CHICAGO — Forty years ago, Chicago Bears Coach Mike Ditka stumbled upon a way to help the team win — and no, it wasn’t rubbing a lucky rabbit’s foot. It was eating alligator.
In October 1985, a historic season for the Bears, Tribune columnists Skip Myslenski and Linda Kay wrote about a good luck ritual started two years earlier by Ditka and General Manager Jerry Vainisi.
“What about that little tidbit that Dick Butkus offered during the Bears’ broadcast on WGN-AM Sunday? The one about … eating alligator Saturday night? Yep, it’s true,” Myslenski and Kay wrote in their joint column for the newspaper.
Ditka and Vainisi had had their first taste of the reptile in 1983, the night before the team faced off against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. It was an away game, and the Bears won.
“Since the team won that year, they’ve eaten alligator on each succeeding visit,” Myslenski and Kay wrote. “Yum, yum!”
Ditka confirmed the story in his 1986 book, “Ditka: An Autobiography.”
“I do things a certain way because I get into a pattern, like a ritual,” he wrote. “We went to Tampa Bay and Jerry Vainisi and I ate alligator meat and we won. So you better believe I’m going to eat alligator meat every time we go to Tampa Bay. We even started serving it on the team plane.”
“I still have trouble remembering whether it’s alligator or crocodile,” Ditka wrote. Alligator is much more common and available to eat than crocodile, which is almost exclusively found in the southern tip of Florida in the United States and is typically only available as an imported delicacy.
Once the public became aware of the team’s good luck gator ritual — and with the Bears headed to the Super Bowl in January 1986 — fans were sent into a “frenzy,” according to newspaper headlines at the time.
Reporter Andy Knott wrote in the Tribune on Jan. 20, 1986, that alligator meat “has become the unofficial victory victual for the Bears since a team official first offered players a couple of nibbles.”
An ad in the Tribune for Penelope Catering highlighted its upcoming Super Bowl party, telling readers to “ask about alligator appetizers.” Burhop’s Seafood restaurant touted its Cajun-style ‘Gator-Mates — seasoned meatballs made from “genuine Louisiana alligator” — as the “secret to the Bears’ success.”
Leading up to the big game, Bears fans across the city and suburbs were lining up for alligator pizzas, with eateries calling it “the original Mike Ditka alligator meat pizza,” the Tribune reported.
“After all, alligator meat to the Bears is like spinach to Popeye — superfood!” Steve Locke, Hot Lips Pizza ‘n’ Ribs owner, told the paper.
The suburban pizzeria said it delivered four of its alligator pizzas to the Bears’ headquarters “as a luncheon tribute to Ditka and his coaching staff.” When asked how he liked it, Ditka told sportscaster Johnny Morris it was “great!” the Tribune reported.
Whatever IV, a Chicago pizzeria, also sold alligator pizzas. Owner Wayne Sova told a reporter for The Life newspaper that he “got the idea from hearing that the Bears sometimes eat alligator meat to ‘get up’ for games.”
Shoppers could find alligator meat on sale at butcher shops and specialty stores, but the “exotic side is not a cheap one,” said Sova, who was reluctant to try it himself. He bought his meat from suburban Lockport for $9.95 per pound (about $30 today) and sold small alligator pies for $9.
On Super Bowl Sunday, Hot Lips Pizza ‘n’ Ribs held a party covered by local TV news crews where customers tried the delicacy. Two lucky customers won alligator belts.
Today’s Bears fans who wish to partake in the old-school ritual may opt for one additional ingredient: freshly grated cheese.
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