Monthly Archives: January 1985

Baseball, Chicago Tribune, Professional

‘SUBWAY SERIES’ TAKES FANS FOR RIDE

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Baseball in Chicago is arranged under the tidy assumption that Cub fans and Sox fans will never have to suffer the company of each other except on public transportation or during the odd elevator ride when, for lack of other literature to help endure the trip, they might read one another’s T-shirts.

That is often what passes for literacy among the faithful of each team, neither of whom has ever been fascinated by the alphabet but can tell you in an instant how far behind in the standings the other guy’s team is.

There is a comforting reassurance to this natural order of things, for each fan has not only the success of his own heroes to encourage him, but the failure of his neighbor’s to make him feel better.

It is a wonderful system and one that should be protected for the good of all.

When the Cubs are up and the Sox down, as is the most recent arrangement, some gloating is evident. Cub fans take to wearing pictures of cuddly bears and even the name of the city we all share, while Sox fans are stuck with Eddie Einhorn.

The Cubs’ constituency has always felt it had the advantage in these encounters, having one more letter in its last name than do the modern Sox, who used to have a first and a middle name but have recently lopped off color and place as redundant or too taxing to be read all in one sitting.

The Sox are just the Sox, happily truncated and phonetic, a distinction that is sufficient enough to foster a private superiority over the Cubs. No place name is needed to identify Sox allegiance, and even more than casual inspection will reveal no hint of geography.

The Sox know who they are, and so do their fans, who conveniently ignore the city of Boston and its Sox of a different color, as well as the perpetual error of Noah Webster and his heirs, who insist on spelling Sox funny in the dictionary.

Life progresses through the seasons here with mostly civic tolerance to these differences, and outright violence is infrequent, especially since the Sox again started tucking their shirts in and wearing pants that cover their knees.

The Cubs stay in their warren to the north and the Sox in theirs to the south, at least for now, though the suspicion is growing that the Cubs may move south and the Sox north and west, if you can believe anybody who uses the words “new” and “stadium” in the same sentence.

No matter. The point of all this is to examine an announcement that the two teams will confront one another on the field in 1985, a year that is already racing past us.

Plans have been made to have an exhibition game at Comiskey Park on April 29, a date that would otherwise be left innocently vacant of baseball and could be set aside for something useful.

Next year, the two teams would do the same thing at Wrigley Field, though just when has not been determined.

This would appear to be one swell idea, or two if you count home-and-home games separately. Not so.

The only decent thing the Cubs and Sox can do to satisfy their fans is to meet in the World Series. Both teams would have had to put away the rest of their companions over the long season and set up an authentic showdown.

Meaningless exhibitions will satisfy no one. Some arguments should never be settled for fun, or worse, as appears the case here, for profit.

The Cubs and Sox used to play each other often, and the fact that they haven’t for a while has not resulted in a great outcry for them to resume. In the past, assorted charities benefited from the games, which was at least a noble if predictable excuse.

These games will be played not for the fans, or for charity, but for the Cub and Sox payrolls. The two teams will split the proceeds.

In other words, the Cubs and Sox will be exploiting the fragile emotions of their audience for the money, which reduces the whole thing to the level of wrestling, except no one will know ahead of time who the winner is.

But too many people will care.

Basketball, College

KNIGHT BENCHES HIS INTEGRITY

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The basketball coach of Indiana University is a fool, as well as a phony, and thankfully has nothing more sinister to do than to bully other people’s children and occasionally give away conference games to the University of Illinois.

If the Indiana coach were doing something truly vital, such as your laundry or mine, he might be a perpetual irritant, but he is seasonal and avoidable, like poison sumac.

In fact, there are many citizens who think of the basketball coach of Indiana about as often as they do insurance, and with equal fondness.

What amusement there is in paying the least attention to the man comes from wondering what new and original way he can make a jerk of himself, though such curiosity is as pointless as wondering whatever happened to your first bicycle.

None of this is a startling discovery to have made on a cold Sunday afternoon while watching the coach of Indiana insult Illinois and the rest of college basketball, a sport he pretends to protect, for his own private amusement.

The greater surprise would have been if he had not done something to confirm his loutishness, though the last thing anyone expected was that he would play to lose.

The coach of Indiana has won national titles and was only recently the headmaster of our Olympic effort, which resulted in gold medals all around from stomping foreigners without remorse, hardly a challenge.

Maybe the only thing he had never done in the game was lose on purpose. And now he has.

Unless, of course, the coach of Indiana has simply allowed his ego to disengage him completely from reality.

Ordinary coaches can win with their best players, their starters. That’s the way it’s done every day. But only the most exceptional coach can win with the very bottom of his roster, and only the most arrogant would try.

The coach of Indiana tried. He played six freshmen against Illinois, the point being not their ability, of which there was precious little, but their age.

He was apparently teaching his regular players a lesson in humility, or defense. Maybe he was merely making some insane point for the guardians of Illinois athletics, in whose house he was playing and whom he considers unrepentant pirates.

Maybe he thought it beneath him to play games with crooks. Which it was is not important to anyone but him.

It could be that he was showing everybody who is in charge at Indiana, who is the boss, a question that needs to be posed but has never been raised except possibly in his own curious mind.

