Former Dallas Cowboy Walker still an enigma
Running back's revelation means there's more to him than we know01:21 AM CDT on Sunday, May 25, 2008
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Herschel Walker's story of his life with multiple personalities is bizarre. That's the only way to describe it.
Whether you read his book, Breaking Free: My Life with Dissociative Identity Disorder, or chat with him for 30 minutes like I did recently, his story remains strangely fascinating.
Actually, it reminds me of something my pastor does every few weeks in church.
He'll ask a man to stand up and then he'll tell the congregation, "You don't know his story and what he's overcome to get here today."
Or he'll ask a woman to stand, and he'll say, "You would never believe her story if I told it to you."
He might ask four or five people to stand before delivering the sermon, but his point is obvious: A lot of people overcome trials and tribulations, but you never have a clue because of the way they handle it.
Clearly, Herschel falls into that category.
Just about any reporter who covered Herschel during his 13-year NFL career, or any of his teammates, would tell you he was quirky. No one ever figured his occasional odd behavior was the result of having multiple personalities.
After all, Herschel had the perfect life. Or so it seemed.
He starred as a freshman at Georgia, won the Heisman Trophy as a junior and signed a mega-million deal with the New Jersey Generals of the now defunct United States Football League.
He earned millions and had a good NFL career, though he never reached the level of stardom most of us figured he would. Walker, who played six seasons in two stints with the Cowboys, gained 8,225 yards, averaged 4.2 yards per carry and scored 82 touchdowns.
He played in two Pro Bowls and was the central figure in one of the biggest trades in NFL history, when Dallas dealt him to Minnesota, laying the groundwork for the Cowboys' three Super Bowl wins in the '90s.
It's pretty obvious we didn't know his story.
We had no way of knowing the different personalities – perhaps as many as 15 – fighting for control of Herschel. Although he was running a successful food company in addition to several other business ventures, his personal life was in turmoil.
And his marriage was in trouble.
That's because he couldn't take control of his life. The waging personalities wouldn't let him.
At least twice, he played Russian roulette. At the time, he said, suicide was not part of his thought process.
"That's the ultimate game of winning and losing. Satan tried to fool me because the ultimate game of winning and losing is life and death," Herschel said. "This is God's guardian angel taking care of me until I could get help.
"They are fragments of my personality, so the real Herschel is all rolled into one. You try to consolidate them and put them together. You get them all in a board room, and you finally become the CEO like you're supposed to be."
These days, Walker is telling anyone and everyone about the mental condition he developed as a child to help him cope with his fears, and how he worked with doctors to control it.
See, Herschel was scared of the dark. And he stuttered. And kids made fun of him because he was chubby, which is hard to believe for someone who says he's been doing 1,500 pushups and situps daily for more than 20 years.
Most of all, Herschel wants people to know that his condition has nothing to do with movies like Sybil or The Three Faces of Eve . He would even like for you to understand that having multiple personalities can be a positive, if harnessed properly.
I'm not sure I buy that, even though he seems fine these days.
"There's no such thing as normal," Herschel said. "There's too many variables in life for anyone to think they know what is normal."