Death by Degrees

The sun had barely peeked over the hills of Blue Earth County and already local cattlemen were bracing for the worst. It was July 31, 2001, and Minnesota was in the middle of its most intense heat wave in a decade. A radio warning advised farmers to keep livestock out of the sun. It was too hot even for grazing.

One of those farmers, Jerry Seitzer, started the day by turning on the sprinklers in his brick-red barn, dousing his cows with hundreds of gallons of cool water while circulating the air with massive fans. His philosophy: “You have to treat the cows like you treat yourself.”

A few hours later and 10 miles away, in the withering heat of training camp, the Minnesota Vikings’ Korey Stringer was dying.

Stringer, 27, a Pro Bowl offensive tackle, collapsed after the morning practice on the second day of training camp and died of heatstroke complications 13 hours later at a nearby hospital. He is believed to be the only NFL player ever to die of heat illness, and his widow, Kelci, has filed a $100-million wrongful-death lawsuit against the Vikings and their medical personnel. Kelci has brought the suit on behalf of herself and other Stringer heirs, including their 4-year-old son, Kodie, and Korey’s parents. The trial is set for next summer.

The Vikings say they did everything they could to save the 335-pound tackle, who struggled to keep his weight in check throughout his career. They insist they didn’t miss signs that he was in distress, pointing to a three-month investigation by the Minnesota Occupational Safety and Health Division clearing the club of any direct responsibility for Stringer’s death. The NFL echoed the Viking claim that Stringer received “exemplary treatment” and Commissioner Paul Tagliabue said he is largely satisfied with the way teams approach training-camp practices and heat-related issues. Teams begin training camps this month.

Almost four months after Stringer’s death, the Vikings disclosed he had a locker full of controversial and possibly dangerous dietary supplements on the day he collapsed. The revelation cast doubt on the notion heatstroke alone killed him.

Attorneys for the Stringers say there is no basis for that theory, arguing a posthumous toxicology report showed the player’s system was “absolutely clean” and offered no evidence he was taking supplements. They say the Vikings are guilty of gross negligence and could not have been more blind, missing all the warning signs and letting precious minutes slip away as the player’s temperature rocketed to 108.8 degrees, possibly higher.

Interviews and depositions indicate Stringer was left alone, writhing on the ground, while fellow linemen trudged through a blocking drill, then essentially went untreated in an air-conditioned trailer for approximately 40 minutes under the watch of an unregistered, 22-year-old trainer. All this occurred a day after an overheated Stringer vomited five times, failed to finish the morning practice and sweated profusely into the night.

“The first day of camp starts a chain of events leading to his death,” said Paul DeMarco, an attorney for the Stringer family. “It’s an unbroken chain from then on.”

High heat and humidity made for a heat index of 110 on the day Stringer collapsed, one of the Upper Midwest’s hottest days in a decade. Stringer attorneys say their weather experts will testify the day felt between 120 and 130 degrees to the players, who were in full pads for the first time. Stringer and the rest of the offensive players wore dark purple jerseys, which made them feel even hotter. In addition to Stringer, 10 Vikings were treated for heat-related problems on July 30 and 31, Stringer lawyers said.

Said DeMarco: “If Korey had been given no more care and attention than the farmers gave the cows, he’d still be alive.”

A Reluctant Witness

Stringer’s Viking medical records, obtained by The Times, reveal the Vikings had treated him for heat-related problems in years past, even making a special notation a year earlier. Wrote team physician Dr. David Knowles after treating Stringer for nausea, diarrhea and severe muscle cramps on July 24, 2000: “I will follow him closely at training camp.”

A year later, at the conclusion of Stringer’s final practice, the only person watching him closely was freelance photographer Billy Robin McFarland, who was aware Stringer had problems the day before so he kept an eye on him throughout practice. He noticed Stringer looked exhausted, disoriented and out of step all morning.

McFarland, 49, is a reluctant and deeply conflicted witness. He feels very close to the Vikings, whom he has worked with for 20 years. He considers the players his friends--Stringer used to call him Billy Vanilli--and he has long provided them with flattering photographs they distribute to fans. The Vikings, in turn, have treated him well over the years, often letting him fly to away games on the team’s charter, even providing an extra media credential McFarland used to bring his son onto the field.

McFarland said he barely slept in the weeks after Stringer’s death and considered never showing anyone his pictures of Stringer from that day. He is haunted by his memories. He has a recurring dream he saves Stringer by dousing him with a bucket of ice water.

He said he will never forget what he saw on those practice fields, which sit on the campus of Minnesota State University, Mankato. For most of the players, practice ended at 11:10 a.m. The offensive linemen stayed later, though, making their way across the field to “Big Bertha,” a refrigerator-sized heavy bag hanging from a metal frame. When they got there, they pulled off their helmets and shoulder pads, dumping them on the ground.

