Doug Feldmann - A View from Two Benches: Bob Thomas in Football and the Law

I first met Bob Thomas when I was six years old. We did not cross paths again until I was forty-six. Naturally, much happened in each of our lives in the intervening four decades. Nonetheless, I discovered at our reunion that his moral core had not changed. He remained true through the years, as Chicago Bulls announcer Chuck Swirsky told me about Bob. Not the same, but true.

The story began for me as a kindergartner in the northwest Chicago suburb of Algonquin in 1975, the year I started following the Bulls, Cubs, White Sox, Blackhawks, and Bears. In those days, the easiest way for a kid learn about the teams was to get a pack of sports cards at the local White Hen convenience store, a courtesy permitted by my mother when I accompanied her on errands.

It was an interesting time for a childor anyone, for that matterto begin watching the Bears. The team did not simply press the reset button in 1975; they pounded it in frustration. Owner George Halas hired a new general manager when the previous season had ended, a new coach by January, and thirty-four new players come September. The 1975 Bears were laden with a bevy of rookiesWalter Payton, Mike Hartenstine, Virgil Livers, Bob Thomas, Revie Sorey, Bob Avellini, Tom Hicks, Roger Stillwell, Doug Plank, Roland Harper, and seven other first-year playersin addition to seventeen veteran free agents or trade acquisitions who also made the club.

The inevitable struggle ensued. After the running back Payton netted zero rushing yards on eight carries in his opening-day debut (which prompted me to ask my kindergarten teacher whether she thought the Bears should keep him), I agonized as the young team took regular beatings week after week. If enough diehards had pushed through the turnstiles at Soldier Field to keep a home game from being blacked out on television, I peeked at the screen through my hands, yearning to one day join the Bears and help themalthough I confessed to my parents the fear of being tackled by Jack Lambert of the Pittsburgh Steelers. My parents soothed me as they always did, pointing out that Mr. Lambert would likely not be playing in the National Football League by the time I got there.

Things got a little better in 1976 as I reached grade school. That October, I went to the nearby Crystal Point Mall to get autographed photos from backup quarterback Virgil Carter and the kicker Thomas. With a smile, Mr. Thomas assured me that the Bears were indeed getting better and suggested I come out and see them play in person sometime.

With each passing year through childhood, my surveillance of Chicago sports teams grew into a daily, incessant scrutinybordering on the pathological.

Summer days were spent at the Algonquin Pool and its adjoining baseball fields, located just a few blocks from my house on the old east side of town. My friends and I played pickup baseball games in the mornings so that by 1 p.m. we could get to the poolwhere the lifeguard grew tired of my regular requests to turn up the volume on the Cubs WGN broadcast emanating from the snack bar. Later in the afternoon, as soon as Vince Lloyd told me that Frank Taveras had grounded out to end the Pirates half of the fifth inning, I grabbed my towel, hopped on my bike, and sped home to make sure I saw the first pitch to Manny Trillo in the bottom of the fifth.

In the evening it was time for the White Sox. Via the secret radio under my bed (which my parents actually knew about), a late-night bonus was presented if the team was playing on the West Coast. The exciting stories in the dark continued during the wintertime, as I was levitated off to the Pacific shore when Bulls broadcaster Jim Durham announced, Wilbur Holland just hit one from the Twilight Zone! against the Lakers in Los Angeles.

With major-league baseball games televised daily in the Chicago area, I took them for granted when I was a kid. I even occasionally missed a few. But I never missed a Bears game.

I can honestly attest that from 1975 until I left for college thirteen years later, there was only one Bears contest I did not follow on TV or radio. The date was December 4, 1983, when I begrudgingly attended my churchs youth group retreat for eighth graders. The staff at St. Margaret Mary School made it clear we would have no recreational connection to the outside world over the weekend, thus preventing me from catching even a glimpse of the Bears game at Green Bay.

Considering the fanaticism Ive just described, one might assume my greatest day as a young Bears fan occurred just over two years later, on January 26, 1986. It did not. I simply expected another triumph on that date, as on every Sunday for the previous four months. A coronation took place that day in New Orleansnot a Super Bowl.

Instead, my greatest Bears day was December 18, 1977.

Joining my second-grade class at St. Margarets that fall was a boy named Jeff Mitchell. Before long, Jeff and I were debating pro football with an intensity rivaling the pre-game shows on television. Waiting until the teacher had turned toward the chalkboard, we pulled out our copies of All-Pro Football Stars 1977obtained through our classrooms Scholastic Book Club programto locate our next talking points.