THE DAY THE SF FORTY NINERS WENT BIG TIME AT LAST,
AND MY CONTRIBUTION TO THEIR VICTORY!
I don't expect everybody gets the whole "sports fan" thing, women particularly. Also many logic-bound men of good characrter as well. When I look outside myself at times (don't try this yourself at home, I had to take a course called "Split Your Ego!" at a junior college) I can sense fandom is irrational at best and just plain juvenile at worst. What is rational about sitting in front of a television rooting for, in football let's say, 40 total strangers who happen to be wearing the same jerseys, helmets and matching pants?
But it was January 10, 1982 and I was home, totally by myself save for my parents' cat, Bandit. We were in the living room in a house in Antioch, California. I was watching the "Cinderella team", the San Francisco Forty Niners, led by Coach Bill Walsh and QB'ed by the great Joe Montana, in a match at Candelstick Park against the dreaded juggernaut, "America's Team", the Dallas Cowboys. The Niners had won the NFC West that year and even beat the Cowboys in the regular season. But that meant nothing now. Dallas was winning as the smart money picked them to win. The Niners were down to their last drive.
Bandit the Cat was...I don't know. I'm sorry to say I wasn't keeping track of the little black and white furred beastie. He was probably staring out from the living room at the back patio, thinking about catching and slowly killing something twenty times smaller than he was. (Some bird with a lame wing or a pregnant lizard.)
I was the civilized being in the room, watching a game being played 45 miles miles away where grown men were pummeling each other and inflicting pain against their fellow man with great relish.
For a small brown leather ball.
It was past the two minute warning. We (the Niners and I ) were behind by six points and Joe Montana was moving the team down the field. Time was running out. I sat on the sofa like a man waiting for a jury of the Football gods to decide my fate: blissful happiness or another cold hard year of community service "waiting until next year".
Twice inthe early 1970's, Tom Landry's Cowboys had defeated Coach Dick Nolan and QB John Brodie's Forty Niners in a championship game a step away from the Super Bowl. Twice! Once, with a come-from-behind victory when "America's Team" was down 10 points with eight minutes left in the fourth quarter. Could we come back? Objectively, no way.
I don't remember if it was third down or what it was and I'm not going to look it up. All I know is I had the sound down on the television and was listening to Lon Simmons and Wayne Walker on the radio. The Niners were inside the "red zone" and Montana was running out of the pocket, chased by half the guys inwhite, silver and blue jerseys, and I remember standing up as Joe threw a desperation pass into the End Zone and it seemed too high for a receiver to get but suddenly tight end Dwight Clark leaped up and....
"Oh, my Godmy GodmyGod!!! Yes, yes, dammnit!!!! We win!!! We Win!! Not this time, Texas!! Not this time, Landry!!! Not this time "Too Tall Jones"!! We win!! Yeeeah!!"
I waited for the extra point kick. It went through the crosbars. 28-27 Niners with under a minute to go!!! But wasit really over. We're talking about the Cowboys. America's Team. Big D got the ball and tried a couple plays and maybe got a pass completion or whatever but it was all over quickly and beautifully. My team was going to the Super Bowl. The team my friends Pat and Steve and Richard and lots of others who had waited for this was actually going to the Super Bowl. A new page was turned in NFL History. A new team would go on to the Final Game...
And they would win that game against the Cincinati Bengals and the Forty Niners would be on the Lombardi Throphy and no more next year.
The Niners and Montana and Walsh and his succesor, George Seifert, would go on to win three more Super Bowls in the 1980's and make the playoffs seven times as well. But that was the most memorable, sweetest football game of all time for me.
Oh ,yeah, I scared the hell out of Bandit after that catch. Jumping up and down he must have thought I was completely deranged and was going to pull his tail out. He ran around and wound up cowering under a kitchen chair. But I think after I calmed down, and he relaxed a bit with my calm reassurances, and picked him up and told the cat the whole story and then started calling my friends that even Bandit knew all was well after all.
Clark and Montana reinacted that pass during halftime of a recent home game the Forty Niners had at home against the Vikings (the Good Guys won that one too). It might have seemed chessy or old news to younger fans but the crowd got to roar for those two men and for a team of forty men from 25 years back.
I hope Montana and Clark do it again in another twenty five years. And I hope I'll be able to see it on the television, even though all I did on that day in 1982 was scare the cat.
Here's to a bit of the irrational in life.
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