Shortly thereafter, McFarland saw Stringer drop to his knees, fall over on his right side and curl into a fetal position. All the while Stringer was clutching his stomach and groaning loudly, McFarland said. Finally, the player flopped his massive arms over his head. By the photographer’s estimate, Stringer was on the ground for as long as five minutes, yet did not attract the attention of then-offensive line coach Mike Tice, who was leaning against the Big Bertha frame and watching his players strike the bag.

The heat was almost unbearable. “It was like having a whole bunch of hair dryers blowing on you,” McFarland said. “It was stinking hot.”

He was about 10 feet away from Stringer when he snapped a picture of him sprawled on the ground. Suddenly, the photographer felt a hand shove his shoulder. It was Pro Bowl center Matt Birk, who had just hit the bag.

“We don’t need any pictures of Korey on the ground,” said Birk, sounding annoyed.

McFarland was shaken. “You’re right,” he said, lowering his camera and walking across the field, away from the drill.

Recalled McFarland: “I was almost too embarrassed to look up.”

A Young Trainer

Moments before McFarland snapped the picture, an offensive lineman shouted for a trainer to attend to Stringer. The trainer in charge was Paul Osterman, 22, who was two months out of school and in his third summer working for the team. He testified he had passed a test to become a certified athletic trainer at the end of April 2001, but was not registered until Jan. 12 of this year.

But he was in charge, taking over for head trainer Chuck Barta, who left the field after practice to treat a cut on the leg of then-coach Dennis Green. Before leaving, Barta gave Osterman his cellular phone and the responsibilities that came with it. Barta instructed him to call Fred Zamberletti, the team’s longtime medical services coordinator, in the athletic training room across the street “if anything comes up.”

It was around 11:20 when Osterman was summoned. He jogged over to the area where the linemen were hitting Big Bertha and noticed Stringer lying on his back. “Korey, how are you doing?” he asked. Stringer didn’t respond, instead rising to his feet, walking over to the heavy bag and taking a rep. Tice and some players say he stumbled or slipped a bit when he struck Big Bertha. Osterman suggested to Stringer that he head into the air-conditioned trailer, which was about 40 feet away.

“It had been a pretty hot day and a pretty long practice and I thought it would be a good idea, more as a preventive measure, to get him inside,” Osterman testified.

He said Stringer responded by jogging over to the trailer without saying a word. But attorneys for the family say they have player testimony that Stringer staggered to the trailer as if he were drunk. Either way, Stringer and Osterman entered the otherwise empty trailer around 11:25 and the 62-degree air was so cool it fogged the young trainer’s sunglasses.

The trailer was as much a lounge as it was a first-aid station, a comfortable oasis for Viking VIPs, including owner Red McCombs and his family, as well as players. Although it featured two training tables, it also had cushy office chairs and, hanging on the back wall, an Edward Hopper print. Water was not immediately available in the trailer; intern D.J. Kearney brought some in for Stringer, later testifying there was Gatorade in the trailer’s refrigerator. Osterman testified there was no thermometer to take the player’s temperature.

Sometime between 11:25 and 11:30, Osterman advised Stringer he should drink some water. Stringer took one or two sips, then moved from a training table to the floor. Osterman said he was letting him “relax.” Ten minutes passed.

Stringer sat up between 11:35 and 11:40 and asked to have his shoes, socks and ankle tape removed. Osterman needed two minutes to do so and--in what would be his last words--Stringer thanked him.

Osterman said Stringer was sweating and his skin did not feel feverish. After drinking a bit more water, the trainer recalled, Stringer climbed back onto a table and began humming to himself, bobbing his head to an imaginary beat.

The two had been in the trailer for at least 20 minutes when Osterman called for a cart to take Stringer to the training room across the street. He later testified he did so as a matter of procedure, not because Stringer looked to be in distress. Stringer got off the table and lay on the floor. He was silent. Osterman tried to place an ice towel on Stringer’s head, but the player pushed it away.

Five to 10 minutes later, Kearney arrived with the cart. The two had been in the trailer a half-hour. “Korey, the cart’s here,” Osterman said. “Let’s get up.” Kearney testified Stringer lifted his arms and head slightly as if trying to sit up. Osterman remembers him being “unresponsive,” although his eyes were open.

Kearney and Osterman tried to lift Stringer but couldn’t budge him. They had no hope of getting him out of the trailer and down the small flight of stairs to the cart.

“That was the first sign where, you know, something was wrong and I was concerned, and that’s the first time I checked his vitals,” Osterman said. “His breathing was normal, and that’s the first time I took his pulse.”

Osterman instructed Kearney to get Zamberletti in a hurry.

