“I never set out to hurt anyone deliberately – unless it was, you know, important, like a league game or something.”
Dick Butkus was a tough, nasty linebacker at a time when the NFL as a whole was pretty tough and nasty but as the quote above relays, he also had a pretty good sense of humor and knew his Shakespeare, too. You’d be hard pressed to find an opposing player who appreciated those things, though.
Butkus was a menace to quarterbacks. A monster to running backs and a danger to receivers who dared cross his path.
A Butkus jersey is about as close as you can get to appreciating one of the NFL’s truly legendary players and Heritage Auctions has one such animal in its recently launched Fall Sports Catalog Auction.
The deep blue Chicago Bears jersey dates to the 1970 season, when Butkus earned his second of back-to-back Defensive Player of the Year awards. He was, as Sports Illustrated called him for its cover story that fall, “The Most Feared Man in the Game.”
“I get my charge out of hitting people,” he told writers after winning the DPOY award for 1970.
The jersey’s history takes you to the city of Chicago at the time Butkus was terrorizing rivals and the Halas and McCaskey names were synonymous with football there. Former Chicago Bulls and Chicago Sting equipment manager Willy Steinmiller’s letter of provenance reveals that he “picked this jersey up from Virginia’s house in Des Plaines, IL, in 1971.” Virginia McCaskey was Halas’ daughter.
The jersey has been matched to a photo shoot in August of 1970 when the image that would become Butkus’ 1972 Topps football card was taken.
It carries the King O’Shea manufacturing label and according to MEARS, which has given the jersey an A10 rating, shows several team repairs and some soiling is still visible from use.
The jersey is expected to sell for $50,000 or more.
Bidding ends Oct. 5.
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