They both had a wild side to them which made them what they are,” Shearer said. “It was their edge.”

That edge was evident whether they were wearing spatted cleats or black ostrich-skin cowboy boots. Neither All-Pro blockers nor last calls could slow them.

McMichael rented a house a block from Halas Hall. He threw some memorable parties there that no one can clearly remember. After one such all-nighter, the two of them showed up to practice looking somewhat worn. That’s when Ditka started calling them “The Night Riders.”

One night as they rode from Chicago to Arkansas, McMichael pulled out a .44 Magnum and began shooting signs along the road.

WELCOME TO ARKANSAS

THE NATURAL STATE

Boom!

On one Fourth of July in Arkansas, McMichael used Hampton’s diving board as a launch for skyrockets and other fireworks.  The next day, the board had the consistency, color and smell of burnt toast.

On another night, Hampton was invited to get together with some good old boys in Arkansas. McMichael, who didn’t know anyone, came along. They got a few looks when McMichael stepped out of the Hampton’s Dually truck with a gallon of Crown Royal and a .45 in a holster.

“I’m a Longhorn,” he said. “Without him with me, I would have heard the banjo start playing.”

The King and Ming will tell you they never were in a bar fight. Most of their physical confrontations were of the boys-will-be-boys variety. Shearer and the King once used the hood of the King’s BMW as a wrestling mat. Steiner remembers them dangling him upside down by his ankles late one night.

They took particular delight in tormenting safety Gary Fencik. On more than one occasion, Fencik recalls being body slammed.

“One time Dan picked me up and threw me and I hit the wood floor pretty hard,” Fencik said. “Steve helped me up and turned to Dan and said, ‘Hey Hamp, you’re gonna hurt the little guy.’”

At about 2 one morning at the Silver Dollar in Highwood, Fencik pointed out that if he were as big as those two, he would be capable of doing to them what they had done to him in the past. With that, they dragged him by his feet out of the bar and around the asphalt parking lot until he was a bloody mess.

“You learned not to shoot your mouth off too often with those guys,” Fencik said.

When Rivera was a rookie, Ryan told him he was in charge of his elder Hampton, who Ryan called “Big Rook.”

“He said, ‘Chico, when you go out with Big Rook, you’re in charge,’” Rivera said. “‘If I find out he got in trouble and you were there, it’s gonna be your ass.’ So whenever I was with him, I kept one eye on him.”

It was almost impossible not to keep an eye on him.

“Dan’s energy would sweep up everybody,” former Bears defensive end Trace Armstrong said. “If you went out with Dan, it was going to be a big night. Everybody in the city knew who he was. He was a giant, good-looking guy with charisma and a ton of presence.”

Curfews could present more significant challenges than many offensive linemen for the duo. Once during training camp at Lake Forest College, they headed to The Lantern after their meeting ended at 9:15 p.m. They raced back to make the 11 p.m. curfew. Hampton decided to take a shortcut on campus and drive off the street and onto walking and biking paths. As they tore through the college, they saw Stanfel with a flashlight. The King steered straight at the old offensive lineman, who shuffled his feet and lunged left and right like a good blocker would.

The next day at practice, they complimented him on his quickness and technique, which might have influenced Stanfel’s decision to let them get away with their tardiness.

It was the Chicago version of North Dallas Forty.

The King and Ming were many things to the other — battle buddies, running partners, co-conspirators, soul mates.

As is the case with most relationships, theirs had ebbs and flows.

When he came to the Bears, McMichael was just trying to prove he belonged. By the post-Super Bowl years, he had established himself as one of the best defensive linemen in the game, a man who should have taken a back seat to no one.

He had 95 sacks in his career. The only pure defensive tackles in history with more are Hall of Famers John Randle with 137 1/2 and Warren Sapp with 96 1/2.  Neither Randle nor Sapp ever had to concern themselves with keeping blockers off linebackers. Armstrong, who was teammates with nine Hall of Famers in his career, considers McMichael the best player and pro he ever lined up with.

The King, however, usually stood between Ming and the spotlight.

Early on, McMichael had hired Steiner as his agent on Hampton’s recommendation. But he cut ties with Steiner in the late ’80s.  Steiner said it was partially because McMichael thought he spent too much time with Hampton.

“Steve had grown,” Hampton said. “For a while, people kind of considered him as Robin and I was Batman. Now he thought he was Superman. He didn’t want to be known as the sidekick. He wanted to be his own guy. The bottom line is we still played excellent football together side by side. We knew that together we had more power and ability to affect things positively.”

When the team honored Hampton before his final regular-season practice, it was McMichael who gave the speech.

“I don’t know why we’re doing this, but this is for you,” he said with his trademark sarcasm as Ditka drove up in an orange and blue golf cart with Hampton’s number 99 on the hood. The King choked up.

After football, McMichael reached the height of his celebrity traveling the country hitting oily men on their platinum blonde heads with a steel briefcase. He even had his own action figure.

When wrestling ran its course, he returned to the southwest suburbs of Chicago, a short drive from where Hampton lived.

Seven years ago, Hampton wanted to bring back a new version of The Chicago 6, which had its first run in the late ’80s.

“The first person I thought of was Steve because he’s got a good baritone voice,” he said.

The King and Ming first sang together publicly in the late 1980s at the town fair in Platteville during training camp.

“The band was so shitty we had to get up there and do something about it,” McMichael said. They livened up the fair with, “Up Against the Wall Redneck Mother.”

These days, the duo harmonize on songs like “Suspicious Minds,” “Gimme Three Steps,” and “Courtesy Of The Red White And Blue.”

“You have to work on it and develop harmony,” Hampton said. “It’s just like back in the day, we do it over and over and over again.”

They have played about 120 gigs together. Not long ago, they practiced in Hampton’s driveway, mixing work with laughs and cold beverages.

