CHICAGO — Hall of Fame Bear Steve McMichael leaned all the way into being a Chicago legend.
So when McMichael was invited to sing during a seventh-inning stretch at Wrigley Field in August 2001, he tried to help the home team in the way he knew how.
“Hey, don’t worry; I’ll have some speaks with that home plate umpire after the game,” the imposing McMichael told the crowd as he led them in boos directed at notorious umpire Ángel Hernández. McMichael was ejected — and the Cubs won.
McMichael, an outsized presence in the city after serving on the menacing defensive line of the 1985 Super Bowl champion Bears, died Wednesday at 67 following years of living with ALS. He is survived by his wife and daughter.
The progressive disease saw the larger-than-life figure decline, ultimately leaving him bedridden and unable to speak.
But the man known as “Mongo” held onto his spirit.
“You know what’s best in the human condition? Compassion. Not warrior, not competitor, not alpha,” McMichael said in a 2021 WGN interview after his diagnosis. “What’s going on in the world today, you kind of lose faith in that, don’t ya? But everyone that comes into my presence, now that I’m in this condition, that’s the first thing I see on their face, and man, it reinvigorates your belief in humanity.”
McMichael was surrounded by his former Bears teammates at his home in August when he was inducted into the Hall of Fame after fans petitioned to give him football’s golden honor. McMichael was a Bear for 13 seasons and ranks second in team history in sacks and games played.
Betsy Shepherd, McMichael’s longtime publicist, said the last words he said to her were “Hall of Fame.”
“It was everything to him. And he deserved it. He was always the unspoken hero of that team,” Shepherd said. “It encouraged him to stay alive.”
McMichael died four years to the day he went public with his ALS diagnosis, Shepherd said.
After his football career ended in 1994, McMichael found a match for his personality as a professional wrestler and commentator, winning the United States championship belt as a member of the famed “Four Horsemen” stable in World Championship Wrestling in 1997.
The defensive tackle from Texas moved back to the Chicago area in 2000 “to be around his fans,” Shepherd said. In 2013, he ran for mayor of suburban Romeoville, losing out but collecting 39 percent of the vote.
Around the city, McMichael frequented fundraisers for first responders and pediatric hospitals, said Shepherd, who called McMichael more of a “teddy bear.”
“I could take Steve anywhere in Chicago, it could be a classroom, a men’s club, an assisted living center, and he knew how to play to the audience,” Shepherd said. “He was one of a kind.”
Tributes to McMichael have poured in online, stretching from Bears chairman George H. McCaskey to wrestler Ric Flair.
“I was at a Bears event as a kid, and I yelled at Steve McMichael, ‘Screw the Packers.’ He came over to me & put his hand on my shoulder & said, ‘son you shouldn’t use that language, it is f—k the Packers,’” one fan wrote on social media.
Pat Fowler, owner of Candlelite, 7452 N. Western Ave., rewrote the pizza tavern’s hand-lettered marquee Wednesday: “RIP Mongo!”
“Us Chicagoans, we hang onto those ’85 Bears, they’re still legends to this day,” Fowler said. “We grew up on Mongo stories. He was a fighter.”
On that notorious day at Wrigley in 2001, McMichael had nothing stronger than Mountain Dew in his cup, Shepherd said.
McMichael left the stadium with no regrets and, the next day, got a 20-year contract to appear on ESPN, she said.
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