“I really wasn’t sure what was going on at that point,” Osterman said. “I was pretty confused.”

Kearney left with the cart, and Osterman checked Stringer’s pulse, which was weak but steady. He didn’t count the beats. Kearney returned with Zamberletti within two minutes. Stringer’s breathing was rapid and shallow, so Zamberletti, in his 41st season with the Vikings, instructed Kearney to put a zip-lock bag over his face, concerned about hyperventilation. Kearney held it there for something less than two minutes, but Stringer kept panting.

Osterman was told to call Knowles, the team physician at training camp. When he couldn’t reach Knowles right away, he called an ambulance. It was noon, and it was the first time Osterman used the cellular phone.

The Gold Cross ambulance arrived at 12:09, and Stringer was transported to Immanuel St.-Joseph’s Hospital, arriving at 12:24. When his temperature was taken 11 minutes later, for the first time, it was 108.8 degrees.

Checking the Locker

Osterman, Barta and Zamberletti testified the Vikings provided trainers with little formal instruction on how to deal with heat-related problems. The notion Stringer might be suffering from heat illness did not occur to Zamberletti until after the trainer arrived at the hospital and heard someone mention heatstroke. Zamberletti, who testified he has treated approximately 150 cases of heat-related illness in his career, told attorneys he thought Stringer had fainted or was having a seizure, possibly because of a bug bite.

On Aug. 1, at 1:50 a.m., Stringer was pronounced dead of heatstroke complications.

The OSHA report, which cleared the Vikings, focuses only on the workplace environment surrounding the team until 11 a.m., around the end of formal practice. It contains no analysis or opinion on the medical attention Stringer received from Viking trainers or doctors.

During the 13 hours when Mankato doctors were scrambling to save Stringer’s life, they called Viking trainers and asked whether the player had been taking any medication. Team officials talked to his roommate, guard David Dixon, and sent all the bottles and containers from his locker to the hospital.

In his locker, according to the Vikings, were an empty bottle of the supplement Ripped Fuel; a vial of Celebrex, an anti-inflammatory prescription drug; an unopened bottle of the weight-loss product Xenadrine, and the herbal supplement Mo’ Power, a performance-enhancing product endorsed by teammate Cris Carter.

Xenadrine and a version of Ripped Fuel include derivatives of ephedra, an herbal stimulant commonly used by athletes and body builders. According to the Food and Drug Administration, such over-the-counter products can raise blood pressure, speed heart rate and contribute to dehydration. At least three of the football players who died last year--Devaughn Darling of Florida State, Rashidi Wheeler of Northwestern and Curtis Jones, who played for a Utah indoor team--were found to have traces of ephedrine in their system when they died.

A month after Stringer’s death, the NFL added ephedrine to its list of banned substances, following the lead of the NCAA and International Olympic Committee.

Stringer reported to training camp at 335 pounds, the lightest he’d been in six previous seasons as a pro. His agent, James Gould, said Stringer had been especially careful about what he ate in the off-season and had no rapid weight loss.

“He was in perfect shape,” Gould said.

But when Stringer arrived at the hospital, he might have been beyond saving. He was essentially comatose, and his organs were in the process of shutting down.

“Looking back on it now,” Knowles said recently in a televised interview, “all the damage that was done, I don’t think we had a prayer from the start.”

Knowles, who works in Mankato full time, is one of the defendants in the wrongful-death lawsuit and, partly because of that, he has recently said he wants a reduced role with the team. In the past, he attended summer practices on request and to make occasional rounds.

The NFL does not require teams to have doctors on duty during training camp, and, like the Vikings, many teams hire local doctors to be available for their summer practices.

Linebacker Gabe Northern, who spent one season with the Vikings and was cut in training camp last summer, said he had little confidence in Zamberletti and his staff of trainers. He said they frequently relied on home remedies when it came to rehabilitating players, rather than using the conventional methods he saw in his previous four seasons with Buffalo or in a training-camp stint with Pittsburgh.

“It was like the Beverly Hillbillies,” Northern said, referring to the Viking training staff.

He had nagging hamstring problems, for instance, and requested ice and electric stimulation for the back of his legs. Instead, he was told to rapidly kick his legs back and forth. He said it was not uncommon to see players fresh off knee surgeries pushing a golf cart with Zamberletti behind the wheel, or to see them carrying Zamberletti piggyback up and down stairs.

“The first time I saw that I called my mom,” said Northern, 28, a former Louisiana State standout. “I said, ‘Mom, if they ever make me do that, I’ll retire right away.’ That has nothing to do with playing ball. I couldn’t see the help in that.”