What remains after all the songs, the sacks, the triumphs, the losses, the ice bags, the empties, and the roguery?  Appreciation, respect, and gratitude.

“Do you remember what Brad Pitt said to Leonardo DiCaprio at the Oscars when he won for best supporting actor earlier this year?” McMichael said. “I’ll ride your coattails anytime, pal. If I was on a team without him, I would have sucked on that double team every play.”

McMichael, of course, drew his share of double teams as well.

The King and Ming. They completed one other.

McMichael punctuates many of his statements with the word “brother.” But it means something different when he is talking to Hampton. In his book “Steve McMichael’s Tales from the Chicago Bears Sideline,” he called Hampton his big brother and his best friend in the game.

“He still is like my big brother,” he said. “You might have problems like any family. But it’s been like having a big brother in the school ground, helping you, directing you, watching out for you.”

Hampton, who is less than one month older than McMichael at 62, never saw him as his little brother.

“It was like we were contemporaries,” he said. “That’s the kind of respect I had for him. That’s why I said he’s the toughest man south of the Picketwire next to me. What John Wayne was saying about Liberty Valance was they were two of a kind.”

Like many blood brothers, they have an unconditional, enduring commitment. They understand one another in a way few others could. They speak each other’s language.

And that’s what made them more than just two defensive linemen who lined up next to one another. “If you look at a guy like he’s your brother and you will sacrifice yourself for him, that’s when everything works,” McMichael said.

With the King and Ming, it’s always been about the power of two.

 

That was a great read, thanks. 

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C-Man

C-Man 27,777

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Sad deal. What a horrific disease. My first cousin's husband is battling ALS right now. He's a former commodities broker in NY and was playing adult baseball up until a couple of years ago. He is a total bad ass. They've tried everything -- and spared no expense. Hell, they went to the "miracles" church in France. We went to the Notre Dame-Clemson semifinal game at JerryWorld with him and my cousin a couple years back and his speech was starting to slur. (He's a huge ND alum and my wife went to Clemson.) He's not doing well at all now. Truly sad.

McMichael was a hoss at UT and in Chicago. I wouldn't wish ALS on my worst enemy.

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Goredho

Goredho 17,649

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You know, I thought the video of him on the Tribune link was inspiring.  ALS is going to win in the end, but damn if he’s going to let it take his courage and sense of humor.  If I ever have to face something like that, I hope I can be as much a badass about it as Mongo.

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ImissWallyPryor

ImissWallyPryor 9,046

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Damn, one of the Freer Twins. I was a freshman his last year at Texas.

When the 1980 Cactus came out, there was virtually no mention of All-American Steve McMichael in the football section, but there were plenty of action shots of his backup, sophomore Kenneth Sims. I knew right then that Bam Bam had cucked some soy boy on the Cactus staff.  

  • Hook 'Em 1
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ImissWallyPryor

ImissWallyPryor 9,046

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On 4/23/2021 at 10:34 AM, Hiphopopotamos said:

This is devastating.  As a Chicago native who grew up with the great Bears teams in the 80's - Steve McMichael was my football hero before I even knew Texas football existed.

McMichael was an All-American DT for Texas before being drafted by New England.  He was cut before his second season and ended up being signed by the Bears.  He spent the next 13 years in Chicago - terrorizing QB's as part of Buddy Ryan's '46' defense.  He was a huge personality who went into Pro-wrestling after finishing his football career.

If you're into that sort of thing - say a prayer for Mongo.

Also - consider donating to his gofundme.  https://gofund.me/526d272e

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

Steve ‘Mongo’ McMichael is suddenly in a vicious fight against ALS. ‘This ain’t ever how I envisioned this was going to end,’ the Chicago Bears great says.

CHICAGO TRIBUNE |
APR 23, 2021 AT 10:14 AM
 
 
 
 
Chicago Bears great Steve McMichael is now in a vicious and unwinnable fight with ALS, the progressive nervous system disease.

 

 

Brace yourself. This is not the Steve McMichael you’re used to seeing, this gaunt 63-year-old man propped up on an elevated chair in the corner of his kitchen and struggling with basic movement. It just doesn’t compute.

This isn’t the McMichael whom Chicago has known over the last 40 years as a Chicago Bears great, a rollicking presence wherever he goes, an entertainer who fills whatever room he’s in with his imposing stature, booming voice and larger-than-life personality.

Now McMichael, with his shoulders drooped and hair mussed, is craning his neck just so family friend Laurie Dimakos can spritz his face with water to refresh him. He slumps forward to wrap his lips around the long straw extending from his coffee mug.

This is no longer Steve McMichael, football warrior, a five-time NFL All-Pro who from 1981-93 played 191 regular-season games for the Bears and a dozen more in the playoffs, all in a row. Now he can barely trudge across the room to show off his new high-tech wheelchair, an advanced-hybrid model with both a “sip and puff” straw and head controls for steering.

 

This isn’t how anyone would ever have pictured McMichael, one of the beloved leaders and most colorful characters of the 1985 Bears, the only team in franchise history to win a Super Bowl. But here he is now in a vicious and unwinnable brawl against amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), often known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, the progressive nervous system disease that is disrupting his brain’s ability to communicate with his muscles.

A little more than three months after being formally diagnosed, McMichael has chosen to reveal his condition. He has lost in the ballpark of 50-60 pounds, now down near 200 and lighter than he was when he graduated from Freer High School in Texas in 1976.

 

He now needs his wife of 23 years, Misty, to feed him, help him use the bathroom and give him sponge baths.

He no longer can raise his arms or hold anything in his hands.

Full-time confinement in that wheelchair likely is just around the corner.

“I promise you,” McMichael says, “this epitaph that I’m going to have on me now? This ain’t ever how I envisioned this was going to end.”

