Remember Bill

Perhaps it was a little strange to spend the first day after leaving my job by going to a memorial service for someone I had never met. Maybe sleeping in or going through my tivo recorded list would be more appropriate, but funerals happen at unexpected times, I knew I could make both the service and then go to a wedding that afternoon, and some of the most influential people in your life are the ones you never meet.

Bill Walsh was a childhood hero. Growing up the two mentors I wish I had were Bill and Obi Wan Ken-obi (the Alex Guinness version. The Ewan McGregor one I keep expecting to burst into song). There is a similarity of type between the two; at a deep level I believe that they were intellectual boxers, the ones who survived on their wits but knew how to battle when the time arose. There are the other kinds of fighters, those that use superior strength or unchecked emotion, to their advantage and in a given battle these types can win. A strong punch can triumph over a well thought out one. But I think to have a successful career is to know when to fight, to grasp the rhythm of a battle and set its tone, to understand and maximize the talent you have, to be ruthless in the brief times it is needed, and to be gentle every time else. Bill Walsh did all of these things.

“The Catch” is the “Stairway to Heaven” of football plays in that it is both overplayed and still is impressive. In the history of leaps Dwight Clark floated in the back of the end zone the way that Neil Armstrong did on the moon. The moment has been used extensively as a highlight from pre-game shows to sport drinks commercials. It was the YouTube football moment of the eighties.

Yet to shorten a decade down to a clip is to widdle its importance. A few months ago ESPN Classic replayed the entire game on television, and I was transfixed once again.

In 1982 San Francisco had an inferiority complex. The seventies weren’t kind as the drug use hardened, the Vietnam war raged, the presidency changed from paranoid to ineffective, and this rage now aimless without a fixed or easy concept to rally against (the war) or for (civil rights) manifested itself in the craziness that lead to the assassination of a mayor and soon afterwards the drinking of cool aid in the jungles of Africa.

We also sucked at sports. I don’t know whether as a pacifist city, San Francisco was doomed in a game that used war metaphors, but the Niners were bad not so much in the Charlie Brown sense where the ball is pulled away immediately before being kicked, but more in what used to be the Red Socks Way where the team would do well for most of the season until they would get crushed in the playoffs.

Bill Walsh would change this, but we could hardly expect it at the time. More Odysseus than Hercules he looked less like a classic hero than the tweedy professor who teaches classics. His boxing approach to football wasn’t going for the massive punch, but instead to use a series of dinky passes to grind an opponent. It was a strategy based on adverbs - “consistently” and “eventually” - rather than verbs such as “pound” and “crush”.

This was fine and good for the regular season, and to get a winning record was an achievement for a team that had gone 2-14 a couple of years earlier. But the question remained how would such a thing work against a powerhouse team with superior talent.

Texans breathe football the way that San Franciscans breathe fog. Any place that boasts they have “America’s team” has to have the talent to back the claim, and other than Steelers of Pittsburgh no one was as ferocious in the seventies, the battle orcs of red state America.

The Niners weren’t as talented then. They had a series of cast offs - Fred Dean, Hacksaw Reynolds - a few up and coming youngsters - Ronnie Lott, Dwight Clark - and one quarterback with a soft arm but a steady poise that slipped to the third round. Joe Montana would become one of the greats, but against this Dallas team it looked liked he was going nowhere. With three interceptions in the game, Montana looked mortal.

The local crowd felt it. The announcers kept mentioning it. When the Niners got the ball late in the fourth quarter, my memories stirred that “this was the drive,” but they went three and out. Dallas got the ball back, but a receiver dropped a ball on third down. If he made that catch then perhaps the West Coast Offense doesn’t dominate football strategy for the next twenty years. If he made that catch everything changes. But Dallas punted on fourth down to give the Niners the ball on their own 11 yard line with 4:54 left to go.

At this point watching the game I was ready for the greatest passer in history do his stuff, but what I had forgotten was that Bill Walsh was coaching. The counter puncher had to set up his final blow by doing something quite unexpected: run the football. This seems even more insane in hindsight, but the little runs by Lenvil Elliot, a player who had been cut during preseason, were available. To me, the definition of someone who can successfully do the unexpected, who achieves victory by the unanticipated, is a genius.

Finally the ball got down to the six yard line, and well, you know...

And so it was twenty five years later that I felt I had to go to the funeral. Small and with bad hands I was never going to play football well even on Nintendo. I have seldom had the courage to run when the world thinks pass. But I want to. I needed to say thanks to someone who showed that even the most physical of things can be won on wits.