Steve McMichael lies in a hospital bed with his wife, Misty, at his side.
Rick Telander/Sun-Times
Steve McMichael is in a furious race.
He has been at it a long time, and the finish line is close. Yet the tape seems to recede like a mirage on a shimmering horizon.
McMichael, aka ‘‘Mongo’’ or, if you like, ‘‘Ming the Merciless,’’ is the former Bears defensive tackle recently elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. He has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a progressive disease that destroys nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord.
There is little doubt, though no proof, that football contributed to this. His head was always in there, getting blasted, as it often was during his post-football stint as a pro wrestler.
ALS is something nobody wants. In the space of three years, it has left McMichael an immobile, emaciated replicant of the wild Texas strongman he once was.
Yet his brain is undiminished.
Though he barely can move his eyelids to communicate, the two-time first-team All-Pro with 95 career sacks and a Super Bowl ring in his 15-year career is there inside, like a prisoner. And that Mongo wants to go to Canton. He has blinked it out on a computer several times: ‘‘Let’s go.’’
The Hall of Fame induction ceremony — the finish line — is Aug. 3. That’s when the inductees are introduced on stage, wearing their new gold jackets, in front of a crowd of dignitaries, fans and other Hall of Famers. Their busts will be ready for enshrinement, their place in NFL immortality secure.
But the event is almost a half-year from now, a marathon away. It’s anybody’s guess whether McMichael can live that long.
His wife and constant caretaker, Misty, says they’re going to the ceremony, by God.
‘‘Stay alive?’’ she says. ‘‘At least till Canton. He deserves it and always has.’’
She says this from Silver Cross Hospital in New Lenox, where Mongo has been for a few days — first in the emergency room, then in intensive care — for infections in his lungs, bowels and urinary tract.
This is the kind of ancillary stuff that can kill, all of it a result of ALS.
‘‘I think all we need now is to go home with the IV,’’ Misty says, adding that there are so many logistical elements involved in getting her husband to Canton that she needs as much help as she can get.
After seeing an ESPN documentary about McMichael’s travails, Mike Honeycutt, the owner and CEO of JET ICU, an airline medical-ambulance company based in Florida, told Misty he will fly Mongo to Canton free of charge. This is a huge step forward.
They’ll go in a Learjet 60, with two pilots, two nurses, Misty and Mongo’s personal home nurse all there to assist him as he lies flat on a stretcher.
‘‘It’s our privilege to help him,’’ says Mary McCarthy, the chief nurse for JET ICU.
She explains how the company transports people around the world with medical emergencies.
‘‘Heart attacks, strokes, people on bucket lists, you name it,’’ McCarthy says. ‘‘Yesterday we had someone with a barracuda bite. But it takes a hundred people to move a someone like Steve.’’
Those extras are the ground crews, the wheelchair people, the ambulance services, the nurses needed around the clock, on and on — all to help one helpless man on a mission.
Sometimes it’s all too much for Misty. She will talk and be as funny and edgy as Mongo at his finest, but then tears suddenly will appear and she’ll cry.
You wonder whether all this isn’t bittersweet, given that McMichael is, in essence, being honored by the very entity that caused his demise. Won’t it be a kind of grand embarrassment to the NFL to see this wounded man on stage?
‘‘Bittersweet,’’ Misty says. ‘‘That’s the perfect word for it.’’
Make no mistake, ALS will be front and center if Mongo makes it to Canton.
‘‘It’s not a secret about the connection,’’ Misty says. ‘‘That’s why the NFL paid up. I want awareness of ALS.’’
I remember talking with Mongo, the whole guy, back in 2019, before he felt any weakness. We were talking about how tough running back Walter Payton was, how he lived by the warrior code, by Mongo’s code.
‘‘In practice, he was the only one you didn’t hit coming through the line,’’ McMichael said with that impish grin of his. ‘‘And you know what Walter’s attitude was? It would piss him off! ‘Bring it on, mother----ers!’ ’’
That’s retro. That’s old-school. That’s brutal.
That’s what Mongo will take to Canton.