 
 
PHOTOS

Steve McMichael diagnosed with ALS

AWC3DVGZDZAOZEKIWMSVK3TPQI.jpg

Steve McMichael, the former defensive tackle for the Super Bowl XX champion Chicago Bears, has been diagnosed with ALS.

(Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)
 
 
 
 

Among the reasons McMichael has chosen to offer a glimpse into his very intense battle with ALS: He wants the outside world to know the curtain has lowered on his time in the public eye.

There will be no more public appearances; no more performances with his band, “The Chicago Six”; no more on-air analysis of the Bears on ESPN-1000.

He never will sign another autograph. He has given his last show.

“I want everybody to realize why they’re no longer going to see me around,” McMichael says.

At some point, the disease is expected to further obstruct his breathing and could eventually steal his speech as well. Fathom that. Steve “Mongo” McMichael perhaps unable to talk one day?

“I’m pretty sure that’s the last thing that’s going to go,” Misty jokes. “Just to spite me.”

Unsurprisingly, the McMichaels still have their sense of humor. They’re also summoning incredible toughness and resolve to face each day as its own challenge. But taking on this disease is only going to get more difficult.

“I thought I was ready for anything,” McMichael says. “But man. This will sneak up on you like a cheap-shotting Green Bay Packer.”

‘This is a humbling thing, brother’

Last week, McMichael’s legs gave out in his bathroom. He took a spill and cracked a rib. Misty couldn’t pull him up off the floor and had to summon a neighbor for help.

Damn, this deterioration has been rapid.

Last autumn, when chronic tingling in McMichael’s arms continued to worsen, his concern elevated. Misty also noticed he was holding his silverware in an unconventional manner. “Started coming into a caveman grip,” she says.

For a long time, McMichael figured he was dealing with some sort of neck or spine issue stemming from his lengthy football career and subsequent five-year stint as a professional wrestler. But a September visit to a neurosurgeon at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota presented the first suggestion that he might be dealing with ALS.

The doctor there raised McMichael’s right arm and asked him to stop it from falling. The idea was to measure, on a scale of 1-10, how high McMichael could gain full control. Instead, his arm plummeted like an anvil.

“Doctor looked at the nurse (and said) ‘Zero!’ ” McMichael says. “That’s when he said, ‘I think this is about something else.’ ”

McMichael didn’t want to believe it. He sought multiple other opinions. On Jan. 7, doctors at Rush University Medical Center repeated the ALS diagnosis. That’s when it became official.

A neurologist at UIC Medical Center later surmised that the condition likely began setting in 36 months earlier.

No matter how much denial McMichael and his wife were in, eventually they had no choice but to face their reality. McMichael still can’t fully believe this is where fate has led him.

“What I used to be is the antithesis of what I am now,” he says. “This is a humbling thing, brother.”

Steve McMichael gets help from his wife Misty while eating lunch on April 22, 2021 at their Romeoville home.
Steve McMichael gets help from his wife Misty while eating lunch on April 22, 2021 at their Romeoville home. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)

The recent progression of degeneration through McMichael’s limbs has been jarring. First his right arm went dead, then the left.

Then his left leg began to weaken significantly. Now his right leg is following close behind.

“They call it Lou Gehrig’s disease. But I didn’t know that was a metaphor,” McMichael says. “Because it’s going to run the bases on you.”

McMichael still has some strength in his right leg, but that’s decreasing gradually too. The ALS is heading for home.

“It’s running the bases on me,” he says.

“And it’s running them quicker than we thought it would,” Misty says.

That leg weakness has been staggering.

“I know what it feels like to go in the weight room and do a set of three with 725 pounds on the squat rack,” McMichael says. “Now? When I get up and try to move? It feels like I’m doing 1,000 (bleeping) pounds. And it’s just exhausting straining that hard. That’s what my world is now.”

As McMichael ambles across his kitchen, almost toddler-like with his wobbly gait, he finds an opening for self deprecation.

“I’m a Super Bowl Shuffler now,” he says. “As long as I keep my legs stiff and shuffle along, I won’t go down.”

It hasn’t been easy becoming so immobile and needy so quickly. McMichael can’t emphasize enough how much he has admired and valued Misty’s ability to be a devoted caretaker through all this. Along with that, though, there’s a bit of embarrassment that can sometimes hit hard.

“I feel like a baby lying there whining,” he says. “ ‘Help me! Waaaaaa!’ ”

Misty says she regularly is having difficulty with her own neck and back. She also never fathomed having to properly fit her husband with an external catheter before bed every night. But this is just life now.

In the saddest moments, McMichael hates what he’s putting his wife and daughter through, and the sense of helplessness that comes along with that.

“I’m not the provider anymore,” he says. “I’m just one of the animals. I’m last in line behind the chihuahua. We’re both waiting in line to go to the bathroom.”

‘We scream. We holler. We cry’

The mental toll over the last four months has been significant. First, Steve and Misty had to work past their resistance to accepting the diagnosis. Then they had to deal with McMichael’s frustration, the kind that would come on suddenly when he tried to reach for something but realized he couldn’t.

On the bad days, the agitation can boil over.

Says Misty: “We scream. We holler. We cry.”

The tears have been frequent.

“A good cry helps me clear my nose out,” McMichael cracks.

Steve McMichael signs autographs for fans before the unveiling of the statues for Hall of Famers Water Payton and George S. Halas outside of Gate O at Soldier Field on Sept. 3, 2019.
Steve McMichael signs autographs for fans before the unveiling of the statues for Hall of Famers Water Payton and George S. Halas outside of Gate O at Soldier Field on Sept. 3, 2019. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)

The McMichaels also have had to begin envisioning the future, planning for survival with this ailment and the challenges it brings.

As much weight as McMichael has lost, he still is north of 200 pounds and difficult for Misty and their 13-year-old daughter, Macy, to move if he has fallen or otherwise needs help.

