A Death Before Closure

When Detroit Lions receiver Chuck Hughes lay dying on the football field at Tiger Stadium in October, 1971, felled by a massive heart attack, a strange thing occurred. Chicago Bears linebacker Dick Butkus frantically waved for medical help for the fallen Hughes. Yet Butkus, an enemy in Detroit as well as in every other NFL city, was at first deemed to somehow be responsible for Hughes's plight. All the fans saw was a prone Hughes, and the ferocious Butkus looming over him. They put 2 and 2 together, but in that instance, they didn't come up with 4.

Obviously, Butkus had nothing to do with Hughes's death. So there was nothing to reconcile.

I thought about Hughes and Butkus in reading about the death of former Patriots receiver Darryl Stingley, 55, the other day. Stingley was paralyzed from the neck down after a brutal, yet legal hit delivered by the Raiders' Jack Tatum in an exhibition game in 1978. Tatum, like Butkus, reveled in his reputation as a fear-invoking, nasty hitter. His nickname was The Assassin.



So when Tatum laid out Stingley, there was no question who was responsible for the receiver's injuries, legal hit or not. Naturally, everyone wondered how Tatum would handle the situation.
Apparently in Stingley's eyes, Tatum didn't handle it well enough. The two players never reconciled.

Stingley was to appear with Tatum in the late-1990s on the field, but he pulled out after learning the meeting was to partly promote Tatum's new book. Stingley sharply criticized Tatum for his seeming lack of compassion in the days immediately following the hit. That, combined with Tatum's reluctance to publicly express genuine concern or formulate an apology, put the Assassin on Stingley's bad side forever.

Even now, I haven't heard a peep from Tatum regarding Stingley's death. Maybe it's out there and I just haven't read it. Maybe not.

How Stingley died is still, at this point, unknown. He was found unresponsive and pronounced dead on arrival. But there's little doubt that his death at the relatively young age of 55 has something to do with his horrific injury.

Darryl Stingley, I don't think, ever truly forgave Jack Tatum for the hit that changed his life forever. And Tatum never offered any real apology or remorse, at least not to Stingley's satisfaction.

Another thing is for sure: it's too late now.