Necessary Roughness

 Back in the mid-seventies, a young struggling screenwriter was searching for just the right name for a dog in his script about a fighter who frequented a pet shop in order to woo the mousy young lady who worked there. He landed on "Butkus." 

It is quite possible that many people know of "Butkus" from this reference and this reference only. That young screenwriter who grew up to write several more screenplays, each with successive connections to reality, was paying homage to Dick Butkus, the Chicago Bears linebacker who was referred to as “The Most Feared Man in the Game.” The game was American football, and there was a reason Mister Butkus was feared. He was in a word, relentless. He was accused of biting offensive players on their fingers and legs and spitting on them. His nine years in the National Football League were marked by the intimidation he brought to the field each and every game. 

Dick Butkus passed away this past week at the age of eighty. One might imagine that he probably gave the Grim Reaper a couple good shots before being hauled off to the gridiron in the sky. 

It is also quite possible that your initial encounter with Dick Butkus was the series of commercials he did for Lite Beer. Or maybe you saw him appear in countless TV shows and films as himself or a facsimile of himself: The Robot of Destruction, The Maestro of Mayhem, The Enforcer, The Animal. Those last two became titles of a Dirty Harry movie and a regrettable comedy featuring Rob Schneider. Neither of which did any sort of remote justice to the legend that was Dick Butkus. 

So, this is the place where I confess that my initial peeks at professional football did not include any Chicago Bears games. But when I played football in the back yard of the kid who lived down the street, sometimes his older brother would come out "to play defense." And somewhere in the midst of tossing us much smaller kids around, he would eventually invoke the name "Butkus!" It was a war cry. It signaled triumph and pain. 

And I learned to fear it.

It wasn't until later that it occurred to me just how funny that name actually is: Dick Butkus. But I won't say that too loud, just in case Mister Butkus is lurking nearby, having faked his death as a strategy to sneak up on anyone who might disrespect him or his legacy. Dick Butkus stomped on the Midway and the Terra, and he will be missed every time someone is flagged for unnecessary roughness. That was the way he lived. Aloha.