Read Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football for Free Online

you look at and go, no way, but they put a uniform on and become a terror. If you can convince yourself that what you’re doing on that field is not going to hurt you, you’ll be capable of anything. It takes practice. You have to develop the mental capacity to keep moving those legs even when you know pain is coming.
    “When I played, I played angry,” he added. “It sounds childish, but I would trick my mind into believing that the person on the other side had done something to me or my family and now it was time to deliver justice. It sounds shallow, but you have to work yourself up into a fury. I never went to the Super Bowl. I never played in a Pro Bowl. But here’s one thing I did do: hit as hard as I possibly could every time I possibly could.”
    To me, Doug Plank was a revelation. Not only because he was smart and funny but also because he has considered and reconsidered every moment of his career. He’s thoughtful. What’s more, he typifies the Bears mentality. “You get to Chicago and you look around and see all the incredible history,” he told me. “Halas, Butkus, the defenses, the Hall of Famers, and you feel like you have an obligation. When I first got there, people told me, ‘Doug, win or lose, you’d better be tough and physical, you better play like a Bear.’ I remember my mind-set going out onto the fields in those first years: If we were not going to beat the other team, we were at least going to beat them up.” He was a throwback, a perfect example of an old-time player; in him, you recognized the energy and gleeful anger that made football the national game. What is baseball when you can watch Doug Plank seek frontier justice on a Sunday afternoon? He could have played with Jim Thorpe, or Red Grange, or Bronko Nagurski—he could still be playing today. He’s the foot soldier, the cannon fodder, the grunt, the sort of player who has lit the boards from the beginning. It was hard hitters from the grim coal towns that made the game worth watching. In Doug Plank, you see the spirit and history of the Chicago Bears, and of the game itself.

 
    3
    THE OLD ZIPPEROO

    The Chicago Bears played their first season as the Staleys, the pride of A. E. Staley, a starch manufacturer in Decatur, Illinois, one of many industrial teams that characterized early pro football.

 
     
     
    When I was growing up in Chicago in the 1970s, George Halas was a kind of god. His face seemed to hover over the city. The lantern jaw and steely skull, eyes blazing. Fury burned like a fire in the old man, flames seen through the window of a dilapidated mansion. Halas was an Old Testament god. In his years as coach of the Bears, he would race up and down the sidelines, screaming at referees and opposing players. The air around him turned blue. A lot’s in dispute about his legacy, but one thing seems settled: his favorite word was “cocksucker.” After a loss in Minnesota, he got on the plane’s PA system and said, “You’re all a bunch of fucking cunts.” End of speech. On one occasion, when a ref threw a flag, Halas shouted, “You stink, you lousy cocksucker!” The ref threw another flag, marked off fifteen more penalty yards, then said, “How do I smell from here, Halas?” He said that he retired from coaching only because his bad hip didn’t let him make it up and down the sidelines fast enough to keep up with the referees. He was known for being stingy, angry, and mean. Years before, when he docked Ditka’s salary, the young tight end said, “The old man is so cheap, he throws around nickels like they’re manhole covers.” It was a nasty thing to say, and it stuck. By the 1980s, it was the main impression fans had of Halas. Of course, like almost everything else said about old people, it was half considered, unfair, shallow, and wrong.
    The bones sat close to the surface of Halas’s face. He looked like sculpture. Even when he was alive, he resembled a bust in the Hall of Fame. The high cheekbones,