All that is known right now is that he did it in public, as only a fool or someone overly enchanted with his own legend would do.

He did throw in one regular senior starter, who stands sometimes without falling at 7 feet 2 inches. One imagines he did that so that when the pictures come out, it will look like a real basketball team was on the floor.

Otherwise, the team that represented Indiana was as unkempt as a teenager’s room and had no more chance of beating Big 10-leading Illinois than it did of finding a clean shirt under the bed.

His explanation was not as amazing as the fact that he bothered to explain at all, even in his fashion, which was to pretend like nothing unusual had happened at all.

“I enjoyed watching our kids today,” he said. “They played defense.”

And even the coach of Illinois lied right along with the coach of Indiana.

“Different coaches have different ways of handling their players,” Lou Henson said. “I am not complaining.”

What Henson ought to be doing is calling for an investigation, or at least an apology. This wasn’t college basketball, this was an inexcusable fraud.

It was a man tripping over his own mania, which is that only he knows what is good for himself and for everyone else.

The coach of Indiana has lately and loudly expounded on the evils of his sport, accusing without proof almost every other basketball program in the nation of the most terrible things.

The danger in calling into question the integrity of others is that you must be above reproach yourself, and that was the edge he enjoyed.

His honesty and his concern for the game had never been an issue until now. But the evidence of Sunday is that the coach of Indiana cares as little about the integrity of college basketball as he would have us believe everyone else does.

Which is worse, to buy players in order to win or to use players who have no chance of winning?

Choosing up sides on this issue is as appealing as trying to decide whether to sleep with a weasel or a warthog.

One of which is Bobby Knight.

PHOTO: UPI Photo. Brian Sloan, one of 4 freshmen who started for Indiana in its loss at Illinois, flips the ball between Bruce Douglas (25) and Efrem Winters.

Biography, Chicago Tribune, Football, Professional

SUBSTANCE LOST OUT TO NAMATH’S STYLE

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JOE NAMATH WOULD not be much on our minds these days except for two astonishing developments. First, he got married, and second, he joined pro football’s Hall of Fame, only one of which, as far as is known, required a vote.

Namath as a groom may be more intriguing than Namath as an all-time hero, since his reputation as a bachelor always exceeded his fame as a quarterback. Namath had one great moment on the football field. The number and intensity of his other accomplishments will have to wait for his memoirs.

I suppose he deserves to be in the Hall of Fame for no other reason than that magic afternoon in Super Bowl III, when he brought the American Football League from tourist to first class. But he never did anything with a football before or after that day that warrants enshrinement in Canton, Ohio, the last place anyone nicknamed Broadway would be expected to be found anyhow.

FOR THOSE WHO have forgotten the legacy of Namath, he once represented a generation, right up there with the Beatles and Muhammad Ali.

His last game, if memory serves, was a losing playoff encounter six years ago between the Los Angeles Rams, for whom he lurked in the final year of his career, and the Minnesota Vikings.

The end was not what his legend demanded. For those who believed he was everything romantic and compelling in sports, Namath should have gone down under a fierce pass rush, pinpointing one last touchdown pass to win the big game. He should have been carried off on his shield, thumbing his nose at the world in one final, glorious act of defiance.

Instead, the man who once joked about sleeping through college sat alone on the bench of a team most of us can’t remember he ever suited up for while Pat Haden, a Rhodes Scholar, swept up in front of him.

The man who once saved a league with the New York Jets was not asked to save a single game for the Rams.

IT WAS AN END not uncommon in sports. Babe Ruth ran out his string with the Boston Braves, leaving his team in a pique because it wouldn’t give him the day off. Ali fought pygmies for money, losing his last fight in front of foreigners because they were the only ones who could watch without turning their heads. Billie Jean King hung on and on, willing to lose tennis matches to children.

And like them, Namath was always bigger than the game he played. He has managed to remain with us, more or less, as a fitful actor, a celebrity bowler or some such.

It takes a Hall of Fame endorsement for us to remember what he was. Namath’s real importance and his real credentials for the Hall of Fame were his influence on his sport and on his time. What he was and what he did linger still like a locker-room odor.

He was the first to give football players an exaggerated value of their own worth, getting nearly half a million dollars as a rookie and immediately jacking up the wages of combat.

Any sports contract that does not begin on the fat side of $1 million these days is not worth mentioning.

NAMATH’S LIFESTYLE, outrageous in his day, is commonplace now. Not that booze and women were ever out of fashion with athletes, but Namath made both a status symbol for the successful jock. Booze has been replaced by more exotic mindbenders, a not surprising progression.

A more trivial example of a Namath affectation that became routine is white shoes. It is difficult to find an athlete south of Minnesota who wears basic black on his feet instead of white. And are we all too young to remember when Namath was the only one who wore them?

Namath’s long hair set a style not only in sports but also in the larger arena. Executives who would have been the first to yell, “Get a hair cut!” in 1968, became shaggier than Namath ever was, and like the original he was, Namath showed his ears again long before they showed theirs.

Namath was the first athlete who got away with being different. “Do your own thing” became a catch phrase for a generation.

BY BEATING THE establishment in the Super Bowl, and by challenging it when he quit football in dispute over ownership of a bar, he set the tone for much of the later rebelliousness of athletes everywhere.

