Where can you find the all-time leading receiver in Bears history? Johnny Morris is hiding in plain ·

19 May 2024, 00:00

A familiar face sits in a corner booth of a bar at Arlington Park, carefully studying the racing form. But this is not just another railbird.

In the 100 years of Bears football, no one other than George Halas and Mike Ditka have had longer, stronger associations with the team than this man. Fifty-two years after he stopped playing, Johnny Morris remains the Bears’ all-time leading receiver. And 26 years after he stopped broadcasting, he also is arguably the most popular sportscaster in Chicago history.

He looks splendid, almost how he looked when he was on TV, and he has the same youthful voice. But he’s 83 now, and he walks like a man who has asked a lot from his body.

If it seems like you haven’t heard much about Morris, it’s because you haven’t. His name these days often is preceded by the phrase, “Whatever happened to…” Not long ago, he was referred to on a local radio show as “the late Johnny Morris.”

After earning the right to live life as he pleased, Morris retired from WBBM-TV at the age of 59.

“I wanted to play the horses,” he says. “I was burned out. I was tired. I was working six days a week. I did the 5, 6 and 10 (newscasts). I didn’t need the money anymore. I figured I might as well live out my life and enjoy it.”

He rarely does interviews. In fact, he only agreed to an in-depth interview with The Athletic after three years of requests.

“This is an exception,” he says of being interviewed. “I feel my time has come and gone. I just want to live a quiet life. I’m just happy the way I am.”

He hardly ever makes public appearances, but has committed to attend the Bears 100 Celebration — billed as the largest gathering of Chicago Bears ever — which takes place June 7-9 at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont. He is going because he is grateful to the team that took a chance on him. Morris is expected to be the second-oldest Bear in attendance, younger only than 89-year-old Bill McColl.

If you want to find Morris, check the track first. He’s usually there four or five days a week. You also might find him at the movies (he loved “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “A Star Is Born”) or at a Blackhawks game (he’s a season ticket holder). You can’t text or email him. He doesn’t have a computer or a smart phone. There is no need for him to be so available.

In recent years he had his left hip and right knee replaced. A left knee replacement probably is coming. He exercises every other day and his health is excellent considering what he did for a living.

When he was working out in 1982, he felt a strange sensation in his head. He had a brain aneurysm that left him unconscious for several days and hospitalized for three months.

But ever since, his brain has served him well. He believes playing the ponies helps keep him sharp. He was always gifted at math and skilled at memorization. He and movie critic Gene Siskel used to have math contests when they were co-workers at WBBM.

“I can remember this stuff,” he says, holding up the form. “It’s a mathematical challenge. It’s a science. It’s fascinating.”

Johnny Morris, the ex-Chicago Bear, interviews Muhammad Ali. (Courtesy of Jeannie Morris)

He became hooked on the sport of kings in September 1962, during his fifth NFL season. The Bears had just played the 49ers in San Francisco and remained in California at the Sonoma Mission Inn because they were playing the Rams the following Sunday. Assistant coach Jim Dooley, Ditka and wide receiver Angelo Coia were heading to Golden Gate Fields and asked Morris to come.

Morris bet on all eight races, and won on seven of them. “Never done that since,” he says.

Horse racing has, however, been very kind to Morris. But so has football.

In his youth, Morris was better at track than football. He could move like fire on a trail of gasoline, and was recruited to run track at UC Santa Barbara.

In 1957, at a college meet at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, he ran the 50-yard dash in 5.2 seconds. It was as fast as anyone in the world had ever run a 50-yard dash, though it never was recognized as an official record.

He developed into a mighty fine football player too, and was voted second-team California Collegiate Athletic Association in 1956 and first team in 1957.

Ed Cody was a Bears fullback and defensive back in 1949 and 1950 who took handoffs from Johnny Lujack. After retiring, he became an assistant at UCSB. When head coach Tom Hughes had medical issues during Morris’ junior season, Cody was promoted.

No one in the NFL knew anything about little Johnny Morris from Santa Barbara, but during Morris’ senior year, Cody called his old coach Halas with a tip.

In those days UCSB played Cal-Davis every year at the Los Angeles Coliseum as a prelude to USC-UCLA. It turned out the Bears were playing the Rams that week, and Cody talked Halas into coming to the game. Morris excelled in a 39-0 victory.

The Bears planned on signing Morris as an undrafted free agent. But the Packers and Steelers apparently found out about the Bears’ interest in him, and in the days just before the draft Morris received telegrams from those teams inquiring about his interest.

He gave the telegrams to Cody, who alerted Halas. Concerned the Bears might lose Morris if they didn’t draft him, Halas chose Morris in the 12th round of the 1958 draft.

In his first preseason game at Soldier Field, he fumbled a kickoff return and a punt return.