Northern, and other Viking players who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the team changed some of its policies immediately after the tragedy. Before Stringer died, for instance, players were instructed to take only one water or sports drink at the beginning of camp, then save the bottle and refill it, rather than taking another one. Beginning the day after Stringer died, water and sports drinks were offered in abundance, as were iced towels.

“Big K died; we have a lot of Gatorade now,” Northern said. “That’s just the way it was.”

He said as much when he delivered a eulogy in a memorial service for Stringer, one of his closest friends on the team. After the service, Northern said, Barta reminded him the Vikings have always made drinks readily available to players at training camp.

Northern, who lives in Baton Rouge, La., believes it was more than a coincidence that he was released a week later and has not been contacted by an NFL team since.

The Coach’s Favorite

The young player was so dehydrated, so wobbly and faint from the heat, he felt drunk. Had trainers not acted quickly, things might have been much worse. That player was Mike Tice.

Tice, Stringer’s offensive line coach who later would be promoted to head coach, can remember succumbing to heat illness in 1982, his second season as an NFL tight end. He was playing for Seattle, and then-coach Jack Patera didn’t believe in making water available to players. According to sources familiar with his testimony, Tice recounted the episode in a recent deposition with Stringer attorneys. He said Patera’s no-water policy was “mean,” and he said it helped shape his own coaching philosophy: Treat your players well and they will perform for you. He has denied calling him a “big baby” when Stringer struggled during his final practice.

“If you canvassed my players, they would tell you that Korey Stringer was my favorite,” Tice told reporters at the NFL owners meetings in March. “A lot of people wanted to believe it was Matt Birk. My players know that it was Korey. I need to be very careful with what I say because we’re in the middle of a lawsuit, but that’s why a lot of the things that have been said have hurt me so bad.

“Because I never, ever in the five years I coached Korey Stringer, yelled at him. He wasn’t the kind of player that took to the yelling. So the things that I read just kind of tear me apart, to see what’s being said now, what’s in this lawsuit.

“You look at everything, you go through every minute of practice. You look at it and say, ‘What did I miss? What did I not see that I should have seen?’ And there’s nothing. I don’t want to say I’m at peace with it because I don’t think I’ll ever go through a day where I don’t think of it. But at least you have a sense that, ‘Thank God, I didn’t miss something.’ ”

Tice and Stringer were Viking teammates in 1995, often lining up shoulder to shoulder. Tice remembers him as a young kid teeming with talent who was enormous and “Cadillac quick.” But Stringer wasn’t big on running or training, Tice testified, and frequently would need a phone call to get him up, out of bed and moving. The two took frequent walks and, Tice said, Stringer took great pride in his role as a leader on the offensive line.

So Tice believes Stringer was embarrassed about throwing up five times on the opening day of practice--once right in the middle of the huddle--and was mortified the next day to find the St. Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press had run a photo of him getting sick. According to several sources, Stringer was enraged by the photo and, some say, especially determined to prove himself the next day.

When Stringer was in the trailer, slipping into unconsciousness, Tice was eating lunch at the team cafeteria, then reading and relaxing in his dormitory room. It wasn’t until the player had been in the hospital for an hour that Tice received a call from his wife, informing him of the situation. She had heard about it on a local sports radio show.

Tice testified he rushed to the hospital, where Viking personnel and some players were holding vigil. He later told lawyers he was angry that he wasn’t told one of his players was sick.

The person left entirely out of the loop was Kelci Stringer, who was in Atlanta visiting her parents. Her husband had been in the hospital more than five hours by the time a friend reached her after hearing it on the news. Despite the efforts of Viking receiver Randy Moss, who arranged for a chartered plane for her, Kelci did not arrive at the hospital until an hour after her husband died. At the time, she had no idea how bad the situation was.

“When I got there, I asked the hospital communications director, ‘Is he OK?’ ” Kelci recalled. “He just turned around and said, ‘Let’s go upstairs.’ So I kind of prepared myself--well God prepared me, rather--and I was walking upstairs to the elevator and I saw some of his teammates and they were crying. I thought, he has to be in a lot worse condition than I thought for them to still be crying at this time of day.

“And I went upstairs and all the coaches were around, and I asked if he was OK. They told me, ‘We lost him.’ At that moment, I just kept saying, ‘This is not real. This is not real.’ But something else inside of me kept saying, ‘This is real. This is real.’ ”

Now, almost a year later, the Vikings have made some quiet but significant changes. Umbrellas were installed on the field for cooling during mini-camps. Players will report to training camp two days early and must pass a fitness test, and, for the first time, there will be a physician on the field at all times during practice.

Farmers in the area are bracing for a summer that could be even hotter than last year’s. Down the road from Jerry Seitzer’s farm, his cousin, Dave, recently installed a new ventilation system for the cattle in his barn. “We haven’t lost any yet,” he said, reaching out to knock on a wooden door frame.