“I can’t pick his ass up by myself,” Misty says. “Macy and I managed to pick him up together one time. But if one of us is crying, we get weak, and now we need the neighbors.”

As much as anything else, Misty knows she has to find the family a new handicap-accessible home. Or a builder who can rapidly construct a handicap-accessible home. Amenities the family never would have thought about before — ramps, widened doorways, a roll-in shower, a toilet lift, track-lifting systems — suddenly are must-haves.

The McMichaels rent their current residence in Romeoville. As such, they are unable to make any extreme modifications or renovations.

“I know we need to move before his legs go out fully,” Misty says.

The clock is ticking.

“Calling all Bear Fan realtors,” McMichael says. “Mongo needs a handicap-equipped house.”

‘We’re all still in shock’

Dan Hampton and McMichael have been close friends for 40 years, Bears teammates for 10 seasons and buddies long after they both retired. Hampton hasn’t been able to wrap his brain around McMichael’s rapid decline.

“We’re all still in shock, a state of total disbelief,” Hampton says. “I look out my window and shake my head.

“I don’t know how many times I’ve looked at my wife and said, ‘I can’t believe this. I truly can’t believe this.’ ”

Steve "Mongo" McMichael performs with other members of "The Chicago 6" in Grant Park on July 25, 2019.
Steve "Mongo" McMichael performs with other members of "The Chicago 6" in Grant Park on July 25, 2019. (Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)
Hall of Fame Bears defensive lineman Dan Hampton performs with other members of "The Chicago 6" in Grant Park on July 25, 2019.
Hall of Fame Bears defensive lineman Dan Hampton performs with other members of "The Chicago 6" in Grant Park on July 25, 2019. (Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)

In 2013, when Hampton revived “The Chicago Six” band, he brought McMichael on board as a guitarist and vocalist. Now, Hampton thinks of the last show the group did — in September at the Centennial Park West Summer Concert in Orland Park.

“It’s hard to believe that last show is the last time Steve will ever sing with us,” Hampton says. “We’re heartsick about this.”

Around the time of that final show last fall, Hampton heard McMichael complaining about the tingling and occasional numbness in his arms. McMichael also shared how he was having abnormal difficulty even twisting the plastic tops off Coke bottles.

“We were concerned,” Hampton said. “But Steve had complained for years about a neck injury. And maybe I was deluded into thinking that was it. …. We all know the predominant attitude of a pro football player is that we’re indestructible and nothing can stop us. Obviously this is a cold slap of reality.”

As word of McMichael’s condition has circulated slowly and privately through the Bears fraternity in recent weeks, the shared shock has been pronounced.

Former Bears offensive linemen Tom Thayer and Jay Hilgenberg visited McMichael this month and were jarred to see him in the state he was in, thin and unsteady and so incredibly vulnerable.

“And you know what they did?” McMichael says. “They looked at me, then looked at each other and they got ready to double-team me. Just like, ‘I think we can take him now.’ ”

“Mentally,” Thayer says, “he is still fit as a fiddle. But then you see the other stage of what the disease does to you. That’s the hard part to take.”

‘There is no cure for this’

Thayer has made it a point in his time with McMichael to talk about the old days, the good times, to provide at least a temporary distraction from his current ailments. The old stories always provide a healthy dose of laughter and feel-good vibes.

“It’s more just trying to get access to the good times,” Thayer said, “instead of what he’s living through.”

So many of McMichael’s former Bears teammates still love him as much as always. Maybe more now. Dennis McKinnon has visited on multiple occasions to provide company and support.

Keith Van Horne, Richard Dent and Jim McMahon continue to reach out.

Gary Fencik and his wife are scheduled to pop in next week.

“There is no cure for this,” Fencik said. “It’s just a matter of not if but how long it takes before this (disease) really starts bringing its terrible consequences. And it has already begun.

“Steve has this. He’s acknowledging it. And there’s no reversal. This is going to be a cruel, cruel existence going forward. But he has a great attitude, and all we can do is hope he keeps that.”

 
 
PHOTOS

Steve 'Mongo' McMichael

Steve McMichael

Steve McMichael played in 191 games during 13 seasons with the Chicago Bears and retired second on the Bears' career ...

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(Bob Fila / Chicago Tribune)
 
 
 
 

Former Bears defensive back Leslie Frazier can’t even comprehend the idea that an athlete as burly and seemingly indestructible as McMichael is now so exposed.

“When I first heard about his condition, my heart dropped,” Frazier said. “You think of Steve as this strapping, physical specimen. He was a guy who would go hard all the time. And you never fathom he could be in this state. It’s been hard for me to wrap my mind around.”

McMichael always called Frazier ”Corn” because he came to the Bears from Alcorn State. And while the two couldn’t be more different personality-wise, they always had a bond as teammates and a respect for one another’s work ethic and purpose.

Frazier knows all the 1985 Bears will forever share that deeper connection, forever attached by their triumph and the fun they had on the way there.

“To this day,” Frazier said, “it’s still a brotherhood. And I really believe all the guys feel the same way. When one guy is hurting, everybody feels the pain. This has not been an easy thing to process … I still picture Steve in our locker room posing and kissing his muscles. He’d say, ‘Corn! I know you see these muscles. You may want them. But you can’t have ‘em.’ ”

‘A man needs to know he was loved’

Don’t think McMichael doesn’t feel the love. The visits from former teammates always bring laughter and wise-cracking and a chance to relive the glory days and talk ball.

But it goes deeper than that. The visit from Hilgenberg and Thayer reminded McMichael of how sincerely his Bears brothers care about him.

When Hampton stopped over two weeks ago, he built a ramp from the laundry room into the garage.

“That type of compassion renews your faith in humanity,” McMichael says. “It does. A man needs to know he was loved. So he can be proud of himself and know that he mattered.”

