The best story about Dick Butkus, the one that summed up the fight in him and the flight response in others, had to do with the poor slobs who made the unfortunate mistake of harassing the football star’s girlfriend one day at Chicago Vocational High School.
Butkus was in full pads for practice when he noticed four guys giving Helen Essenberg, his future wife, a hard time. What happened next was recounted in a 1993 Sports Illustrated story by Rick Telander, now a Sun-Times columnist:
