He grew up without a father, who was killed in a car accident when he was three years old. He lost his mother, who worked two jobs to support her three boys, a decade later to a blood clot. He was an orphan at age 13, raised by his older brothers, Robert, 21, and Richard, 17.

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Raymond Ernest Nitschke did not have the easiest life growing up in Elmwood Park, Ill., a blue-collar suburb on the fringe of Chicago.

"I grew up with anger seething inside me at the dirty trick life had pulled on me," Nitschke said concerning the loss of his parents in his autobiography, "Mean on Sunday."

"A day didn't go by that I didn't belt some other kid in the neighborhood. I was like that right through high school and college and even after I joined the Packers. Didn't take anything from anybody."

The brunt of Nitschke's anger was channeled into sports.

At Proviso High School, he was a star quarterback, starting center in basketball, and a pitcher and outfielder on the school's state champion baseball team his senior year.

Nitschke earned a full scholarship to the University of Illinois, where he was a bruising fullback and punishing linebacker. He was also an accomplished enough baseball player to be offered a professional baseball contract with the St. Louis Browns.

But football was his sport.

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