Ameri-Football-Cana

Americana:  materials concerning or characteristic of America, its civilization, or its culture; broadly: things typical of America.              Merriam-Webster

Baseball is what we were.  Football is what we have become.    Mary McGrory

I’m on my way to the NFC Divisional Playoff Game between the San Francisco 49ers and the New Orleans Saints.  The game starts at 1:30 but we’re on the road and planning to be at the stadium parking lot by 8:30.  I’m riding in with my daughter Jess and son in law Kyle in their new pickup truck. We’ll be meeting up with my son Matt on the way and caravan in.

I attended my first football game sometime in the sixties (I suppose I was only 9 or 10) at Kezar Stadium, a little bowl by today’s standards tucked away in the eastern corner of Golden Gate Park.  My dad got the tickets and it was obviously for a father-son day because his interest in sports wasn’t even passing.  I hardly knew anything about football at that age but I could easily reel off the starting lineup and pitching rotation of the Los Angeles Dodgers.  By the time we parked the car somewhere seemingly miles from the stadium the game was about to start.  We arrived somewhere around halftime and watched the second half on Kezar's hard, cramped bench seats.  Years later the 49ers would move to larger Candlestick Park and Kezar would be all but forgotten until it got a bit part in Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry, where Eastwood’s Harry Callahan would confront the Scorpio murderer.  Years after attending that game with my dad I would return to Kezar to watch a Day on the Green concert starring the unlikely paring of Waylon Jennings and The Grateful Dead in a haze of cheap white wine and weed. Over the years I occasionally went to games at Candlestick until 1982, when I got season tickets.

By the time we get to the outskirts of the stadium, the main lots are closed off to all but those with prepaid parking passes.  We’re relegated to the hard packed dirt lots further out.  Once parked we unpack the truck for our tailgate barbeque.  The local air quality control board has declared today a spare the air day; no burning of wood.  The air in the square miles surrounding Candlestick is not only not being spared, it’s being abused.  It’s thick with the smoke of barbecues, cooking flesh of various species and weed.  A group of old boys to our right unpack and set up their temporary campsite.  “Let’s get drunk” says one.  It's always good to have a plan and they're well prepared to follow through with that plan.  Plenty of beer, a bottle of Skyy vodka and a personal favorite, Maker's Mark bourbon.  They have chicken, hot dogs, beans and looking out of place and forgotten, two green bananas.  What in the hell are the bananas  doing there?  There are four girls on our other side who are going basic; beer, chips and dip.

Football isn’t just a sport in America.  It’s an event; one that incorporates multiple American traditions.  Besides the game itself there is the prerequisite pregame tailgate which includes America’s love affair with the car -- the larger the better if not a truck or a recreational vehicle -- with barbeque and of course alcohol.

Jess and Kyle are ramrodding this tailgate.  They've marinated some meat for carne asada and my son has some spicy shrimp skewers.  We have shrimp and cocktail sauce, various chips and dip and beverages. This is the first tailgate they’ve organized and there have been some rookie mistakes.  There was a plan to make margaritas until it was discovered that they forgot the tequila.  Kyle and Jess go for a walk and come back 45 minutes or so later with a bottle of Jose Cuervo Gold.  They ventured out into the sketchy local neighborhood and found a bottle shop that gouged them for bad tequila. The small blender works well and drinks are served.  Thanks to my doctor’s directive I’m alcohol free and drinking Pelegrino mineral water “spiked” with margarita mix.  It isn’t bad actually but it just isn’t the same.  Can't the football gods grant me a one day imbibing pass?

I didn’t start tailgating until I had my season tickets and they ranged from the simple to the outdoor feast.  There was the seasonal snack one Sunday during Christmas season when we roasted some chestnuts over the barbeque.  We took some ribbing for that one.  Speaking of which, ribs was on the menu more than a few times.  The tailgating menu is often rich with regional fare.  In Green Bay bratwurst is a favorite while Buffalo Bills fans opt for chicken wings.  What would a tailgate party in New Orleans be with without gumbo?  Here in San Francisco, local Dungeness crab often accompanied a grilled fillet with a side of baked potato and all washed down with Napa Valley wine.  My friend Rick had a side job as a deckhand on a salmon boat and he often supplied fresh salmon steaks.  Caesar salad, sausages, chili and roasted potatoes all have graced our tailgate table. 

