Bleaker and bleaker

 You might want to cover your ears now, if you are inclined to civil discourse. The Blob is going to cuss for awhile here.

Dammit. Dammit. Dammit, dammit, dammit ... DAMMIT.

Gale Sayers is dead.

He passed today at 77, and 2020 can kiss my wrinkly old-man ass. It's been nothing but a neon prick of a son of a bitch since it blew in at midnight on January 1, and now it's hauled off and darkened my childhood Sunday afternoons yet again. And dammit, dammit, dammit, DAMMIT.

Told ya I was gonna cuss some.

I do it here because I'm way past civil discourse at this point, and that's because No. 40 was No. 1 and always will be. He and Butkus were the only reasons to watch the early NFL game in these parts in the late '60s, when the Bears were mostly wretched and you could fit all the logos of the NFL teams on one seat cushion. (I know. I had one.) Life, and football, were simpler then, and less bizarre.

Well. Except for that crazy Fran Tarkenton, who ran around back there like a chicken with his head cut off and didn't act anything like a quarterback was supposed to act.

Sayers, though ... that man was pure art. There has never been a running back before or since who ran through defenses with such fluid grace, seeming to move in slow motion even in full flight. His most breathtaking excursions should have been set to Mozart. 

Don't even try to argue with me on this. You will lose.

That his career numbers are so modest (4,956 yards and 39 touchdowns) owes less to his artistry than to the crudities of orthopedic medicine in the 1960s. Two knee injuries that wouldn't have derailed his career in 2020 wrecked his, limiting him to just seven seasons and 68 games. Twice, in 1966 and 1969, he rushed for more than 1,000 yards, then the benchmark for running backs in the NFL. He also caught 112 passes for 1,307 yards and nine more touchdowns.

Throw in eight return touchdowns, and in 68 games he scored 56 touchdowns, for a football team that won more than seven games only once in his seven seasons -- his rookie year in 1965, when the Bears went 9-5. It was a whole lot of 7-7, 6-8 and 1-13 thereafter.

Not that the essence of Gale Sayers ever was about numbers.

It was about a man who played football the way Baryshnikov would have played it, for a team that was not the Bolshoi but the Hooterville Ballet And Repertory Company. 

And now 2020 has taken him. 

Cover your ears. It's time to cuss some more.