He landed at Miami's airport for the first time in February 1956, fresh out of Wausau, Wis., and immediately headed for the bathroom. His first lesson was to take off the wool long johns. He was 18, full of football, and signing on with the school that was, "at the end of the world to start my journey," he said.

Thursday night, 52 years and a full journey later, Jim Otto walks into the University of Miami's Ring of Honor. Or limps in. Or hobbles. Or whatever verb you want to accompany the man whose left leg was amputated last year after 10 knee replacements left doctors with no more cartilage to attach another one.

"I'll be walking on a prosthesis," he says.

That prosthesis bears an Oakland Raiders shield and a small, "00" jersey and is the symbol to Otto's full story: Pain and football. Or: Football and pain.

Take it in what order you want today, though, at 70, he doesn't care too much. He's lived the life he wanted. He's still paying the price for the disease of football, too. It didn't just consume his mind and ambitions, but got into every nook of his body.

His good knee, the left one, has been replaced twice. Both shoulders are artificial from blocking 15 years in the pros without missing a game. Half his back is screws and steel rods, so he nearly clanks when walking like Marley's ghost.

His nose, broke 20 times, is mush. He never counted the concussions.

"Nobody did then," he said.

Somewhere amid the nearly 70 surgeries he has been in a coma, had a temperature above 105 degrees for five consecutive days and sat in a wheelchair for seven months. On top of that, he got prostate cancer about eight years ago, got it bad, eight on a scale of 10.

"I'm gonna kick its butt," he flatly pronounced and, apparently, he has.

But only now is he about to get to the serious stuff, the problems that nearly put him under, the affairs of the heart. His daughter died in 1997, at 39, with four children, and his heart still hasn't recovered. He still finds himself crying.

As if to prove his heart went bad right then, he's had five heart infections in the last decade that nearly killed him. Staph infections. Septic shock. There's a slew of medical terms he's learned, but the bottom line is he should have been dead five times and he isn't.

This summer they cut open his sternum and worked on the heart to get out the latest infection.

"You can't imagine what I've put my wife through," he says.

Sally is part of the story tonight. You bet she is. When he was a freshman at Miami, fresh out of those long johns, he went to the house of a Miami booster named George Swanson. The out-of-town players were adopted by in-town boosters in those days, and Otto went over to the Swanson house for dinner one night.

"That's where I met Sally," he said.

She was 15, a high school student and that night changed both their paths. Seven years later, they were married. They celebrated their 46th anniversary this year. Tonight will be a homecoming for them. This entire weekend will, in some respects, with the Raiders coming to town Sunday to play the Dolphins.

"We need a win," he says.

He still claims ownership of the team, just as he still calls the Raiders owner "Mr. Davis." It's no wonder. He made a life outside football, owning a tree grove and five Burger King restaurants. But it's to the Raiders he not only gave his body, bit by bit, but his identity. That knife-chewing, eye patch-wearing insignia of a Raider on the side of the helmet?

"That's me," he says.

Everyone asks him if it was worth it, and they mean weighing his football and its awards against what's happened to his body.

"I say those awards and $3 will get you a loaf of bread," he said. "I'm a Christian man. I've enjoyed life. No, I wouldn't do it any differently. Not everyone would think that, I know."

He chuckles from his home in Oakland. "Did you know I'm the first Miami player to make the Pro Football Hall of Fame?" he says. "That means something to me."

Just as Thursday night's honor does. Give this man in full his due as he walks on. Or limps. Or whatever.