Doug Flutie would like Chicago to know there is a logicalreason why hocus rhymes with pocus. He wants us to remember his nameis Doug Flutie, not Doug Henning. Magic, he warns, is forcharlatans.
"It does bother me a little bit," he says of the reputationthat escapes like a startled dove every time he takes his hat off inpublic. "It's cute. It's nice and the whole bit. But people almostplay it off as though it's not a real talent - that you don't haveability, that you're lucky - that it's not real football when I dosomething."
Trouble is, Chicago would like Doug Flutie to know it expectsnothing less than another Super Bowl next month. Hail Mary. OpenSesame. And plunk your magic twanger. But just get it done, son.
Presto chango!
It is Saturday afternoon, the day before Flutie will run forone touchdown against Tampa Bay, throw for another and make SoldierField buzz like a giant apiary. He is with his parents, who havearrived from Massachusetts.
Richard Flutie is an engineer for Digital EquipmentCorporation, the same company that made the computers that said his5-9 son was too short to play in the NFL. Joan Flutie has beenRichard's "steady" every since they were 12. They are much moreenergetic than Ma and Pa Kent. So after pizza, Doug and wife Lauriewhisk Richard and Joan off to the planet Photon.
Photon is a futuristic space game emporium in Palatine. Theobject in Photon is to "zap" your opponents and your opponents' base.The four Fluties strap on helmets, battery packs and detectors. Theyfamiliarize themselves with their lasers.
"I was thinking to myself as we were doing this," RichardFlutie says later, "if the people in Chicago only knew that Doug hasnever changed. He loves this kind of stuff. Playing games with hisbrothers, his parents, his sister, friends, anybody. He loves to doit."
Doug's team wins. "It's a strange gift he has," his motherexplains.
Later that night he attends a team meeting and adjourns to hishotel suite with his playbook and roommate, wide receiver KeithOrtego. Flutie studies the playbook and asks questions while Ortegowatches a movie about kids and lasers called "Real Genius." Has that magic Ortego describes Flutie as "pretty much likeanybody else." But in the next breath he admits, "Doug's got magic.I really don't know how to explain it. But I wish I could get someof it."
"Plus," says Richard Flutie, "he's the next door type guy."
Two years ago the National Bureau of Statistics in Hyattsville,Md., listed the average height and weight of the American malebetween ages 18 and 74 as 5-9, 172. That's exactly what the NewJersey Generals listed Flutie at on their roster. His mother insistshe's 5-10.
The Bears now say he has bulked up to 176. His size 42 jerseyis not the smallest on the team. He wears a 9 1/2 football shoe anda 7 1/4 helmet. "He's small,' says equipment manager Ray Earley. "Butwe've got three or four guys that small."
Men like Flutie because they can identify with his struggle.Women are attracted to his boyish good looks. "But he's a one-womanman," warns a family member. And that woman is the former LaurieFortier, his high school sweetheart.
Children draw to him because he radiates ease. "He's too goodto be true," his mother says. And she isn't complaining.
Flutie understands better than most why people respond to him the way they do. "It makes the average person feel like they wouldhave a shot at doing it," he says. "But I don't look at it that way.I'm a football player. I've been playing football all my life."
When he was 8, the athletically precocious Flutie drew crowds inMelbourne Beach (Fla.) for Midget League football games. "Sometimeshe would do things the officials just couldn't comprehend," says hisfather.
As a sophomore at Natick (Mass.) High School he kicked a 38-yardfield goal with no time remaining to beat Braintree 27-25. Notespecially remarkable except it was his first field goal attempt andhe had to convince Natick coach Tom Lamb to give him the opportunity.
In his junior year at Boston College, Clemson and William Perryled Flutie and BC 16-3 in the third quarter. In a 13-minute spanFlutie directed four touchdown drives. Boston College won 31-16."Doug Flutie has got some kind of magic in him," Boston College coachJack Bicknell said after the game. "Flutie was so little," Perrysaid. "He was hard to get to."
Then, of course, there was the Miami game his senior year. Awhole generation of non-parochial sports fans now think the "HailMary" is the 48-yard touchdown pass Flutie flung to wide receiverGerard Phelan on the last play of the game to beat the Hurricanes andBernie Kosar 47-45.