Former player Steve McMichael and his wife Misty by his wheelchair at their Romeoville home.
Former player Steve McMichael and his wife Misty by his wheelchair at their Romeoville home. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)

The McCaskey family has vowed to cover the cost of the fully loaded wheelchair McMichael needs.

“Bears fans should be proud of the way they’ve stepped up,” McMichael says. “In my entire life, I haven’t paid as much for a car as that thing is going to cost.”

McMichael remains eligible for substantial financial aid from the NFL. His application for funding from the league’s “88 Plan” — named in honor of Pro Football Hall of Famer John Mackey — is under review and should open the door for up to $144,000 annually for medical and custodial care. The plan provides assistance for former players diagnosed with ALS, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease and dementia.

That funding will help, no doubt.

“But I don’t have that yet,” Misty says. “And Steve is degenerating much quicker than we thought. So we have to start fundraising now.”

Misty has been floored by the cost of the medical bills and specialist visits and medications and estimates for what Steve’s long-term care will require. The itemized-expense list seems unending. Misty recently had to purchase a new Chrysler Pacifica, equipped with a mechanical ramp, to help Steve get in and out of the car in his wheelchair.

The family savings have eroded rapidly. They’re also house-hunting during a seller’s market when inventory disappears rapidly.

“It’s unbelievable how fast homes are going right now,” McMichael says. “It’s like people are (bleeping) looting toilet paper.”

A Go Fund Me page has been set up, a means, according to the site, “to help defray the mounting cost of Steve’s daily care and medical needs.”

This weekend, Obvious Shirts founder Joe Johnson will begin selling “Team Mongo” T-shirts on his popular website, promising to devote all proceeds to Steve and Misty. (Naturally, McMichael’s shirt will be personalized to read “Me Mongo.”)

Information on future fundraising events and additional “Team Mongo” gear can be found at the official “Team Mongo” website, www.TeamMongo76.com.

The McMichaels and their team also have reached out to the Team Gleason Foundation, established by former Saints safety Steve Gleason after his ALS diagnosis, hoping to receive assistance in eventually getting McMichael an augmentative communication device, a computerized method of speaking for those who lose their vocal ability.

That’s still impossible to comprehend. Steve McMichael without his booming voice, without that Texas drawl and emphatic inflection.

“I look at it like this,” McMichael says. “I’ve already said it all anyway.”

‘They know they’re playing for real’

Even as his body deteriorates and his muscles wither, McMichael vows to draw on an inner-strength and resilience that will help him and his family persevere. His desire to fight has smothered any temptation to surrender.

“That’s the ‘it’ they’re all looking for at all those scouting combines. That fight,” McMichael says. “You’re never going to stop bringing that.”

When Macy heard from one of her father’s doctors that the life expectancy of a patient with ALS averages around two to five years after onset, she interjected and told him they didn’t know what they were talking about.

“She’s a strong girl,” Misty says. “And she knows her mom is going to keep her daddy alive until she’s grown.

During a visit with the McMichaels earlier this month, Hampton came away thoroughly impressed by the sense of resolve Steve and Misty have found.

“I was struck by their ability to focus and face this with a no (B.S.) attitude. They know they’re playing for real.”

Hampton knows that response isn’t universal and shouldn’t be taken for granted.

“If I was to be afflicted with this? I don’t know. I really don’t,” he said. “I don’t know that I could chuckle or laugh. I’m just being honest. I’d be destroyed. But Steve has found a way to accept this and say, ‘This was the hand I was dealt.’ For that, you shake your head and say ‘Wow! What amazing courage.’ ”

McMichael sees it as a combination of perspective, perseverance and gratitude.

“I’m not in a depression, brother,” he says. “This disease came onto Lou Gehrig when he was still playing baseball. At least it waited until I was an old man. I’ve lived so long that I’ve seen and done things I want to forget.”

‘Hell yes, I would do it all over again’

McMichael has long taken great pride in his philosophical reflections and sharp one-liners, boasting that he combines the deep contemplations of Forrest Gump with the humorous invective of Don Rickles.

For years McMichael has joked that he should take all his musings and beliefs — “Mongoisms” — and fold them into a book or at least one of those one-a-day calendars.

“They flash across my mind like neon,” he jokes. “Why would I want to keep them? That just means there’s not enough room for the next one.”

Among his most recited pearls of wisdom: Every man lives, but not every man really lives.

To that point, McMichael always has had a profound appreciation for how football and his place on the Bears changed his life.

Two years ago, the Tribune named McMichael the 18th greatest Bears player of all time. That kind of recognition still means something to him. The Super Bowl triumph of the ’85 Bears, of course, tops his achievement list. He always will be remembered as a key figure on an iconic team.

 

The sport he loves did so much for him. It opened doors. Gave him a stage. Allowed him to be a showman. Best of all, it inspired him to test his limits and see how much greatness he could squeeze out of his talent.

So no, McMichael won’t allow himself to feel bitter toward football or question whether its brutality helped lead him to this current state. (A 2012 published study from the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology noted that NFL players with at least five years of experience in the league were four times more likely to die from ALS than those in the general public.)

Says McMichael: “One neurologist I saw suggested to me that ‘Maybe the damage you did to yourself opened the door for what’s happening (now).’ But there are other people who get this where it just opens the door itself and kicks their ass.”

More than two dozen former NFL players have come forward with their ALS diagnoses, a group that includes Gleason, Dwight Clark, O.J. Brigance, Kevin Turner, Wally Hilgenberg, Orlando Thomas and Tim Shaw. Former Raiders running back Steve Smith, now 56 years old, has been battling the disease since the summer of 2002. His wife, Chie, has now become one of Misty’s most trusted resources and confidantes.

Forever, McMichael has told anyone who would listen that the joy of his career and the passion it brought out of him was worth every last ache, pain and bruise, surgery and long-term debilitating setback. But that’s a question worth revisiting now that the brutality of ALS has taken over.

