Pain and Hampton Aren’t Strangers, More Like Friends

NEW ORLEANS —  If Picasso painted a portrait of a pair of hands, they would look like Dan Hampton’s.

Fingers take wrong turns and knuckles bulge out in a variety of unusual shapes and sizes. These hands look as if they were put together by an amateur plumber using spare parts.

Hampton plays six musical instruments, and the way his fingers jut and twist, he probably can play all six at once.

Dan Hampton, 6-5 and 267 pounds, also plays defensive end for the Chicago Bears, and he is considered the premier player at his position in pro football. He has been a big star in all seven of his seasons as a Bear, and he has taken some big knocks.

The hands are just the beginning. The rest of the body, from the neck down, is a road map of Hampton’s hard times.

Listen, I realize pro football is a brutal game. Players get pounded like cheap steak. They all play in pain, then they all limp off into the sunset.

Hampton, however, is a freak even by pro football’s ghoulish standards of pain tolerance and bodily abuse.

In fact, if you are trying to build a case for the Chicago Bears being real Monsters of the Midway, symbols of raw, frontier-style toughness, Dan Hampton would be Exhibit A.

Don’t be fooled by the face. It is unlined and unmarked, and all the teeth are original issue. And you won’t hear him complain about the aches and pains.

“I grew up in the country, and it (ignoring pain) was something you did,” Hampton says. “If you got snake-bit, or kicked by a horse, you didn’t go to the doctor, you took care of it yourself.”

Like the time on his family’s farm outside Little Rock, when dad rotated the pastures, moving the barbed-wire fences around. Young Dan didn’t learn about the changes until he rode his bicycle full tilt through a section of the fence.

“I knew if I went to the doctor he’d take about 200 stitches, so I laid in the bathtub and bled for a while, then put some medicine on it,” Hampton says.

Later that same year, Dan and his brother Matt were playing in a tree. Matt was hanging from a rope, shooting at Dan with a BB gun. Dan, a knife clenched in his teeth, climbed out on a high limb, intending to cut Matt’s rope.

The branch snapped. So did both of Dan’s legs, and an arm.

“My mom backed the station wagon out of the garage and called the clinic, but the doctor wasn’t there,” he says. “So I laid in the back of that station wagon for two hours until the clinic called back to say that the doctor was in.

“The doctor said I would never be able to run without discomfort again. My right heel was crushed, they took 60% of it out and put pins in.”

He was learning about pain. At Arkansas, Hampton played one entire game with three ribs cracked clean off his breastbone.

“I didn’t think about it during a play, but as soon as the play was over it felt like someone was sticking a knife in you,” he says.

The other Bears marvel at Hampton’s ability to deal with pain. They call him Danimal. It’s not that he doesn’t feel pain the way normal human beings do; it’s just that he can push it aside for a few seconds at a time, long enough to deal with pesky quarterbacks and running backs.

“I hurt like everybody else,” Hampton says. “I lay in bed at night and I hurt. But in the game, during a play, I don’t. It’s something I can block out. I get all the pain I want, but between the snap and the whistle, I just don’t feel it.

“Something that bothers this guy here doesn’t bother me at all.”

He is pointing directly at me when he says that, although the last joint of his index finger veers off and points at the ceiling. I am quietly miffed. How does Hampton know that I can’t play in pain?

“The mind controls the body,” he continues. “I couldn’t imagine running a marathon, blocking out the pain for three hours. That’s asinine.”

Hampton can’t forecast the weather with his bones and joints, but he doesn’t have to look outside to see if the sun is shining.

“When we went to Atlanta this season, the first day it was raining and I was miserable. I felt like I was 85 years old. The next day it was sunny, and I felt like I was 18.”

The body, unfortunately, has a way of remembering old injuries, of storing them up like film footage and replaying the pain from time to time the rest of your life. Hampton is in for quite a film festival.

“But it’ll be worth it,” he says. “I saw a Mountain Dew commercial on TV the other day. You see a guy running like hell and jumping into some water. I thought, ‘I remember when I could do that.’

“You got to sacrifice a lot to play this game, and it’s been worth it to me.”

Sure, he can say that now. Going into the biggest game of his life, Hampton happens to feel like a million bucks.

One knee is swollen with fluid from a cartilage tear a few games back--”A cartilage tear sounds like a broom handle breaking,” he says--and one ankle is swollen with blood, but other than that. . . .

I could tell you more, like the time Hampton’s left ring finger was jammed a couple of inches back up into his hand, and he played on. But I think you get the picture, and besides, I’m developing a hellacious blister on one of my typing fingers.