Namath’s demand for freedom was echoed in player strikes in both football and baseball. For better or worse, the roots of almost all athletic unrest can be traced to Namath’s trend-setting belligerence.

It was no accident that Namath’s greatest glory came in the ’60s. He was the kind of hero an uncomfortable nation was looking for–arrogant, self- confident and a rebel.

And it is worth noting that, as the turbulent ’60s gave way to the complacent ’70s, Namath gave way also. Here in the causeless ’80s, he is just another Yuppie whose only rebellion is against polyester.

Now he is being honored by the establishment he once taunted, going into the Hall of Fame at the same time as no less than the high commissioner of the game himself, Pete Rozelle, which proves what we’ve always suspected: Young pioneers have a way of becoming old proprietors.

Letters

The Readers Send Their Very Best

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MARK TWAIN once apologized, “If I had more time, I would write you a shorter letter.” No one reads Twain anymore.

Dear Mr. Lincicome,

You are a sports parasite, a creature that feeds on the inevitability that 95 percent of all sports teams go home without a championship ring. . . . In the next year or two, Chicago may also have a championship in a major sport, which will put cynics like you on page 10. It truly is a darn shame that the fans have more appreciation for the teams that play their hearts out than the writers who supposedly represent them.–David B. Alfvin, Bellwood.

Dear Mr. Alfvin,

Trust me. Cub Fever can be cured.

Dear Mr. Lincicome,

I felt that your reference to Joe Montana and his many marriages did not seem to be needed. None of us knows the reasons behind his divorces, so that means we don’t have the right to say anything about them. Just because he’s had two divorces doesn’t make him any less of a human being, or a quarterback, for that matter. Next time you decide to do some comparing of quarterbacks at Super Bowl time, why not try comparing by ability and not by personal lifestyles?–Pam Abraham, Chicago.

Dear Miss Abraham,

There is no truth to the rumor that Montana has a wash-and-wear tuxedo.

Dear Bernie,

Too often your cleverness seems like hostility. (Like a New York stand-up comic or someone imitating one.) I wonder if you like sports in Chicago. I wonder if you like your readers. I wonder if you perceive your job as being a sports critic. . . . So what I want to know is, Are you from Chicago or someplace else? Do you have the authority to be as cynical as you often appear? If you are from Chicago, I suggest you lighten up and try some optimism. If you are from someplace else, keep up the good work and I’m sure you will be back there someday.–Jim Hawley, Milwaukee.

Dear Jim,

Curiosity can be very unattractive.

Bernie, my man . . .

This is a reply to your, ugh, column concerning lights in Wrigley Field. Seems to me, my man, that you just love trouble and can’t stay out of it. If something is left alone for generations and “flows” its own way, that is hell for you. Destroy it, screw it up, jazz it up, turn it upside down, all in the name of progress, right?. . . . Did someone make you the mouthpiece of the Trib to educate us ignoramuses as to what is good for us and what is archaic? Keep this up and we will make life so miserable for you in Chicago that you’ll wish you never heard of Chicago or the Trib. Continue to aggravate us, you all-knowing one, and you’ll be out of here so fast, as fast as we get rid of all the dingbats who don’t belong here.–Andrew Zurczak, Chicago.

Andrew, my man . . .

So that’s what happened to Greg Luzinski.

Dear Bernie,

As one of your harshest critics, I’m sorry I couldn’t bid on this “opportunity of a lifetime” (to hit you in the face with a pie). I honestly don’t think you do anything in good fun.–Al Dordek, Wilmette.

Dear Al,

My worst fear is to be taken for a good sport.

Dear Bernie,

What on earth is wrong with a little controversy over who is No. 1? Why the childish obsession with crowning an “undisputed” champion? Will we eventually sink to the level of demanding a punt, pass and kick competition for the Heisman Trophy? A little healthy argument adds interest to the game. I, for one, enjoy the postseason bowl games and dread the prospect of seeing my beloved college sport turned into a junior version of the NFL.–Clifford Vickery, Chicago.

Dear Clifford,

Too late.

Dear Bernie,

Not all Cub fans are opposed to lights in Wrigley Field. I, for one, and probably a majority of other true Cub fans would welcome night games. You see, most Cub fans like myself do not live within walking distance of the park. Most Cub fans are employed and work during the day when weekday games are played. Most Cub fans would join me in attending night games in large numbers. Go out and find out what the real fans think, not just the bartenders, housewives, retirees, salesmen, vagrants and the rest of the crowd that currently attends weekday games.–Thomas Pazur, Chicago.

Dear Thomas,

Okay, Lee Elia. Stop kidding around.

Dear Mr. Lincicome,

“Tour de force” is not a phrase often applied to sports journalism, but your (Doug) Flutie column surely qualifies for it. In its own way, it is of Heisman quality itself, a long sour note sustained to a length beyond the powers of ordinary men to achieve. It confirms your eminence among professional provocateurs, no other of whom has as yet discovered flaws in Flutie. As the Trib’s Designated Denigrator, your ambitions must daily be to repel the reader, cause him to smite the forehead, dither with rage and roll his eyeballs. The Flutie column would appear to have reached the summit of these ambitions. It is a kind of Matterhorn of misanthropy, the sneer raised to an art form, a large green oyster hawked in the middle of the oatmeal.– James G. O’Brien, Mundelein.