Would he still do it all over again knowing this misery was waiting?

“Hell yes, I would do it all over again,” McMichael says. “Because it’s that journey that’s the reward. It’s that climb and how hard it was to substantiate yourself as out of the ordinary. That kind of achievement isn’t just given to you.”

Not that McMichael has any say in turning back time or reversing his condition. At this point, ALS has wrested control of his life. And McMichael is the first to admit he doesn’t want the hordes of Bears fans and other admirers to have their lasting memories of him be as a fragile man on the decline, weak and confined to a wheelchair.

Sure, he’s going to miss the adoration and the chance to entertain.

“But the dancing chicken is ready to be entertained himself,” he says. “I want to see someone else on that hot plate dancing around.”

In a more solemn moment, McMichael uses his bottom teeth to bite his upper lip and nods. He has one last message for those who may soon be concerned about him and his family.

“Say a prayer,” he says. “Say a prayer.”

 

 

 

Further down your post, there is a link to Chicago Bears T-shirts in support of McMichael.


https://obviousshirts.com/collections/team-mongo

Can one of you Tweeter types suggest to CDC that UT make burnt orange Team Bam Bam shirts for Texas fans? I’d buy more than one.

Edited by ImissWallyPryor
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UncleSonny

UncleSonny 6,798

Posted
Posted

He was before my time as a football player, funny enough I knew him as a wrestler first. I was so excited when my dad told me he was a Horn. 

Pretty gutting stuff, sounds like he's handling it like the badass he is. Hook'em Steve:

https://theathletic.com/3174997/2022/03/31/i-pushed-myself-to-the-limit-bears-great-steve-mcmichael-as-tough-as-they-come-on-the-field-is-in-the-fight-of-his-life/

Spoiler

HOMER GLEN, Ill. — Outside, birds chirp relentlessly, signaling a brighter, warmer tomorrow.

Inside the bedroom of a brick ranch in a quiet subdivision, NFL Network plays on the television, but there is no sound.

Mostly there is the ventilator’s hiss. And the occasional six-tone alarm signaling that something isn’t working as it should.

This morning, there is laughter. Deep, hearty laughter from big men. They are rolling out old stories like dusty carpets, and they are chortling.

Steve McMichael makes sound, too. If he wants attention, he makes a noise like a duck quack.

When he speaks, he moves his lips, and you can hear the edges of his words, the hard consonants, but the insides of the words are hollow. It is a strain for him to talk.

Inside his bedroom, tomorrow and the promise those birds are chirping about isn’t important.

What matters is today.

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Jim Thornton, Dan Hampton, Steve McMichael, Mike Hartenstine, Gary Fencik and Jim Osborne. (Courtesy of John Nunu Zomot)

Yesterday

“Ming The Merciless” they called him. Or “Mongo,” after the character in “Blazing Saddles” who coldcocked a horse.

The fool who once patted McMichael’s wife on the rear end could tell you why, assuming he was revived after McMichael had him facedown on the floor in a chokehold.

McMichael once threw a man through the wall of a restaurant. Another, he dragged through a parking lot. He bit another’s nose, leaving blood spilling down both sides of his face. And those were his friends.

Imposing his will came easily, whether he was crushing a rattlesnake with his helmet on a practice field in South Texas, powering his way through two blockers as a defensive tackle for the Bears, delivering a “Mongo Spike” in a WCW ring, or using a close grip to bench press so much weight at the University of Texas that the barbell bent.

McMichael and Dana LeDuc, his college strength coach, once walked into a Gold’s Gym in the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas. McMichael asked if they could get a lift in. The manager, having a little fun, told him they could work out if McMichael could break the gym’s bench press record of 500 pounds held by Cowboys offensive tackle Mark Tuinei.

McMichael calmly loaded up a bar and knocked out three reps of 520 pounds.

That astonishing strength showed up on football fields, too. Hall of Fame Washington guard Russ Grimm says it took multiple blockers to move McMichael, and for proof, he cited McMichael’s career tackles total of 847. In seven seasons, McMichael led Bears linemen in tackles.

“He’s one of the old-fashioned, blue-collar tough guys, like Randy White, Harry Carson, guys who you knew would give you a full day’s work,” Grimm says. “There’s no question I think he should be in the Hall of Fame. I’ll tell you this, if I started a football team, Steve McMichael would be one of the first guys I picked.”

He was about more than brute force and will, as his 95 career sacks attest. Sacks became an official statistic in 1982, but they have been tracked back to 1960. Among all true defensive tackles in the last 62 years, only seven have more sacks than McMichael, and five are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The two who are not are Aaron Donald, who is well on his way, and Jethro Pugh, who had 1 1/2 sacks more than McMichael. Defensive tackles with fewer sacks in the Hall of Fame include Buck Buchanan, Curly Culp, Joe Greene, Cortez Kennedy and Merlin Olsen.

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Steve McMichael was one of the best defensive tackles when it came to getting to the quarterback. (NFL Photos / Associated Press)

Incredibly, McMichael never has been discussed as a Hall of Fame candidate. On a line with Hall of Famers Dan Hampton and Richard Dent and the celebrated Fridge — William Perry — it was easy to look past McMichael, who was voted to just two Pro Bowls. He was voted All-Pro four times, however.

And there is significant evidence that says he was a dominator.

Former 49ers guard Randy Cross considers McMichael one of the two best defensive tackles he lined up against, along with the Jets’ Joe Klecko.

“People ask me who the best pro and best player I played with,” former defensive end Trace Armstrong says. “I say Steve McMichael.” Armstrong also played with Hall of Famers Jason Taylor, Charles Woodson and Rod Woodson, as well as Dent, Hampton and Mike Singletary.

