ProCase Sports

During the fall of 1999, Chicago Bear fans had a growing concern about the health of what many would consider the greatest Bear of all time. Walter Payton had been battling the toughest opponent of his life, cancer.

At the time, Walter was in a hospital under a different name as an attempt to keep his condition quiet. But word had made its way into Halas Hall that Walter didn’t have long to live. During the last week of October, I received a phone call from Tony Medlin the Bear’s equipment manager. Tony asked me to design a patch to honor Walter, and it had to be completed right away! The Bears wanted to wear this patch on their game jerseys for the rest of the season following Walter’s passing.

Now ProCase’s shop has been located inside of American Outfitters Ltd.’s building since 1995. American Outfitters and ProCase have been a great fit and have had a great working relationship since the beginning. Besides having my business located inside of American Outfitters, I’ve also been a sales rep for them and have previously worked with them to complete many projects for the Bears organization over the years.

I brought the Bear’s patch request back to the Rettig family (owners of American Outfitters) and they went to work on it. Their graphic designers created three different patches for the Bears to choose from. The Bears chose the patch shaped like a football with Walter’s number 34 right in the middle it. The Bears ordered 500 patches, most were to be used by the Bears and a certain number of patches were sent to Walter’s college Jackson State.

I gave the Bears my word that only 500 patches would be made with no extras. I knew this would be a target for collectors, so my wife and I laid all the patches out on our kitchen table and numbered each one of them. I had also asked the Bears for an original stamp that I could mark each patch with, which they gladly provided.

I wanted to make sure that no one would be able to create knock-offs of this item. It’s amazing how dishonest people try to profit during these situations. In the coming years, I noticed someone at the Chicago Bears convention selling replicas of these patches for ten dollars each, while claiming that he made them for the Bears… what a liar! To this day some of these dishonest people try to sell knockoff patches online.

While ProCase and American Outfitters were manufacturing the patches, I received phone calls from a few different television sports anchormen. All of them were asking me if they could have a patch to show on their newscast on the night Walter passed. I didn’t provide any of them with one, I was not going to be dishonest to the Bears organization. However, WGN did come to American Outfitters to film the patches while they were being embroidered.

Walter Payton passed away from his battle with cancer on November 1, 1999. The Bear’s next game after his passing was on November 7th against their archrival Green Bay Packers in Green Bay. The Bears wore the Payton patch in what was a tightly contested game. The Bears held a very slim one-point lead, the score was 14-13. In the final seconds, Green Bay was attempting a field goal that would win them the game. However, Bryan Robinson would have none of that, he blocked the kick and the Bears went on to win the game!

Many have said that Walter had something to do with the kick being blocked!