Dear Mr. O’Brien,

Flattery will not get you a free subscription.

Biography, Chicago Tribune, Football, Professional, Quotes

Montana the Best? No Argument Here

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WHAT A RELIEF it will be to pass through the approaching NFL-less months without having to worry about who the greatest quarterback in football is.

We now know that it is Joe Montana of San Francisco, an issue that was settled clearly in Super Bowl XIX and the only reason to remember the game at all, unless you count the human American flag that boogied during the National Anthem.

Montana is the best quarterback, and a more reluctant hero we have not had in football since last year, when Jim Plunkett mumbled his way into our hearts.

“Joe is the greatest quarterback in football today,” said his coach, Bill Walsh, and if you can’t trust a guy who always dresses in white, who can you trust?

“Joe Montana is the best that ever played,” said Dwight Clark, who used to be Montana’s roommate and still serves as Montana’s landlord between brides.

“Joe has established himself as maybe the finest quarterback to play,” said Paul Hackett, who is only Montana’s personal coach.

There we have three perfectly objective endorsements, and, of course, our own eyes.

SUPER BOWL XIX was just the latest chapter in the Joe Montana (Montagna in the original Italian) story. The beginning was back in Monongahela, Pa., in the back yard where an only child already burdened with the designation of junior after his name caught footballs thrown by a father determined to make him a great athlete.

The story moved to Notre Dame where, from seventh string, Montana became a college legend. Montana brought the Irish from behind no less than half a dozen times in his three seasons of play there, from a 20-point rescue against Air Force, to a 35-34 victory over Houston in the Cotton Bowl with no time left after Notre Dame had fallen behind 34-12.

And now to San Francisco, where in just six years Montana has won two Super Bowls and has been the outstanding player in each one.

“I don’t know how I’ve been able to do these things,” Montana said. “I just go out there and try to win.”

You don’t learn much about Montana from Montana. For a young man consistently described as fiercely competitive, he is absolutely timid in public.

In any gathering, he would be the one most likely to pass for a sarcophagus.

He speaks softly, though he always fixes the questioner with his clear blue eyes, and he always stops his answer short of anything revealing, though he did confess after this Super Bowl that the one thing that most upset him was being called a wimp by “a writer from Miami.”

OF COURSE, NO ONE in San Francisco would call him that, no matter how tempted by Montana’s hermit instincts. In fact, Montana was declared God for a Day by one group of sign painters who watched the 49er victory parade that Montana skipped.

In all candor, Montana does not look like a quarterback. What he looks like is somebody who carries your groceries to the car.

“The good Lord did not put him together like Dan Marino,” said 49er guard Randy Cross, “but he can run, pass and get out of the way of problems. Marino is the best thrower in the league. Joe Montana is the best quarterback.”

“He is not a flamboyant person,” said Walsh. “He’s like a great writer or musician. There’s something internal that you just know.

“People will play alongside him more smoothly than someone who attracts a lot of attention. He doesn’t have that bravado that certain people who are less smart have.”

What Montana has are results. Notre Dame used to cheer when Dan Devine would finally put Montana into a game, usually when it appeared lost. Devine likes to take credit for discovering Montana, but there is a story around that, during Montana’s junior year, after two Notre Dame quarterbacks had been hurt, Devine whirled angrily and yelled at his assistants, “Get me a quarterback!”

Montana was sent into the game. He brought the Irish back to beat Purdue, causing Devine to ask, “What’s that kid’s name?”

WALSH AND MONTANA are an ideal pair, kind of like a professor and his puppy. Here’s a new trick, Joe. Roll over and stand on one leg. Isn’t he cute? “He is extremely coachable,” said Walsh, “and he is very inventive.”

Walsh first saw Montana when Walsh was working out UCLA running back James Owens before the 1979 draft. Owens had brought Montana along to throw the ball to him, and Walsh was impressed enough to forget Owens and make Montana the 49ers’ second selection.

The choice was high enough to startle NFL scouts. “They questioned his consistency,” said Walsh, “but I felt that was the fault of Notre Dame. I wondered why, if he could have one great game, why not two, or three? They said his arm wasn’t strong enough, but it is as strong as Dan Fouts’. I put his arm in the 90th percentile.

“Joe has leadership, instinct, resourcefulness, maturity. We have the most detailed offense in the league. The quarterback is our limit. But with Joe, we don’t have a limit.”

End of argument.

Chicago Tribune, Football, Professional

Marino, Dolphins Just Babes Against Bullies

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Dateline: PALO ALTO, CALIF.

Uh, about that wing being built at the Pro Football Hall of Fame to celebrate the accomplishments of Dan Marino of Miami.

Put away the hammer and saw for a few more years. Pack up the spotlight and send back all those autographed footballs collected from assorted end zones with Marino’s fingerprints on them.

Rent out the space for something useful, like a used-car lot. Wait until Marino grows up and wins a couple of Super Bowls, like Joe Montana of San Francisco.

Or until Marino learns to throw the ball lying on his back, or only to his own receivers, or until he gets a defense that doesn’t think it is against the rules to get in the way of the other team.