Proscout, Inc. is a respected consulting firm that grades players for NFL teams. According to Proscout, McMichael rated a “blue,” the highest ranking, in eight seasons. In another year, he was rated a “blue box,” which is like an A-minus. Proscout also ranked McMichael in the top five players at his position in the league six times.

“Those are Hall of Fame numbers in my opinion,” says Mike W. Giddings, owner of Proscout.

During the “Ming Defensive Dynasty” — from 1982 through 1991 — the Bears allowed the fewest points of any team in the NFL. They also were first in fewest yards allowed, rushing yards allowed and sacks.

If not for McMichael, the story would be different. The Bears would not have set the NFL record for sacks and yards allowed in 1984. They wouldn’t have become the most dominant defense in modern history in 1985. And they wouldn’t have set the record for fewest points allowed in a season in 1986.

None of the magnificent players on the Bears defense of the 1980s did more for the others than McMichael. Whether it was holding the “jump through” so Singletary could make the tackle, absorbing a double-team so Dent could make a sack, or staying in his gap so Hampton could leave his, McMichael understood better than almost anyone that nothing could be accomplished without unselfishness.

The great Bears all made one another better, but McMichael wasn’t dependent on his teammates. In the two years after Hampton retired, McMichael had 19 1/2 sacks.

“Even with all the talent they had, I always thought Steve was one of the toughest,” former Lions center Kevin Glover says. “I always tell people Singletary was the best inside linebacker I ever played against. And as far as interior defensive linemen, I’d have to put McMichael up there with all of the greats I played against. He’s definitely up there with Howie Long, Dan Hampton, John Randle, Jerry Ball and Reggie White. He’s in that group of guys.”

He was just always there, right where he was supposed to be, right when he was supposed to be.

McMichael never missed a game because of injury, playing in 207 straight non-strike games in 13 seasons with the Bears and one with the Packers — 221 straight, including the postseason.

Says McMichael, “I pushed myself to the limit.”

Hampton, a brother as much as a teammate, once said this of McMichael, “Steve’s attitude is, ‘Damn the future.’”

Today

Beneath a white plush blanket with pinkish/red hearts lies a man who is startlingly thin to those who remember when he was built like a water tower. Now his hair is the only thing about him that’s thick.

His feet hang over the edge of the bed. On his left heel is a bed sore.

Around his neck is the surgical tape that holds his tracheostomy tube in place. Between his chest and midsection is a feeding tube. Surrounding him is a ventilator, a cough assist machine, a saliva suction machine and an oxygen tank.

He can turn his head some. Maybe wiggle his fingers and toes a little. And move his legs back and forth slightly. His eyes are just as expressive as they used to be, and if you do or say something he doesn’t like, those eyes will make a point.

The rest of his body will not move.

About three or four years ago, McMichael started having difficulty gripping things. He couldn’t hold a fork the right way, unscrew a bottle cap or sign his name. There was a convenient, logical explanation: he had disc injuries in his neck from his playing days. Except his symptoms kept worsening. Driving became a problem.

In the summer of 2020, he went to see a neurosurgeon at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. The doctor told him they thought he had ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease, which attacks the nerve cells responsible for muscle control. McMichael didn’t want to believe it, so he returned for a second opinion. The second was the same as the first.

Then he went to Rush University Medical Center. ALS.

Northwestern Memorial Hospital. ALS.

The University of Illinois Hospital. ALS.

Accepting it may have been as difficult as dealing with it.

As the disease progressed, he and his wife, Misty, cleaned his closet. She put his cowboy boots in a pile of things that had to go. He loved those boots, and what they stood for. And so there were tears. “He knew he never was going to wear his cowboy boots again,” Misty says emotionally. “It was hard.”

The hardest period was last November and December. Fluid was building in his lungs, so McMichael was admitted to Silver Cross Hospital in New Lenox. It eventually turned into double pneumonia. During his month-long stay there, they called code blue for him three times.

As his stay was winding down, doctors advised that he spend the rest of his days in a nursing home. Misty would not have it. Shortly before Christmas, she showed up at Silver Cross dressed as Mrs. Claus and took her husband home, where he remains.

“She’s from South Texas, brother,” McMichael says.

Misty was hanging with a couple of friends at Pearl’s Oyster Bar in Austin, Texas, when one night was turning to morning 25 years ago. That’s when love came walking in. McMichael, with a ponytail down to his waist and Ray-Bans over his eyes, took a seat across from her.

Then he lowered his glasses.

Steve: “I don’t know what you think, but you can’t have me.”

Misty: “Who said I wanted you?”

The two nonconformists conformed to one another blissfully. On one knee in a gondola in Venice, he asked for her hand. Now they have been married for 21 years.

For a time, Misty traveled with Steve on the wrestling circuit. At one point, a match was proposed: Misty and Steve against his ex-wife, Debra Marshall, and her new husband, Stone Cold Steve Austin. “That’s when I decided he should call it quits,” Misty says. “I didn’t want anybody else to get hurt. I wanted to preserve him.”

She accomplished that goal.

“She’s the best nurse and caregiver,” he says, nodding to his wife.

It took Misty a while to work up the courage to put the feeding tube in. Now she feeds him every four or five hours. Instead of buying packaged food, she blends her own from fresh ingredients.

Misty is the one who changes the cannula in his throat.

She gives him a sponge bath.

She plays with his toes.

“The life I used to live is over,” says McMichael, 64 years old. “Now I’m glued to this bed.”

IMG_0518-scaled.jpeg
 
“She’s the best nurse and caregiver,” Steve McMichael says of his wife, Misty. (Dan Pompei / The Athletic)

What does he miss about the life he used to live?

The taste of Wagyu filet. And pizza. About the only thing he gets to taste now is Diet Coke from a sponge on a stick.

He misses going to Home Depot with Misty.

Being able to scratch an itch.

The tingle from chewing tobacco in his lower lip.

The way a drag from a Marlboro Ultra Light fills up the senses.