“I thought I was going to get cut,” he says. “I’m heading home.”

He remembers sitting with teammates Stan Jones and Zeke Bratkowski, waiting for the word. A list was passed around of players who were released, but Morris’ name was not on it.

“I remember reading it and sighing relief,” he says. He made the Bears, and earned $6,000 that season. (That equates to about $53,000 in 2019 dollars.)

At 5-foot-10, 180 pounds, Morris initially was a halfback, and he made his mark early in his career as a return man. In his first two seasons, Morris had the second-best kickoff return average in the NFL. In his third season, he also averaged 5.7 yards per rush and was voted to the Pro Bowl.

The next year, Halas had an idea. At the time, most NFL wide receivers were tall and lanky, like the 6-foot-3 Coia. The year before, the Eagles had moved 5-foot-9 Tommy McDonald to flanker, and opposing defenses didn’t know how to deal with his quickness. Halas used McDonald as a model.

Morris was a natural at the position, and he is convinced the move from halfback extended his career.

“After a game at running back, I was always sore,” he says. “As a wide receiver, you didn’t take the pounding.”

The Bears’ all-time leading receiver Johnny Morris (47) falls in the end zone as he reaches for a pass from QB Bill Wade in fourth quarter on Oct. 28, 1962 in Detroit. (AP Photo)

In 1963, Morris was the second-leading receiver behind Ditka on the NFL’s championship team. The following year, Morris had 93 receptions to set an NFL record. No NFL player caught more passes until Art Monk of the Redskins had 106 catches 21 years later.

In 1964, Morris and Ditka combined for 168 receptions, a record for teammates in a season that stood until John Jefferson and Kellen Winslow had 171 catches for the Chargers 17 years later.

Morris was voted All-Pro that season, and named to his second Pro Bowl. He couldn’t play because he broke his collarbone in the final game of the season.

“Johnny Morris was the best kept secret,” Ditka says. “Hell, he was unbelievable in his ability to run routes, catch the football, make people miss and return kicks. Just one hell of a football player in every sense.”

Speed defined him. He says he ran a 4.35 40-yard dash when he was with the Bears. He raced many teammates and beat them all except one. When Gale Sayers came along in 1965 and Morris was near the end of his career, they raced and tied. They raced again the following year, after Morris had knee surgery, and Sayers won.

It was a different time in the NFL. Morris and quarterback Rudy Bukich smoked cigarettes under the stands at halftime. He favored Newports.

Morris remembers the team going to Su Casa and Lou Malnati’s after games on Sunday. Malnati, who owned both, would close down the restaurants to the public at 10 p.m. so the Bears and their families could eat together.

“We had a good team camaraderie,” Morris says.

Morris was close with Bukich, and he also thought he was the best quarterback on the Bears in 1964 even though Billy Wade was starting. At a luncheon during that season, Morris and Ditka were asked about the quarterbacks and both said they favored Bukich. Unbeknownst to them, reporter Ray Sons was in the crowd. Their opinions became the lead story in the Chicago Daily News sports section later that day.

At 2 in the morning, Morris’ sleep was interrupted by a ringing telephone. It was Halas, demanding Morris be at his office first thing in the morning. At the meeting, Morris and Ditka were instructed to apologize to the team.

“In the locker room later, Halas said, ‘Johnny and Mike want to say something,’” Morris says. “I got up and stammered and tried to appease Mr. Halas. I kind of apologized. Then Mr. Halas said, ‘Mike what do you have to say?’ Mike said, ‘I got nothing to say.’”

Morris had great respect and admiration for Halas, but as was the case with most players, he had his moments with him. Some of the stories have aged humorously.

He remembers a kickoff in Green Bay early in his career.

As he fielded the ball, Morris stepped out of bounds on the Bears’ sideline.

“Dumb play,” he says.

Halas, who was running towards him and yelling one of his favorite phrases, thought it was a dumb play as well.

“As he approached me, he kind of slipped, but he kicked me in the shin,” Morris says. “It was kind of a combination of wanting to kick me and losing his footing. He kicked me so hard I had to come in the next day and get treatment.”

In 1967, Morris was nearing the end. He thinks now that his contract called for him to make $22,000. Even though he missed all but the first two games of the previous season with a knee injury that he believes was a torn ACL, he went to Halas to ask for a raise.

Morris: “I’d like $2,000 more.”

Halas: “No way.”

Morris: “How about $1,000?”

Halas: “You only played in two games. You missed the whole season. You don’t get a raise.”

Morris: “Coach, what about inflation?”

Halas: “I don’t care about inflation.”

Morris did end up getting a “raise.” He played for the same salary he played for in 1966, but Halas gave him four season tickets.