IN ONE MISTY afternoon on the campus of Stanford University, Marino was exposed, not as a boy wonder, but merely as a boy, befuddled by the adults of the 49ers, who allowed him only one touchdown pass and none after the first quarter.

“Marino had only a fair game, but he’ll be back,” said 49ers’ coach Bill Walsh. “He’s a brilliant quarterback.

“He’s a great quarterback, a great young quarterback.”

The longer the game went, the younger Marino got. By the end, you expected Marino to curl up in the huddle with a pacifier in his mouth.

“It was our poorest offensive game of the year,” said Miami coach Don Shula. “Our defense never stopped them. We just didn’t have the answers.”

What was supposed to be the greatest Super Bowl ever ended up being the greatest mismatch.

THIS WAS BABIES against bullies. The 49ers even looked better during calisthenics.

And this wasn’t just a bunch of overweight guys with fish on their hats who wandered into Stanford Stadium on stolen credentials. These were Shula’s Dolphins, the most prolific offensive menagerie on record.

They could score so fast the stadium clock needed to be a stopwatch. You had to take off your shoes to count the touchdowns.

This was the team with the state-of-the-art passing attack, inexhaustible and indefensible.

“All we heard all week,” said Montana, “was about their offense. We knew we had an offense, too.”

WHAT SAN FRANCISCO had was more weapons than Miami. Not only was there Montana, the game’s most valuable player, but Roger Craig, who scored three times for a Super Bowl record, and Wendell Tyler, who did not fumble, and Dwight Clark and even a third-string running back, Carl Monroe, who caught the first of Montana’s three touchdown passes.

Montana was as nimble as Marino was inert, dashing away from a timid Dolphin pass rush, running once for a touchdown and, at one point, posing the question of whether he could rush for as many yards as Marino could pass for. Anyone without a microscope would have thought the Miami defense had missed the team bus.

“Montana had a lot to do with that,” Shula said. “He was outstanding in every way. When you get beat the way we got beat, you just take your hat off to the victor.”

If this had been a prize fight, the 49ers would have been given the decision on a TKO, just as soon as Montana found Craig for a 16-yard touchdown late in the third quarter.

THE 49ERS COULD pass and run, often at the same time. Miami couldn’t even walk. So insecure was Miami’s running game that the Dolphins tried it only nine times, with little effect.

Miami had one bullet, Marino, and on this day it was only good for shooting itself in the foot.

Marino threw the ball 50 times, a Super Bowl record, and completed 29 to friends and two to San Francisco, one each to Eric Wright and Carlton Williamson, who weren’t supposed to have the speed or the savvy to stay with the Marks Brothers of Miami, Duper and Clayton.

Duper caught only one pass, and while Clayton caught six, none was ultimately of consequence.

Marino’s most effective pass was a dump-off to running back Tony Nathan.

“We knew we were the key to beating these guys,” said Wright. “It would all come down to what kind of day we had.”

THE SECONDARY and the pass rush, led mostly by Fred Dean, Gary Johnson and Dwaine Board, tested Marino’s noted quick release as it had never been tested in his young career.

To get the ball off in time, Marino would have had to throw it back between his center’s legs.

There can be no doubt now that San Francisco is the best team in football, complete in all phases, while the Dolphins are only as good as Marino can make them.

“This team is one of the best of all times,” said Walsh.

Instant history is dangerous. Just a day before, we would have believed that about Marino. PHOTO: UPI Telephoto. San Francisco running back Roger Craig is upended by Miami cornerback William Judson after a short gain. Craig scored three touchdowns to set a Super Bowl record.

Chicago Tribune, Football, Prediction, Professional

Trying to Figure the Super Winner

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Dateline: PALO ALTO, CALIF.

I’m a numbers guy when it comes to picking football winners and here are the most important numbers to consider in choosing a winner of Super Bowl XIX. The odds of an earthquake actually destroying either the Miami Dolphins or San Francisco 49ers on Super Sunday are 10,000 to 1, reported to be the same as the last time nature tried to shake this city into the bay.

A lot less was at stake in 1906, of course, there being no Super Bowl but merely the infancy of the future Paris of America, which has since been more or less restored, to the eternal gratitude of hairdressers everywhere.

The odds are considerably more promising that Stanford Stadium will be rattled around a little bit, something like 500 to 1, which the 49ers may be counting on to stop the passing of Dan Marino of Miami. It is the only defense that has not yet been tried.

THE OPPORTUNITY to witness this Super Bowl in person has been sold for as much as $1,000, the most impressive number ever associated with football ticket scalping. This would seem to confirm the opinion that this is the most desirable Super Bowl ever concocted, when all it really means is that folks around here never pay less than $1,000 for anything, including bread that tastes like it has already been chewed and a ride on a noisy cable car during which you feel as secure as a scab on a child’s elbow.

Parking places are selling for $100, which I believe is only by the wheel, and TV is hawking without blushing one minute of time for a cool million, the same number as Joe Montana’s salary for a whole month.

This is a Super Bowl that will be won or lost by the quarterbacks. The numbers on each of them are revealing.

