Ditka: Monster of the Midway -

Armen Keteyian

Pocket Books

1992

346 páginas

11h 32m

ISBN-10: 0671749994

Millions of Americans see Mike Ditka as the most competitive man on earth. The National Football League's most controversial, intimidating, and charismatic coach, Ditka is an intense monster of a man who embodies not only Chicago and its Bears, but the American Dream. With the Bears' bizarre 1991 season as a backdrop, award-winning sports journalist Armen Keteyian unearths the Mike Ditka that fans never see - drawing on over two hundred interviews with Ditka's current players (among them Jim Harbaugh, Mike Singletary and Kevin Butler), friends, classmates, former teammates, business associates and family members, including a rare interview with his father. For the first time, Ditka's image is stripped away to reveal the successes - and failures - resulting from his life-long obsession with winning. Ditka the coach: He's the winningest NFL coach of the 1980s - one hundred and one regular season triumphs in ten years. His crowning achievement was capturing Super Bowl XX with a team led by Jim McMahon, Walter Payton, and William "The Refrigerator" Perry, a team poised to become a dynasty. Ditka the father: He's a philanthropist and fund-raiser who's raised millions of dollars for disabled children, yet has rarely connected with his own kids. Ditka the businessman: He's made millions of dollars, yet still suffered staggering losses, leaving a trail of failed enterprises. Ditka the man: He owns antique cars and collects fine wines. His estimated income is more than five million dollars a year. Despite his wealth, he boasts of being a "common man," but when common men question or criticize his decisions, he dismisses them as "losers in life...$100-a-week guys." Keteyian shows how Ditka's personality was forged in a Pennsylvania steel mill town by a doting mother and a distant father who considered praise a poison. Dreading a life in the mills, Ditka used football as his ticket out.