But the "Hail Mary" is a prayer. To longtime Flutie watchers,his game-winning pass was not. "What people don't realize is Doug'sgot a gun for an arm and he's a bright kid," says his father. "Don'tthey give any points for that?"
Nevertheless, the enchanted legend of Doug Flutie grew fasterthan Merlin's garden. "That wasn't Gerard Phelan that caught thatball," said Boston College offensive lineman Mark MacDonald. "Godcaught that ball."
"No," corrected BC teammate Jim Ostrowski. "God threw it."
"Give Flutie a chance and you often get near a miracle,"Newsweek proclaimed.
"Doug Flutie never loses," said Dallas personnel boss GilBrandt. "He only runs out of time."
The Patriots cut Phelan this year. So he was home inMassachusetts last week when he saw the highlights of Flutie'sChicago debut. Like Flutie, he winced when he heard about the spellChicago is under.
"The roller coaster is starting back up the hill," Phelan said."But he's not a magician. I think it's very unfair when people usethe word magic. He works very hard at knowing the game of football."
"It's an awful burden," says Bob Woolf, Flutie's Boston-basedagent.
If anything, Flutie is more magical off the football field thanon. And the source of that magic is his common touch. "I've alwaysreacted that way to him," Joan Flutie says. "It's something in him.I never knew what it was. There isn't a mean bone in his body and hejust exuberates it. You just feel it when you talk to him, when yousee him." Great expectations Too good to be true, his mother had said.And again he is the bearer of expectations, perhaps greater than hecan deliver. "I don't know how things are gonna work out in the longrun." he says. "Or whether or not I'll be here even next year or twoyears down the road. But all you can ask for is opportunity."
After Boston College, the opportunity was in the USFL. Flutiespent 1985 with the New Jersey Generals because Manhattan real estatetycoon Donald Trump wanted to cash in on the Flutie phenomenon thatpeaked in 1984, the year he won the Heisman Trophy.
Trump made Flutie a multimillion dollar offer he couldn'trefuse. And at a subsequent press conference USFL commissioner HarryUsher malapropped that Flutie's impact on the new league would be"unspeakable and immeasurable."
But Generals coach Walt Michaels wasn't a Flutie fan. Teamowner Trump forced Michaels to play him anyway and Flutie threw 13touchdown passes in nine games.
The only thing unspeakable about that season was the pain thatshot through Flutie's left shoulder in his 10th game when astrikingly swift defensive end named Reggie White chased him downfrom behind and broke his collarbone. End of season.
Trump, meanwhile, acquired a newer and bigger toy inquarterback Jim Kelly. Suddenly Flutie's future was even moreuncertain than the USFL's. But one thing led to another, as italways does with Doug Flutie.
Trump and Flutie settled on his personal services contract.The Rams traded Flutie's NFL rights to the Bears. The Bears signedhim Oct. 21. They activated him Nov. 4. And Bear coach Mike Ditka,Flutie's Chinaman from the beginning, sprung Flutie on Chicago lastSunday.
"Joan says that Doug has a star that follows him around," saysRichard Flutie. "And I think that might be true."
At Boston College Flutie had gone from fourth-string to starterin a week. In the USFL he went from rookie to regular in less timethat it takes to memorize a new formation. Now Ditka is hintingFlutie could make his first Bear start by next week in Dallas.
"Maybe I can't lead a team to the Super Bowl," Flutie says."But I don't believe that."
If Flutie does take the Bears to their second Super Bowl in twoyears, he will have to beat out second-year free agent Mike Tomczak.The Bears have won all six of Tomczak's starts this year. AndTomczak has won the unfailing support of his offensive linemen. Healso has the blessing of the injured Jim McMahon.
Loyalty counts for a lot in the male bonding process that goeson in the NFL. And Tomczak is every bit as likeable as Flutie. It'sjust that Flutie is impossible to dislike. "Nobody ever had anyanimosity for Doug here," Ortego says. "And he knew that."
But tight end-comic Tim Wrightman isn't so sure he likes theway Flutie delivers the football. "He throws the ball on a line,"Wrightman says. "I wish he'd put a little more air under it. Maybefrom his angle he thinks he is putting air under it." Zing.