That was his last season, and Morris finished his career with 5,059 receiving yards. Alshon Jeffery has come the closest since, leaving town 511 yards shy of breaking Morris’ record.

“I’m flabbergasted by it,” Morris says of still holding the team record. “In my day, they ran the ball 50 times and threw it 20. Now they pass it 50 and run it 20. Plus I was a running back the first three years. The only thing you caught then was a few swings or a screen. That’s why it really is amazing.”

His 5,059 receiving yards wouldn’t be No. 1 for any other franchise. Though he ranks first on the Bears, 287 players in league history have more career receiving yards, including 36 who played last season.

In the early 1960s, Giants running back Frank Gifford became the first NFL player to have a role in local newscasts. His Sunday night segments on WCBS in New York were so popular that the general manager of his station suggested that the general manager of WBBM in Chicago find a Bears player to do the same thing.

The general manager of WBBM happened to be playing handball at the Lakeshore Club with Milford Baum, the vice president of A&P Food Stores. Baum suggested his close friend Morris for the role.

Morris agreed to audition.

“I debated over and over if I should ask Mr. Halas for permission,” Morris says. “He was the god of pro football. But I thought if I asked him, he’d tell me no. So I did it without asking him, and passed the audition.”

Morris started analyzing games on the Sunday night newscasts during the 1964 season. Halas never said a word.

Morris didn’t realize it then, but he was at a crossroads. He didn’t know where his post-football life would lead. Morris was an economics major in college and he had an interest in the stock market and finance. But he was searching.

“I never planned on getting into television or journalism,” he says. “I had no training in it.”

In the beginning, Morris would tell his then-wife Jeannie Morris his thoughts on the game, which she typed out. Then she gave their paper to the man who ran the teleprompter. All of it was new to Johnny.

It showed early on, especially when Morris was asked to do the sportscasts for the 6 a.m. news in the offseason.

“I was really green,” he says. “I was terrible. But I was able to get through the rough spots on those early morning shows when nobody was watching.”

He worked hard at becoming a pro, and by the time he retired from football in 1967, he was a capable sportscaster.

He became so much more. For nearly 30 years, Morris was television fixture in Chicago. Except for four years early on with WMAQ-TV, WBBM was his home.

The WBBM team of Bill Kurtis, Walter Jacobson, John Coughlin, Siskel and Morris was dominant, finishing first in the local news ratings for roughly 15 years starting in 1973. Morris became the highest-paid local sports anchor in the country, with a salary north of $1 million per year.

Morris combined a star football player’s cachet with an everyman personality. He had a way of always being able to strike the right tone.

“He wasn’t a house guy,” his long-time agent Don Ephraim says. “He sort of told it as it is. But he did it in a nice way. He wasn’t mean-spirited. He was fair-minded. He came over on the air as genuine.”

Ephraim remembers being inundated by Morris’ fans every time he tried to take his client out to lunch.

“People just adored him,” his ex-wife Jeannie says. “They thought he was the greatest, and it never went to his head. I remember somebody saying, ‘God, you are so lucky to be married to him.’ Another time, I was walking down Michigan Ave. and this lady was walking towards me. She pointed at me — point, point, point. She said, ‘You, you’re, you’re, you’re … his wife!’”

Some of his most memorable sportscasts were ones in which he told the viewer nothing. Morris would, from time to time, get a case of the giggles on the air. It would become so uncontrollable at times that he’d be crying.

“I’m a giggler,” Morris says. “If something gets me, I just can’t help myself.”

The mischievous Siskel, who became one of Morris’ closest friends, often provided the inspiration for the giggles. Behind the camera, Siskel tried to make Morris crack up. Sometimes it was crazy gesturing. Sometimes it was by showing him a photograph not suitable for the nightly news.

Once, Jacobson read a story about a discovery on the backside of Uranus. Morris couldn’t get through his sportscast.

Another time, he failed to report a single story or score. After the infamous “No Más” fight between Sugar Ray Leonard and Roberto Duran, Morris got a tip from a Mexican sportscaster. The reason Duran quit was, ahem, a gastrointestinal situation that he was afraid he could not control.

“I started to tell the story and I couldn’t stop laughing,” Morris says, cracking up again more than 38 years later.

Morris was entertaining, but he also delivered the goods. No one broke more stories on local news than him during his reign.

Part of it was his competitiveness, which carried over from his playing days. His longtime producer Bobby Vasilopulos remembers getting calls at 6 a.m. — not even eight hours after Morris signed off the night before — to talk about stories in the newspapers.

“If we got beat on a story, he took it like a personal insult,” Vasilopulos says.

Being respected and liked by so many was helpful in the chase. As a hard-working former Bear, he had instant credibility. Among those who confided in him were Michael Jordan, Don Zimmer, Leo Durocher, Harry Caray, Bobby Hull, Stan Mikita and Dick Butkus.