Montana of San Francisco leads Marino in marriage proposals 3-1 and in weddings 2-0, making him clearly the veteran bridegroom.

Marino’s inexperience in these matters has been of considerable concern to observers who have watched the two all week, trying to determine which one is most adept at handling pressure.

Every question concerning each man’s marriage plans met with severe irritation, with Marino being the more testy, though Montana seemed to have the edge in regret.

MARINO LEADS Montana in number of flashy sports cars, having had three Corvettes to Montana’s two Ferraris. If either one should become most valuable player in the game, he will not win a new automobile, but a bumper sticker that says, “My other car is a Dodge.”

Bill Walsh, the 49ers’ coach, is very big on numbers, as one would imagine about a man who works for a team whose last name is one.

Walsh begins every game with 25 plays called “the script.” The script is never violated until all the plays have been run in numerical order, no matter the down, distance or situation.

Walsh does this to prevent stereotyping of his offense, and to keep Montana’s mind clear to consider more important numbers, such as the address of the church this time.

It also allows Walsh time to dash to the locker room and change in case he should discover himself wearing in public any piece of clothing that does not have a crease.

DON SHULA DOES not bother with scripts other than the one he read a long time ago which told him that any point is made clearer by screaming.

When considering the numerical influence of either coach, one should not look at the sideline but at the roadside. Shula is part owner of five hamburger franchises in the Bay Area, while Walsh is part owner of none.

The most annoying number is nine, that being the total of Miami defenders whose last names begin with the letter B. This oddity is responsible for Miami’s defense being known as the Killer Bees, or on occasion the Beefense.

The Dolphins and their sunburned faithful take great delight in pointing out how clever they are with nicknames, giving an identity to a defense that would be better off hiding its face behind a hat.

SAN FRANCISCO has the much better defense but has no identity except the one it left behind when its pass rush moved north from San Diego. All four of its defensive backs will be in the Pro Bowl, but so will all three important members of Miami’s offense, whose names all begin with M.

There is no telling how good Miami could be if it used the whole alphabet.

The only number that really matters in all of this is No. 13. That is Marino’s jersey number, or the number of touchdown passes he threw last week. I forget which.

Marino is the only reason anyone should pick Miami, but in all the history of Super Bowls, there has never been a better reason.

I make it, by the numbers, Dolphins, 31-24.

Chicago Tribune, Football

Superbowlweek: Can You Top This?

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Dateline: SAN FRANCISCO

There are a million stories at the naked Super Bowl and this one is the most bizarre.

“I was in a bar here named Orphan Annies,” said Bubba Paris, an offensive tackle for the 49ers, “and I picked up a woman. I was a person who liked to womanize, you see.”

Paris weighs 300 pounds, or somewhere in that neighborhood, provided the neighborhood is the size of Idaho.

“We drank some and we drank some more and then we went up to this woman’s apartment,” Paris said. “I used to do that a lot.

“We were lying there in bed and all of a sudden God said, ‘Bubba, you are going to hell.’ ”

PARIS WAS NOT surprised that God called him Bubba instead of by his Christian name of William.

“Everyone calls me Bubba,” he said.

The hour was late, or early, by Paris’ recollection, 5 a.m. on the coast. “I just stopped what I was doing and called a friend on the phone. I told him I had to find a minister,” Paris said. “An hour later I was saved. I haven’t done any sin in two years.”

Whew. And you thought that today’s heroes don’t have any lessons to pass on to the younger generation.

THE SUPER BOWL is full of them. Who cannot be touched by the saga of Robert Sowell, special teams missile for the Miami Dolphins?

“Yes,” said Sowell, “I used to sleep with a football.”

Just try to not ask why.

“I carried that football everywhere with me for three years,” Sowell said, “because I wanted to be reminded of my destiny.”

Which was?

“To play in the National Football League,” Sowell said.

SOWELL HAD PLAYED one year at Howard University before dropping out of school to rustproof cars, obviously not a career goal since he did not sleep with buckets of undercoating.

He was cut by Toronto in the Canadian Football League, stuck with a semipro team in Sacramento and was ignored by every National Football League team but the Dolphins when he wrote letters in longhand, begging for a tryout. “I had one shot,” said Sowell. “Suicide squad. All I had to do was stay alive.”

Which, subsequent events have shown, Sowell was able to do at a salary of $63,000, which is $1,000 less than he will earn if the Dolphins win the Super Bowl.

“I always had my dreams,” Sowell said, “but I never dreamed of going to no Super Bowl.”

Nothing is impossible if you choose the right companion, though carrying around a stethoscope is healthier and pays better in the long run.

HOW HAPPY WE CAN all feel for Tony Nathan, the Miami running back who avoided the most serious tragedy that can befall a football player.

Nathan lost his playbook.

“It was stolen,” Nathan said.

Sure, tell that to Dolphin coach Don Shula, which is precisely what Nathan was forced to do.

“You sit in front of coach Shula,” Nathan said, “and it seems like your chair gets shorter. You sink lower and lower and pretty soon you’re looking up at him.”

Better to hand feed a wart hog than to endure the wrath of Shula.

“I explained what happened,” Nathan said, “and he was very understanding.”

What happened was Nathan had left his playbook in his new pickup truck, which was parked in his driveway in Miami. He woke up the next morning to find his playbook gone, and, incidentally, the truck.

