Payton Was Master of a Fading Art in Sports: Class

A few days ago, several students from a Southern California high school’s football team were accused of tying a teammate’s hands and assaulting him for having allegedly made a racist remark.

This same week, seven boys from another local prep team came under investigation for possibly running up charges of $700 or more at gas stations by using a credit card that didn’t belong to any of them.

These stories follow on the heels of a collegiate football hero from Florida State--considered by many to be the best player in America (on the best team)--being suspended for leaving a department store with unpaid-for clothing.

Of course, it was during this same college football season that current and former UCLA athletes stood before a judge taking their medicine after being caught using handicapped parking privileges without a handicap.

There was also a pro football player from Miami who began this season under indictment on felony drug-trafficking charges. Fortunately, for himself as well as the team, he did get acquitted.

And then there was . . .

Oh, never mind.

No wonder I miss Walter Payton.

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This truly remarkable person has only been gone a few days, having succumbed to a rare form of liver cancer that took his life at 45.

If only every athlete in America would pattern his life off the field--and take out his aggression on it--the way Walter Payton did.

I can never once remember him cursing at a referee, talking disrespectfully to (or about) an opponent, speaking arrogantly of himself, doing an immature dance to celebrate a touchdown, asking to be traded to a better team, acting like a clown on some Sunday morning TV pregame show, or getting in any kind of jam that brought shame to himself or to the people who watched him play.

But nobody wants nicknames like “Sweetness” anymore, I suppose. They want nicknames like “Prime Time.” They want to taunt a man they just tackled. They want to shout at their superiors, as a San Diego quarterback just did, or thumb their noses at the fans, as a Seattle player did Monday night after a touchdown in Green Bay.

Payton’s own coach from his years with the Chicago Bears recently walked off a field in New Orleans making obscene hand gestures to his own team’s fans. The quarterback of Payton’s championship team in Chicago was a man capable of repulsive behavior toward other human beings.

Showing “class” is a disappearing art in sport. The boxers are all braggarts now, the hockey players are brutes, the basketball players showoffs, and the baseball players avaricious to the point that money matters over all else, including fan loyalty and team victory.

Tennis is the only sport in which the behavior of its competitors seems to have become more civilized than it was 25 years ago.

My lasting memory of Walter Payton was a man who spent his idle hours running up and down a hill, daily, strengthening his legs, pushing his endurance.

There is a pervasive feeling among many African American athletes that a white guy who achieves (or overachieves) in his particular sport will be credited with doing so through hustle and hard work, whereas a black athlete is often praised as someone of superior skill. Well, Walter Payton wasn’t tall, wasn’t fast, wasn’t unusual in any respect. He just worked harder and tried harder than most.

When he first came to Chicago and we were introduced, I had no idea what to make of Payton. He spoke in a Michael Jackson falsetto and had an attention span as short as a mayfly’s. His eyes darted around a room the way his legs did on a football field. He’d get up and leave a room in mid-sentence.

“Why do they call you ‘Sweetness?’ ” I asked years later, meaning to be funny, as Payton practically bolted away without so much as a so long.

He rushed back toward me. Suddenly his face was an inch from mine.

“Smell,” he said.

He turned his neck. I sniffed.

“Obsession,” he said, and ran away.

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I can tell you one thing: Walter Payton didn’t shoplift his Calvin Klein cologne from a store. He didn’t pay for it with somebody else’s credit card. This is a guy who earned everything he got.

We were on the practice field late one night, practically alone. He lined up a long kick. Walter Payton was not a kicker by profession, but he pointed to a goal post and said: “Ten bucks?”

I lost a few dollars that day.

We lost a fine man the other day.

Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053. E-mail: mike.downey@latimes.com