He always seemed to know the Bears better than anyone. He still does.

“I predict barring serious injury the Bears will go to the Super Bowl,” Morris says. “I think they would have gone last season if Cody Parkey made that field goal.”

Morris is most remembered for his associations with two people: Ditka and Jeannie.

Ditka was a blustery gust of wind from Western Pennsylvania; Morris a California breeze. With twin flat tops, they became brothers bound by the team they loved.

“You respect a guy for who he is, what he’s done and how he conducts himself,” Ditka says. “I’ve always felt that way about Johnny.”

Ditka and Morris lined up on the same side of the field, straining defenses as effectively as any duo of their era. Then they lined up at the same anchor desk, providing insight and entertainment like no duo before or since.

Morris had the exclusive interview with his former teammate when Ditka came to Chicago to interview with Halas to become head coach of the Bears. And then Ditka aligned with Morris to do postgame shows, as well as a Thursday night show. They had their moments, too.

Ditka sometimes enjoyed himself a little too much after a game and before his appearance on Bears Extra at 10:30 p.m. On one show, he clearly celebrated beyond the boundaries of prudence. During the week, the Chicago Sun-Times ran a photo on the back page of an extremely relaxed coach during his broadcast, and Ditka failed to see the humor.

The next Sunday, Morris showed up outside the locker room in Green Bay to do a live postgame hit with Ditka. Vasilopulos asked Ditka to follow him to where Morris was set up, and Ditka refused. Vasilopulos ran back to tell Morris, and Morris went to Ditka to appeal. Ditka angrily told Morris he wouldn’t go on because Morris gave the photo to the Sun-Times. When Morris explained he had nothing to do with the photo and that the newspaper merely took a screen shot of Ditka on TV, he agreed to go on the air.

Through it all, Morris and Ditka remained friends. They sometimes relaxed after Bears Extra with a glass of wine and stories about the old days at Eli’s The Place For Steak.

“Those shows were fun,” Ditka says. “We had a few laughs. Those were the good old days when you could do anything and still go on TV.”

Morris also was a CBS color analyst for about 15 years, mostly for Bears games. His primary partner was Tim Ryan, but he worked with others as well, including Bob Costas and Vin Scully. He also was partnered with Al Michaels for Michaels’ first NFL play-by-play assignment.

His most significant partnership, however, was with Jeannie. They met in college, wed in 1960, raised four children together and became the first couple of Chicago sports.

Johnny and Jeannie. Their names were poetry.

His edge. Her grace.

His style. Her substance.

His square jaw. Her twinkling eyes.

His warmth. Her warmth.

They completed one another professionally. And personally.

When Johnny began his television career, the Chicago American asked him if he was interested in writing a football column. He referred the newspaper to Jeannie, who wrote a column with the byline “Mrs. Johnny Morris.” It appeared on the women’s pages.

She later wrote for the Chicago Daily News. In 1971, she authored “Brian Piccolo: A Short Season,” which inspired the movie “Brian’s Song.”

She later wrote the book, “Adventures In The Blue Beast,” about the year the Morris family spent traveling from Spain to Russia in a van with six sleeping bags.

“People always ask how we were able to work together, husband and wife,” Jeannie says. “It was because our skills complemented each other.”

Johnny and Jeannie Morris were a formidable media couple in Chicago. (Courtesy of Jeannie Morris)

Johnny calls Jeannie “a wonderful person,” and says, “She has integrity, brains, everything. She helped me a lot with judgement and advice. I did the same for her because she had no training in sports. But she’s a good writer. So we blended together real well. It was a good partnership.”

They separated in the mid-1980s and divorced in 1990, but remain the best of friends.

“When my oldest granddaughter was about seven, she said, ‘Since you and grandpa are such good friends, how come you got a divorce?’” Jeannie says. “I told her, ‘Because he wanted to go to the race track, and I wanted to go to China.’”

And today, Jeannie remains a journalist of international acclaim, while Johnny is still at the race track.

It is a good place for him. His whole life — running sprints, playing football and getting the news — has been about winning the race. He knows speed as well as he knows anything, and at the track, speed matters.

The son of a Swedish mother and a Greek father who was a hod carrier in Southern California, the dream that young Johnny Morris held close to his heart was that football would give him a better life.

Did it ever.

“Making the Bears was my biggest break,” he says. “Mr. Halas gave me a shot when nobody else had interest. I was always thankful for that. It determined my whole life.”

Morris stopped our conversation to watch a race. Yes, he is in a good place now.

(Top photo of Johnny Morris: Dan Pompei/The Athletic)

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Where can you find the all-time leading receiver in Bears history? Johnny Morris is hiding in plain

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