Jeff Pearlman - Gunslinger: The Remarkable, Improbable, Iconic Life of Brett Favre

Copyright 2016 by Jeff Pearlman

All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

www.hmhco.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

Cover design by Brian Moore

Cover photograph Mitchell Layton

e ISBN 978-0-544-45367-8
v1.0916

To Michael J. Lewis

The Jo-Jo Townsell of writers, the Jerald Sowell of proofreaders,

the Ryan Yarborough of fathers, the Paul Frase of husbands.

And a remarkable friend.

(Moment of silence for Dennis Bligen.)

We were up north in Wisconsin, deer hunting, and we went to this bar called Hilltop. And every bar had strippers. So we walked inseven of usand Brett had a hat pulled on low. Its just packed inside, and all of a sudden somebody picked up that Brett Favre was in there. All these people started coming up, asking him for autographs. I was like, You know what? Hes not here to do fucking autographs. Get lost. We had our own little corner and the people just wouldnt leave us alone. So I go, Brett, fuck it. Lets let the guy get on the fucking PA and say youre signing autographs for $50. Anyone who wants an autograph, its $50. And hes gonna sign until all your shit is done, then leave us alone. So the guy gets on the fucking microphone$50, Bretts signing autographs! It was all guys. No women at allexcept the strippers. It wasnt a strip club, it was a normal bar. But during deer-hunting opening weekend all the bars had strippers. So Brett signs, probably, Christ, he had to sign over 100 items, easily. And you know what he did? He took the fucking money, rolled it up in a ball, and he threw it at the bartenders. Every fucking dime. Seriously. Every penny. It was the coolest thing Ive ever seen, and it was total Brett Favre.

KEVIN BURKEL ,
owner, Burkels One Block Over sports bar,
Green Bay, Wisconsin

B RETT FAVRE has a Superman shield tattooed on his left biceps. He has hairy arms and crooked knees. Brett Favre is a lousy texter. His grammar is awful. Hes probably the worst tipper known to humanity. Its not because hes overwhelmingly cheap. He just doesnt like carrying money.

Brett Favre is a bad dancer and an even worse basketball player. Brett Favre used to know all the words to Rappers Delightthe 14-minute, 35-second version. One of his favorite lines is, If the chicken had lips, hed whistle. He also used to say someone was sweating like Shaq at the line.

His favorite hat color was, for many years, red. Now its beige. His favorite beer was Miller Lite; his favorite dip was Copenhagen. He likes eating crushed pineapple from a can. Brett Favre is mediocre with names, fantastic with nicknames. Mark Chmura was Chewey, Cary Brabham was Catfish, Patrick Ivey was Poison. For nearly a year he thought Rob Davis, the Packers long snapper, was named Ron. One day he wondered why Ron Davis never responded when he asked him a question.

Because, a teammate told him, youre saying the wrong fucking name.

Brett Favre is missing 30 inches of his small intestine. Its the by-product of a car accident that happened before his senior year of college, and as a result, he produces the worst-smelling gas in the history of civilization. The scent has been described as skunk, crushed worm, rotten milk mixed with squid, and, best of all, death.

Brett Favre loved LeRoy Butler, tolerated Sterling Sharpe, had little use for Aaron Rodgers. His all-time favorite coach is Mike Holmgren, his all-time least favorite coach is Brad Childress. He threw the football so insanely hard that Derrick Mayes, a Packers wide receiver, has mangled pieces of fleshy barbed wire doubling as fingers. Cant even tell you how many he broke, Mayes said. Favre used to be able to drive a golf ball in excess of 300 yards. His short game was awful. He once went hunting and finished off a deer that refused to die by submerging Bambis head in a pond.

These are the kinds of things a biographer knows, because when you speak with enough people (in this case, 573), you learn stuff. I can tell you every mailing address from Brett Favres life. I can tell you what the bushes outside his Green Bay house smell like. I can tell you how he spit, what cars he drove, what he ordered to eat the first time he visited Boston. There are facts upon facts upon facts.

They are interesting.

They are intriguing.

They mean little.

Theres this weird thing most of us do with celebrities. We meet them, we shake their hands, maybe we even exchange a few wordsand, therefore, we presume to know them. We assign adjectives to their personhoods based upon six minutes of interaction. Ice Cube is a jerk. Eddie Vedder is awesome. Kate Upton is an asshole. Peyton Manning is amazing. On and on and on, until we start to believe one can be wholly surmised in the 140-character Twitter allotment.

Its nonsense.

In many ways, a biography is a search for definition of character. You cant possibly re-create every moment, or enter the brain of a subject matter, or know precisely what someone was thinking at any particular moment. (This is something that has forever bothered me about sports media: Joey, what was going through your mind as you dunked that basketball? is a near-impossible question to actually answer.) What you can do is understand what causes a person to tick, and how he became who he ultimately became, and what he did to make the world a better, or worse, or more interesting place.

Which leads to two of my favorite Brett Favre stories...

First: In 2003 the Green Bay Packers hired a young coach named John Bonamego to serve as the special teams coordinator. He and his family moved down the street from the Favre household, on a cul-de-sac filled with kids who always looked for the quarterback. Bonamegos oldest son, Javi, was five, and easily impressionable.

One day Favre pulled the boy aside. Hey, Javi, you and I are buddies, right? he asked.

Yes! Javi said.

Great, Favre said. So theres this special hand signal, but its just for really close buddies to use to say hello to one another. I want to teach it to you, and any time I drive by you can do it to me. How does that sound?

Great! Javi said. Just for us buddies!

Right, Brett said. You have to keep it a secret, OK?

Yeah, Javi said. I wont tell anyone!

You promise? Favre said.

I promise! Javi replied.

Perfect, Favre said. So what you do is you hold your hand in a fist, like this, and then you just lift the middle finger so its all alone, and...

Second: When Favre was late in his time with the Packers, he learned of a Wisconsin boy named Anderson Butzine, who in February 2006 was diagnosed with ependymoma, a rare tumor of the brain and spinal cord. The quarterback wrote the child a letter, whichwhile cherished in the Butzine householdwas merely one of hundreds of notes Favre penned to the ill and infirm. I never saw Brett not respond to a person in need, says David Thomason, who handled much of the quarterbacks fan mail. He was amazing when it came to that.

As the years passed and his health worsened, the one thing Anderson clung to was his football hero. By the time he was five, he was not doing well, said Michelle Butzine, his mother. Anderson was bedridden, he couldnt move his arms, he couldnt speak, he was on a ventilator, he couldnt hold up his head. Thomason was updated on Andersons condition, and reminded Favre that there was a boy in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, who needed him. One day, out of the blue, Michelle was told that the quarterback (now a Viking) and his wife would like to fly in from Minnesota and visit their home. The year was 2010. The doorbell rings, she said, and theres this big guy, big smile on his face. When Anderson saw Favre, he excitedly lifted his right leg into the air. He was wearing a purple-and-yellow Vikings sock. It took such an effort, said Michelle, but he always loved the stinky-toes game, where wed pretend his feet smelled. She explained this to the Favres, and Brett bent to one knee, gently held Andersons right foot, took a whiff, and said, Aw, theyre not so bad. Favre spent three hours with Anderson, at one point sitting by his side and stroking the hair atop his head, whispering warm words into his ear. He complimented the different pictures Anderson had drawnmany featuring Favre in a Minnesota uniform, wearing a backward No. 4 (as the tumor progressed, Anderson struggled to write numbers correctly). It was the sweetest thing, said Michelle. Lots of people have heroes. Lots of people are fans. But to know your hero loves you as much as you love him... thats special.