NEVER DIE EASY
By Walter Payton, with Don Yaeger
Villard, 268 pages, $24.95
Walter Payton is best remembered for his glory days with the Chicago Bears, when he established the National Football League record for most career rushing yards. But “Never Die Easy” will convince most readers that gridiron glory did not rank highest among Payton’s accomplishments. The man’s humble acceptance of his own talent, and his determination to use that talent for the benefit of as many people as possible, makes him more Gandhi than Jim Brown, the Cleveland Browns back whose rushing record Payton obliterated.
When Payton died of liver cancer Nov. 1, 1999, he and Don Yaeger had already spent several years working on “Never Die Easy,” which combines some traditional storytelling with first-person commentary from Payton, his family, former teammates and others who knew him well.
The man’s basic story is astonishing enough: the poor kid from Mississippi first dominated the NFL, then used the fame and fortune accumulated there to establish an inordinate number of charities and position himself to become the first black owner of an NFL franchise — the one dream Payton never quite realized.
But additional poignancy, even near-overwhelming sadness, is present because some of Payton’s commentary comes after his cancer has been diagnosed, and it is quickly apparent he will soon die.
“What I try to do is get in a positive frame of mind,” Payton says as he grows increasingly weaker. “[I] think of something that happened in my life that’s good, or something that might happen in my life that’s good, and then concentrate on that, and that blocks out a lot of the pain.”
To the end, Payton wanted his family and friends to accentuate the positive too. Business partner Mike Lanigan recalls that when Payton called him to explain his cancer was terminal, he said, “Mikey, I’ve got some good news and bad news.” The bad news was, “I’m not going to be around much longer.” The good news? “I’m alive today.”And he did much that was good when he was alive.
Through various charitable foundations, Payton supported programs to help children learn to read; he also lent his name to dozens of other good causes, and structured his estate so his reputation and money will be lent to many more.
Life isn’t fair, and fate plays no favorites. If anyone did, Walter Payton deserved to live a long life, to see his children and grandchildren grow up. Instead, he died painfully and publicly, his hope of keeping his illness a secret thwarted by the inquisitive media. Even then, he made the best of a bad situation, using the publicity to tout organ donation: He made his last taped plea after learning his own cancer had spread so far and so fast that he no longer was eligible for a transplant himself.
In “Never Die Easy,” the good guy dies at the end, and it’s sad to see him go. But his life was a gift to the rest of us. As Payton concludes: “[T]he way everyone should really want to be remembered [is] that whatever they did, they did it as best they possibly could.” As a football player and man, that’s how Payton deserves to be remembered.