But even Ortego acknowledges difficulty in catching the heavy,"tight" spiral Flutie throws. "The seams can rip you up pretty good,"he says. "You have to make sure you catch his ball on your fingertipsinstead of letting it get into your palms."
And then there's this odd, almost sidearm, way Flutie has ofthrowing while running to his left. His 27-yard touchdown pass toPayton against the Bucs was a case in point. It is one of the fewconcessions Flutie makes to his size.
"It's instinctive," he says. "If you do it by the book, youturn your right shoulder and you cock back up the field and throw theball."
Problem is, he says, "you get plastered all the time from theright side if someone's chasing you."
If his new teammates didn't blame Flutie for the Bear frontoffice's apparent failure to support Tomczak, they didn't hitch uptheir welcome wagon to his star either.
Flutie understood. The day the Bears signed him, they quietlywaived wide receiver Ken Margerum, a close friend of McMahon's. Whenequipment manager Earley later offered Flutie Margerum's locker,Flutie wisely and politely declined. Too much frost left over fromthe chilly reception.
The first notable thaw was running back Walter Payton. Paytonsensed the same child-like quality in Flutie that had enabled him tolast 12 years in a viciously adult environment. "He's always walkingup behind you, goosing you," Flutie says of Payton.
Two years ago Flutie had told a reporter, "I want to be a kidmy whole life." Last week he told another one, "I wouldn't mind if wecame in and practiced twice a day."
Payton liked that. Quicker than you can say Smurf, they werekindred spirits. "All along Walter's sort of been the guy who says,`Hey, don't worry about what other people say, what other people do,just do your own thing,' " Flutie says. "It made me feel that muchbetter when it was Walter who came down with that catch." On Ditka's frequency
Clearly Ditka and Flutie are also "on the same page," to usethe coaching idiom. Flutie's four-yard touchdown sweep-sprintagainst Tampa Bay last Sunday was an example.
"I never said a thing to coach Ditka about it," said Flutieafter the game. "I just had a feeling that if we got into a goal linesituation, that would be the play he would call."
Last year Ditka painted his signature on a world championshipseason with a broad brush named William Perry. Now the strokes aresubtler. But Flutie's hue offers the sharpest contrast to a seasonin which so much energy got wasted on so much bickering. "Mike Ditkaplanned this like a mastermind," says Richard Flutie. Let Flutie prove it
Tell that to Ditka and he might spit in your eye. "I don'tprove anything," he says. "Doug Flutie will prove everything."
Chicago's greatest planner was Daniel Hudson Burnham. Burnhamdesigned the lakefront. And the city fathers later named a harborafter him. "Make no little plans," Burnham said before he died in1912. "They have no magic to stir men's blood."
Lourdes have mercy, there's that word again. "Magic."
McMahon's word is "Outrageous." Perry's is "Refrigerator"Payton's is "Sweetness." Michael Jordan's is "Air." Richard J.Daley's was "Boss." Maybe you have to have a word in this city inorder to have a name.
Like Payton, Flutie also has invested wisely, mostlyconservative stuff. But he does own a large chunk of "Flutie's Pier17," a seafood restaurant in Manhattan near Wall St. and the EastRiver. "The biggest portions I've ever seen in my life," he says."You go in there and you don't finish the meal."
Flutie never finished his vegetables at home. (Gasp! He's notperfect!) And his mother gave up forcing the issue long ago. Sherealized he ate only to live. And he lived to compete. Baseball,basketball, Photon. Name your game. "He's played sports every minuteof his life," Phelan says.
"Doug never in his life had any self-doubts," Joan Flutie says.Still, it's a tall order for a short football player. A simplemiracle will do.
Abracadabra!
The Bear offense has just come out of hibernation and scored 48points against Tampa Bay. But his parents have a plane to catch. SoDoug Flutie is driving almost as fast as he is talking.
"He never stopped," said his mother. "He went over the gameplay-by-play. What he did wrong. Not the things he did right. Whythey went wrong. What he could have done to make it not go wrong.He has to study more. He has to do this. He has to concentratemore. It's just unbelievable his drive for that sport. And that'scontagious."
Doug's team has won again.
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