Police and FBI agents joined the hunt for the playbook. An intense, two- day search ensued.

“They found it at the bottom of a rock pit, under 30 feet of water,” Nathan said. “The playbook was so soggy you couldn’t read it.”

Thus were kept safe the secrets of the Miami offense. And what happened to the truck?

“Oh, they found that, too,” Nathan said.

NO SUPER BOWL would be official without the tale of the sensitive defensive end who composes verse in those quiet moments when he is not trying to break somebody else’s face.

“I don’t pattern my poetry after anyone in particular,” said Fred Dean of the 49ers, “although I like Shakespeare, Poe and Frost the best.”

All the blather of Super Bowl week is worth it if we can discover that otherwise violent human beings are secret softies, able to reconcile the soul of poets with the instincts of assassins.

“Football has a great deal to do with life,” said Dean. “It is a great parable. You strive for a goal, you struggle to achieve, you succeed, you fail. The game has everything.”

Dean is very private about his poetry, reluctant to infringe on the memories of Shakespeare, Poe or Frost, leaving the known poetry of football to this simple verse:

“There once was a nose guard from Texas,/who had a very large solar plexus./He could chew a whole log/and skin a wild hog/and he signed all his checks with crude X’s.”

IT IS NO WONDER otherwise undisturbed civilians will do anything to be part of all of this. A contest was held downtown Thursday to give away Super Bowl tickets. Only the most outrageous contestants would win.

An egg dealer named Tony allowed himself to be pelted by 4,900 eggs, unboiled. Someone named Steve dived into a vat of jello, 39 gallons, colored red and gold, semi-set. Cynthia, who was pretending to be mayor Dianne Feinstein, stripped to her underwear while singing a naughty song about the mayor.

Sam had his body painted to look like a 49er uniform and Bob permitted his girlfriend to tar and feather him.

Describing himself as an “animal imitation artist and synchronized swimmer,” a 274-pound guy named Clay, dressed in a gold lame tutu, tiara and flippers, jumped into a child’s pool filled with fish parts.

And these were the losers. The winner was a young man named Clay, who submitted to a Mohawk haircut and then painted his new hairdo with enamel in the colors of the 49ers.

“I was going to paint my dog, but I was afraid of the humane society,” he said. “People have always said I’m crazy. I guess I just confirmed it.”

Just another day at the Super Bowl.

Biography, Chicago Tribune, Football, Professional, Quotes

Marino’s Success Speaks for Itself

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Dateline: SAN FRANCISCO

Two things you don’t expect to learn about Dan Marino are: one, he is painfully young; and two, he is fat.

Not that he’s a real porker, not like a pulling guard or a nose tackle, but he has a belly that belongs on a baker, or a bartender, not on the greatest quarterback to ever become a legend over a weekend, which is about how long it has taken Marino to make the world forget Dan Fouts.

Quarterbacks, especially record-setting 23-year-old quarterbacks, ought not to look better with their shirttails out. Marino has a body made for suspenders.

Bless his paunch, a mortal flaw. You cannot imagine what a relief it is to have made this discovery. For if he had one of those speedbump stomachs, he would be just too perfect to stand.

He already has hair that curls around his face with careless insolence, eyes as blue as a Florida dawn, a smile that could melt the heart of a hermit, and he can throw a football with the inspiration of a minor Roman deity, which he is rumored to be in assorted Italian neighborhoods and the offensive huddle of the Dolphins.

IF YOU STARTED out to build a quarterback, Marino would already have all the best parts, though yours would probably be able to touch his toes without sitting.

And you might give him something interesting to say, just for variety. Marino treats conversation like a spaniel treats a rose bush.

“How did you come by your fast release?” Marino is asked.

“Who can say?” he shrugs.

“What do you say to people who already call you the greatest quarterback who ever lived?” he is asked.

“Who’s to say who is the greatest?” he says.

“Are you surprised to be in the Super Bowl so soon in your career?” he is asked.

“No,” he says.

“Do you think you are a dull person?” he is asked.

“Who’s to say who is dull? Maybe I think you are dull,” he says.

AND SO IT GOES. Marino came to this Super Bowl with a world ready to anoint him for his achievements, past and future, and he has managed to treat it as if it were trying to steal his wallet.

He has been patient with almost all inquiries, but he would clearly rather be someplace else. Three minutes into any interview and he starts shuffling his feet as if his toes were on fire.

An easy conclusion to draw is that Marino is essentially a jerk, a judgment that is as premature as is any on his place in the history of paid quarterbacking.

Marino is not very smart, not in an extra-football sense. If he has ever had a thought that did not include football or fun or family, he chased it out of his head before it left a scar.

In order to get out on the town with his teammates this week, to avoid the fans who gather to gawk and tug at him, Marino has had to leave his Oakland hotel in disguise. What the disguise is has not been revealed, but rumor has it he has been undetected as a scholar.

“I don’t think about things,” Marino said. “Have I ever sat down and thought at this moment in my life if I am destined to be a champion? No, I don’t do things like that.”

A DEEP THINKER, HE ISN’T. Marino’s explanation of how he does what he does with the football is no more complicated than this: “I just turn it loose and have fun.”

