Wistrom worth every penny

KIRKLAND — They still don't know how something like this happens, how the boy who nearly died grew tall and strong and took his place this offseason among the most handsomely paid giants on the planet.

Kathy Wistrom can still remember when her middle son was 3 months old, and he had infantile botulism and allergy complications. It left him 30 minutes from certain death, she said.

"After that, I always felt that God had big plans for his life," she said the other day. "I just never knew football would be the vehicle for them."

Or maybe everything else was the vehicle for football, even then. Doctors prescribed Grant Wistrom a meat-based formula after his brush with death, and his mom jokes now that without that formula he wouldn't be so tall and strong.

The whole thing seems so surreal now, one story connecting to the next, a football manifest destiny expanding into a series of championship rings and pay raises. All the way to this season, his first as the premier defensive end for the Seahawks, and the questions brought on by the largest signing bonus the Seahawks have ever paid.

"He's built to play football," said Tracey Wistrom, Grant's younger brother. "I don't think there's another sport in the world he could excel at. Good thing he picked this one."

Or maybe it picked him.

Built for football

Every Grant Wistrom story certainly seems to point in that direction. It started with the Kathy Wistrom plan — one boy, one girl, one happy family — that pegged Grant in the second slot.

Grant was supposed to be "her girl," but ended up the second football player in a football family. Sure, he played other sports, but even those efforts pushed him further into football.

Tracey remembers Nebraska coach and current Congressmen Tom Osborne coming to Webb City, Mo., to watch Grant play basketball. After the game, he said, "Gee, I sure wish I could have seen you play more."

Even Tracey would wonder, "This is the kid that's going to Nebraska?" when watching Grant on the basketball court.

But Grant Wistrom was built for football, and his exploits on the field were another matter altogether. Two state championships in high school. Three national championships at Nebraska. Four years — his last two in high school and his first two in college — without a single loss.

Kathy and Ron Wistrom used to preach to all their sons about losing and the character that derives from it. After Grant won another football championship of some sort, his older brother, Chance, turned to Kathy and said, "God's given me enough character. Isn't it time he started working on Grant's?"

At first, the family considered the amount of luck involved. But then Grant won a Super Bowl in his second year with the St. Louis Rams — his sixth championship at three levels in nine years — they were forced to consider the coincidence.

Seahawks general manager Bob Ferguson made quick work of that theory this week.

"It's not a coincidence," he said flatly and without hesitation.

A winning attitude

Somewhere along the way, winning became addictive. It fueled Grant. More than the scholarship to Nebraska, more than the Lombardi Award he won his senior year, more than all the accolades displayed proudly in the basement of the family's new Oklahoma lake house. More than the money. (But more on that later.)

"I believe that winning is an attitude," Wistrom said. "I believe that no matter what the score is and how much time is on the clock, I'm going to win the football game. That attitude is contagious."

Osborne saw that every day, but never moreso than when Wistrom came into his office at the end of the 1996 season. Osborne though Wistrom was going to declare for the NFL draft a year early. Instead, he came to diagram a blueprint for his senior season.

And what a season Nebraska had. They went undefeated and won the national championship for the third time in four years. During the year, someone picked a fight with Grant at a party. He came to practice with a black eye.

"I thought, oh, no, it's going to be the same old deal with the press," Osborne said this week. "But he didn't defend himself because he knew we were under the gun. He wanted to win. I would say he's in the top 1 percent of any player I ever coached. And looking back at who I had during that stretch, you could say I was almost mediocre."

The pressure's on

The Seahawks understood all this before they brought Grant Wistrom in this offseason. They had a simple plan: Sign him before he left the building.

They put an offer on the table. A pretty good one, it turns out.

"You can't print what I said (to my agent)," Wistrom said. "Just sign the dang thing before they change their minds. It couldn't have been with a better team in a better situation."

This team reminds Wistrom of all the winning teams he's played on over the years. But never before has he faced such scrutiny, the kind that comes with a six-year, $33 million contract and $14 million just for signing.

"Right now, everybody is just assuming he's overpaid," said Tracey Wistrom, who also played at Nebraska. "It's up to him to prove he's not. I know my brother, and he makes his living running down tackles from the backside, never giving up, never slowing down. I'm not saying he's a bargain. I just think he's worth it."

Said Ferguson: "The chemistry and character of a team are as important as the talent on the team, maybe moreso in some places. Everybody can say what they want. I'll say this: Just block him. He's ours for the next five or six years."

Asked what Grant was doing with the money, Tracey deadpanned, "I think he's burying some of it in the backyard."

Not entirely. Here's what Grant Wistrom did with his signing bonus, the one that landed him on a list of the most overpaid athletes in the NFL: He bought his mom's retirement so she wouldn't have to continue teaching.

He helped Tracey buy a car. He helped Kathy, by then the author of "Mrs. Wistrom's ABCs: What I Learned Raising Three All-Americans," open up a candle/gift shop. He bought his parents a new house, so the three football-playing brothers (Chance played at Central Missouri State) could have a porch to talk smack on and a lake where they could fish.

And he poured money into his foundation, which works mainly with kids with cancer. The stories there are endless — Kathy waiting an hour in the car while Grant visited a sick youngster in the hospital, Grant shaving his head at Nebraska to make a young boy with leukemia feel better about losing his hair in treatment. The trips he takes with 30 sick children and Seahawks guard Jerry Wunsch in the offseason. The constant giving back.

"It's not a sometimes thing with him," Wunsch said. "It's an everyday deal for the Bionic Man."

Wunsch was asked why the team called Wistrom that.

"Doesn't the Bionic Man cost a bunch?"

It all seems so surreal now, getting lambasted for a contract he never expected to sign, playing the sport that destiny insisted on. Wistrom can still remember the time his father refused to give him a ride home because he didn't play hard enough that game.

So the motor's still running, at full speed, trying to prove the Seahawks made the right decision. Either way, Wistrom will continue playing football. That much is certain. That much is life the way it always has been.

"I can't imagine what I would be doing if I didn't do this," he said. "I'd probably be working construction or pumping gas somewhere. I'm a football player. And now it's up to me to prove that I'm worth every penny that they spent."

Another championship wouldn't hurt.

Greg Bishop: 206-464-3191 or gbishop@seattletimes.com