Watching this year’s Bears has sent me back to my childhood, to the Bears of the late 60s and early 70s, who were likewise an amalgamation of bright talent and mediocrity–a mixture that naturally tends toward the mediocre, given the ability of National Football League teams to exploit weakness. The Bears of my youth had Dick Butkus, and it was enough just to watch him play middle linebacker, driving through blocks and pursuing the ball. Butkus always had one or two able defensive colleagues, for instance outside linebacker Doug Buffone, who could stick a tackle with Butkus even if he didn’t play with the same ferocity. Yet the Bears also always seemed to have holes in the secondary and the defensive line, and these would cost them games–games that were there to be lost because the offense rarely played well enough to win. The Bears had one excellent receiver, Dick Gordon, but he was prone to emotional ups and downs (I remember learning the word “lackadaisical” when it was applied to him in a Tribune headline), and the team never seemed to have a quarterback who could get him the ball consistently. The Bears’ quarterbacks of that era were journeymen like Jack Concannon and promising youngsters who never fulfilled their promise, like Virgil Carter. Gale Sayers had the odd flash of his old form, but otherwise the Bears’ running attack was nonexistent until Walter Payton arrived a few years later. I remember a big fullback named Jim Harrison with a penchant for running three and a half yards and then falling down at the least resistance.
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This year’s Bears can almost be superimposed over that prototype. Rookie middle linebacker Brian Urlacher, for all his struggles to learn the complex offensive and defensive schemes of today’s NFL, has immediately established himself as a player worth watching from down to down. (Eased slowly into the lineup, he had 13 tackles and a sack in his first start, the Bears’ home opener against the New York Giants two weekends ago, and followed that with 10 tackles, a sack, and an interception last Sunday.) He can run like a buck and nail a tackle. So can new safety Tony Parrish. But otherwise the Bears have a porous defensive line and little pass rush, which has forced them to blitz Urlacher and the other linebackers, putting additional strain on the secondary. On offense, the Bears have a talented receiver in Marcus Robinson, but erratic second-year quarterback Cade McNown has had trouble getting him the ball. The offensive line has had trouble opening holes, and when they’re there, Curtis Enis has had trouble getting to them. Enis is emblematic of the Bears’ offensive problems in that he can’t seem to decide what sort of football he wants to play. Last year he didn’t have the bulk to crash through tackles; this year he’s heavier but he doesn’t seem any harder to bring down. Like Harrison, he tends to topple at the slightest impact. Last year the Bears displayed a wide-open passing game, with journeymen Shane Matthews and Jim Miller mixing side-to-side patterns with over-the-middle routes, but this year McNown hasn’t found the same sort of rhythm. In hindsight, the Bears probably would have been better off beginning the season with Miller, but now they have to stick with McNown and his inevitable mistakes of inexperience and see if he shows any development at all.
Yet the lack of passion should not become a mere case of blaming the media messenger. Today’s Olympic athletes are so well trained, their skills honed by videotape and the most up-to-date bodybuilding methods, that they have become technicians. Australia’s Ian Thorpe is a thing of beauty in the pool, gliding effortlessly with a distinctive stroke in which his hands reach forward and slide under the surface of the water before pulling it toward him, but he makes one yearn for the days when a natural like Janet Evans splashed across the pool with a high-armed stroke like a rubber-band-driven toy paddleboat.
On Sunday the Sox looked ready to live up to their boasts, taking a 1-0 lead with a run-scoring Charles Johnson single in the fifth and a 5-0 lead with the help of two more Johnson RBIs in the seventh, as spot starter Sean Lowe pitched shutout baseball. But the bull pen couldn’t hold the lead, the Twins sent the game into extra innings, and the Sox backed into the title with the news that the Indians had been beaten 9-0 in Kansas City. The Twins won the game with a walk-off homer in the tenth and the Sox celebrated in their locker room, but it felt very anticlimactic back in Chicago. Pockets of excitement were reported on the south side, but on north-side streets there were no scenes, no triumphant celebrations, and only the usual honking. If only they had blown the air-raid sirens! Then again, no one would have known what the sound was. At best, it would have been mistaken for the haunting moan of the past.