One suspects if he were to ever really understand his gift, in the way that a mechanic understands an engine, the fun would be gone. For him and for us.

For now, Marino’s innocence, or his arrogance, whichever it is, produces simply marvelous results.

Marino lives by instinct, on the field as well as off it, an approach to life that has served him fairly well so far. Fame has always come to Marino on his terms, or not at all.

Marino has a specialness that visits a few humans without any basis in reason. Just as Edison was destined to be more than a tinkerer, Baryshnikov more than a dancer, Charles Manson more than a nuisance, so was Marino destined to be more than just another quarterback.

EVEN DON SHULA is not quite sure what makes Marino so special. “I’d rather just pat him on the back and say, ‘Atta boy, Dan’,” Shula has said.

And Marino is a baby still, reacting with a child’s suspicion to adults who have wronged him.

A magazine story during Marino’s junior year at Pitt quoted him as saying he could throw the ball better than anybody in college and could throw with anybody in the pros. Marino did not say it exactly that way, even if he believed it, and he has been careful since to avoid saying anything the least bit colorful.

“I’m just being myself,” he said. “I am not being purposely dull.”

No argument here. No one could be that dull on purpose.

Biography, Chicago Tribune, Football, Professional

He Fits the Mold Only If It’s Cracked

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SAN FRANCISCO — Russ Francis, the tight end, was asked to define his role as one of the San Francisco 49ers’ offensive weapons.

“A weapon?” he asked. “Is that what I am? Is there any government agency I should register with?”

It is possible to get a straight answer from Francis, but foolish to insist on one, much the same as going to the circus for the food.

Francis explained why he once dived from a sixth-floor balcony into a hotel swimming pool.

“If I had jumped, my femurs would have been lodged in my frontal lobes,” he said.

But from the sixth floor?

“That’s all the floors the hotel had,” he said.

FRANCIS LOOKS LIKE a garden-variety football player, big and broad. He smiles more than most footballers, but knowing only that he plays football is like trying to know what’s inside a suitcase by reading the name tag.

Football is what he does, not what he is. Francis himself isn’t quite sure what that is.

“Free spirit, I’ve been called,” he said. “Thrill seeker. A guy with a death wish. I’m just someone who does what he enjoys, things that are available for everyone to do, and not difficult.”

Like falling out of airplanes, or flying them upside down. Motorcycle racing. Wrestling. Surfing. Skiing. Playing a little golf now and again.

“What’s your handicap?” he was asked.

“Everything,” he said. “The cart. The trees. The ball.”

Francis plans to set a speed record in his small, open-cockpit biplane after the Super Bowl. He wanted to have done it by now, but the 49ers were unreasonably concerned about his getting injured.

“I told Bill (Walsh) that I’m going to be going 300 miles an hour 50 feet above the ground,” Francis said. “Injury is not a possibility.”

FRANCIS HAS ALWAYS been this way, from six years as an All-Pro pass catcher for New England to his more recent, and more obscure, three-year tenure as a blocker for the 49ers. He has always been a flake.

“Flake is an ugly word,” he said. “It implies lack of ambition, lack of direction. I take that word as a personal insult. Call me eccentric, different, independent, whatever you like. Those descriptions are probably all accurate. Flaky is not.”

True, Francis has never set his hair on fire or eaten glass in public, as Tim Rossovich, the NFL’s all-time flake, once did. Nor has he terrorized himself and companions in the fashion of Joe Don Looney, who was so cursed by his own eccentricity that when his dog bit a stranger, someone observed, “Poor Joe Don. Just when he begins to get his act together, his dog goes crazy.”

But Francis has always tended to be uncommon. At the height of his talent, fame and wealth, for example, he walked away from paid football.

“Retired,” he said. “For a year (in 1981). It was much needed and refreshing. I recommend it to every football player at some time in his career. You get an unrealistic view of things when you are in the game, and you don’t really understand what it will be like when it ends. There’s a whole other world out there.”

IT IS A WORLD that Francis has challenged with at least as much passion as he has football.

He said that as a teenager he used to visit nursing homes. He was fascinated by old people, and thought he could learn something from their experiences.

“Once I was talking to a man who was 90 years old,” Francis said. “He said the two things he thought of most were, first, that it got there so fast and, second, that there were things he never got around to doing. He had never been up in an airplane and he regretted that.

“I vowed I would never look back when I was old and say, ‘I wish I’d done that.’ If I wanted to do something, I was going to do it.”

Jumping out of airplanes was a place to start. “Skydiving,” he said. “It puts you in touch with pure, unbridled terror.”

AND PRO WRESTLING, which his father made a living at in Hawaii. Francis was a pro wrestler before he was a pro football player. “Don’t talk to me about wrestling being fake,” he said. “When the ambulance comes in the middle of the night to take your dad to the hospital because the stitches didn’t hold and people say that’s not real blood, you tend to get a little touchy.”

Francis has been seriously injured only once in all his off-field adventures, that in a motorcycle accident. His otherwise handsome face still is scarred a bit around the eyes.

“The game of football is more dangerous than anything else I do,” Francis said. “I keep running into a lot of crazy people whose express intent is to hurt me, and I’ve never been able to understand why.”