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.