The baritone notes he used to hit singing a song like “Gimme Three Steps” with Hampton and Otis Wilson in their band, Chicago Six.

For most of his life, McMichael spoke in short sentences. That habit has been helpful now that talking has challenges. Team Gleason, the charity of former New Orleans Saint Steve Gleason, loaned McMichael an eye-gaze device that generates speech. But he doesn’t want to use it as long as he can move his mouth and make sounds.

Given how he abused his body in football and wrestling, McMichael has extreme pain. He had eight knee surgeries, including a replacement. His neck, back, rear end, shoulder, elbow and hands bother him.

He takes morphine and CBD oil. And an antidepressant, Ativan, and Valium.

Misty and the nurses try to move him every couple of hours to avoid bed sores. Edema can cause problems, as can the blockage in his gut. McMichael was hospitalized this week because of the blockage, and doctors performed a cecostomy.

A few weeks ago, during one attempt to move him, McMichael nearly broke his arm. In early March, he sat in a chair for the first time since returning from the hospital in December, but he nearly passed out when he didn’t get enough oxygen.

Nothing has been easy. But McMichael said from the start he had no regrets. His suffering has not changed his thinking. It was his choice to play, he tells everyone, and he will not say there is a direct line between football and his disease.

Misty sees it differently. Taking care of an ALS patient costs a lot of money — more than they could afford. She sued the NFL, and he was given a settlement of $2.25 million.

The Bears donated a power wheelchair worth $100,000 that can be controlled with a straw. When Misty wanted a hospital bed that wasn’t for sale except commercially, Bears vice president Brian McCaskey found a way to get one. Then the Bears split the $14,000 cost with Anthony Tomaska, who once owned one of Steve’s favorite restaurants.

Some of their financial burden was eased by a GoFundMe that raised more than $200,000, as well as two charity events.

In the karmic way of thinking, all of it makes sense. McMichael says he raised more money for charity than he earned as a football player.

People have been kind. Hampton built a ramp to McMichael’s house to make it wheelchair accessible. Bears photographer Michael Kinyon installed mirrors on Misty’s bedroom door so she can see Steve when the doors are open. Former teammates have visited from across the country — one helped McMichael get medical marijuana before he had a prescription. Keith Van Horne watched the Super Bowl with him. He brought tequila.

McMichael, understandably, has ups and downs. But remarkably, he lifts the people who come to try to lift him. “I’ve got a good heart and mind about it,” he says. “Why be a miserable motherfucker until you die?”

Misty believes his attitude is enabled by the love that surrounds him. On a February day, his bed is ringed by former teammates Hampton, Gary Fencik, Mike Hartenstine, Jim Osborne, James Thornton and others. In the kitchen, there are pizzas and meatballs from his restaurant, Mongo McMichael’s in Romeoville. And in his bedroom, there are memories.

Fencik talks about the time they broke curfew and walked into a bar and found an assistant coach. “Steve told him, ‘If you squeal on us, I’m going to tell your wife you were in this bar with another woman,’” Fencik recounts. “No one squealed.”

Says McMichael, “It took more courage to go out with you guys at night than it did to face ALS.”

If the rest of him worked as well as his sense of humor, McMichael could bull rush a guard and put a quarterback on his back.

McMichael feels appreciation for his teammates and all who have touched him.

“Most people in my position have fair-weather fans who are only there for what they can get out of it,” McMichael says. “The people who have been here for me, their compassion shows you that you were loved and not used.”

“Amen, brother,” Misty says, her eyes moistening.

Tomorrow

When he finally grasped his diagnosis, McMichael had a request for his wife.

“Just kill me,” he said. “Give me an overdose.”

She refused.

“I’m selfish,” she told him. “I’m keeping you alive for my selfishness.”

Now though, McMichael wants to live. “See this?” he says, pointing to the breathing tube in his throat. “I chose that.”

McMichael still has tomorrows on his mind. He wants to open another Mongo McMichael’s restaurant at O’Hare Airport. His business partner Stavro Spandonidis is working on it, and McMichael keeps tabs.

He also is looking forward to publishing a children’s book that he conceptualized with author Wanda Osborne, wife of Jim. “The Golden Life of Little Steve” is about a boy who loses his ability to walk and uses a wheelchair. His friends Jimmy, Danny and Mike help Little Steve become accepted, and Little Steve becomes a star at the Paralympics. Some of the book’s proceeds will go to the Les Turner ALS Foundation, which has supported McMichael.

Mostly, he wants to live for Macy, their 14-year-old daughter they call “Baby Girl.”

“She doesn’t need her daddy to die any earlier than he has to,” says McMichael, who lost his stepfather when he was 19.

IMG_6876.jpeg
 
Misty and Steve McMichael flank their daughter, Macy. “She doesn’t need her daddy to die any earlier than he has to,” Steve says. (Courtesy of the McMichael family)

Misty wants to see him make it to Baby Girl’s high school graduation in 2027. And she wants him to live long enough for him to attend his induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Being a Hall of Famer would shape McMichael’s legacy. He prefers to be remembered as the Monster of the Midway he was, rather than that guy who died of ALS.

Death does not intimidate him any more than any New York Giant did. “I’ve already lived 10 lives, so I’m OK,” he says.

In each of his previous lives, McMichael never was described as graceful. But in the latest iteration, he shows exceeding grace. There is a calm about him, an unexpected peace.

In times like these, faith usually is either leaned on or abandoned. McMichael relies on his, acknowledging he never has been less in control. “We’ve been closer to God,” Misty says.

Doctors told him he could expect to live two to five years after the onset of symptoms. That would give him another year or two.

What do the doctors know anyway?

Maybe it will be more.

Maybe less.

Hampton is leaving.

“I love you, man,” he says from the foot of the bed. “I’ll be back to see you.”

That is the hope.

But what matters is today.

 

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