Columnist Tim Graham: My hero was a big inspiration

Tim Graham

Thursday, Feb. 4, 1999 | 11:44 a.m.

Tim Graham's column appears Thursday. His media notebook appears Wednesday. Reach him at tim@lasvegassun.com or 259-4078.

Superman is dying.

The man who embodied invincibility, will and grace for a younger generation admitted this week he was scared and running out of time.

Walter Payton, my sports hero, needs a liver transplant to live.

The greatest all-around running back in NFL history prided himself on his physical acumen. His teammates claimed no one trained harder. His opponents claimed no one played harder.

Payton was a super hero in cleats on Sunday afternoons. When I watched him dominate a defense, I saw -- for a brief moment -- what it would be like to be unconquerable.

That illusion has been broken. The sun has set on Sunday afternoon.

Payton, who played his final season at a chiseled 5-feet-11 and 202 pounds, appeared at a Tuesday press conference a shell of his former self. The 44-year-old was emaciated, having lost 35 pounds in four months. His once full face was haggardly thin. He wore sunglasses to hide his jaundiced eyes.

He was there to stop the rumors circulating about his bad health. The Hall of Famer with the nickname "Sweetness" was tired of a Chicago sportscaster calling him the "Raisin Man."

He told the world he has primary sclerosing cholangitis, a rare and irreversible liver disease. His doctor gives him two years to live without a transplant.

"To the people that really care about me," Payton said, fighting through the tears, "just keep praying."

The scene was hard to take. Payton was the most devastating football player of my time, maybe of any time. And he worked admirably hard to be so great.

Like a thoroughbred carries a jockey, Payton toted a featherweight Chicago Bears team on his back in the late 1970s and early '80s, running over and around would-be tacklers all the while. His awesome abilities, which always seemed for naught, finally were rewarded in 1986, when the Bears won the Super Bowl.

He remains the NFL's all-time leading rusher with 16,726 yards. He scored 110 touchdowns.

And Payton was as dashing off the field. He was pure class, well-spoken, always smiling.

I wanted to be Walter Payton. We even happen to have the same birthday.

I never lined up against my buddies in the backyard without donning my tattered, Rawlings No. 34 replica jersey with "BEARS" silk-screened across the front. I still have it. I could never bring myself to throw it away.

That number followed me into high school, where I proudly wore it in Payton's honor. Pictures of Payton torn from magazines adorned my locker, and when I looked at them I couldn't help but trot onto the field motivated to be the best.

Payton was an inspiration.

But seeing Payton's withering health, I was forced to come face to face with my mortality, like many others did when Mickey Mantle battled his liver disease more than three years ago.

We see these idols on TV and read about them in the paper. It's almost as if they're fictional, larger than life.

Yet no matter how vicariously we dream through someone else, they are nothing more than flesh and blood, just like us.

I always knew this. I just never wanted to be reminded of it.

I never wanted to lose my hero.