There is a big difference between Mike Ditka and Dave Wannstedt. Ditka wanted to win like nobody else. He hurt, as the fans did, when the Bears lost to the Packers; those battles were not “just another game.” You felt tension in the air; the rivalry was alive, something that made Sundays great. He was, my friend, a Bear.
If you try to tell me this team Wannstedt and McCaskey have put together are “Bears” . . . It’s not the uniform that makes a player a Bear, it’s the pride he has in wearing it. Ditka’s team had that pride; Wannstedt’s team does not.
And if Bernie Lincicome (Tribune, Aug. 23) wants to blame someone for not winning more Super Bowls, he’d better go another step up the ladder. It wasn’t Ditka who got rid of Gault, Marshall, Wilson and Hilgenberg. It wasn’t Ditka who caused the divisive strike in 1987. And it wasn’t Ditka who slammed McMahon into the turf and ruined his arm.