Tailgating isn’t just eating and drinking.  Its board games, music, TV and for some a chance to make some money by selling something.  There are of course games of catch.  In the cramped community of tailgating there’s always the chance that an errant throw will land on a car or in the middle of someone’s plate of food.  During the heady dynastic days of the 49ers there was often a band and dancing in some corner of the parking lot.  We would bring a small television so that we could watch the broadcast of the morning game.  This was before you could get TV on your smart phone – because this was before smart phones.

Some entrepreneurs make their rounds through the parking lots selling team logoed t-shirts and souvenirs, all of it cheap, of bad quality and counterfeit.  There are plenty of takers though, including undercover cops who slap on the cuffs as the transaction is completed.  One enterprising couple is selling vodka laced Jell-O shooters to raise money for Team in Training.  Is it just me or is there something contradictory about selling shooters to benefit a cancer charity?  Matt and I play catch for awhile and he warns me away from a parked BMW; just in the event he makes an errant throw or I muff a catch. 

Meal’s done and it’s time to clean up and head into the stadium walking past ongoing parties and the corpses of former parties.  The ground is littered with bottles, cans, uneaten food and mounds of hot charcoal. 

It is amazing that someone would be either so drunk or so stupid that he would stash the hot coals from his barbeque under his car (usually the gas tank).  Is he afraid that someone with larcenous charcoal intent might come by, furtively look both ways, grab them and sneak them under his coat?  This is where the excitement would build, walking towards the stadium and hearing the cheers and boos coming from inside as those fans already in their seats react to players from both teams warming up.  Its during this walk that fans get in the last drink; knock it down before the security check or do the unthinkable and toss it.  In my early days of going to games security checks were non-existent.  In fact in the very early AFC days people actually brought small barbeques INTO the stadium.  Flasks and bottles the most common contraband made their way in even with the advent of the first security checks.  Any backpacks got a cursory pat down and sometimes a quick peak inside.  Were we more tolerant in those bygone days or was there simply less bad behavior?

We get to security and have to empty our pockets and hold our arms up so that the security guy can pass the metal detector over our bodies.  He notices my binocular case and peeks inside.  Into the concourse and through the crowded aisles we make it to our seats. The stadium is nearly full and the crowd in what I think we’ll be full throat (I’ll be proven wrong later on).  I don't know anybody here.  Don't know if my neighbors are season ticket holders or, like us, bought tickets for this one game. 

"The audience as participants is indispensable to most games.  The greatest contest in the world in which only the players are present would have no game character whatever."  Marshal McLuhan, War and Peace in the Global Village.

Getting to my season ticket seats was always a time to say hi to the usual fans.  The stadium was sold out to season ticket holders and so everybody knew everybody in the area unless an owner had given away seats to a single game.  The fellow behind me was a Grateful Dead fan with a booming voice that never wore out even in the game’s waning moments; we called him “leather lungs.”  When the game starts the crowd gets involved, cheering as loudly as possible to disrupt the communication and concentration of the other team’s offense, becoming what is called the 12^th man. 

Its kickoff and the crowd is alive.  Its 63000 individual red clad cells that have merged to form one huge crimson organism; a wild red beast.  And the organism is screaming and roaring and it’s louder than at any time I can recall.  The stadium is almost literally shaking.  This isn’t just the 12^th man, it’s the 13^th, 14^th and 15^th man (waking up the next morning my ears would still be ringing, reminding me of my days of standing in the front row at a rock concert). 

8:57 left in the first quarter: The Saints open the game with the ball and nearly score but their main running threat Pierre Thomas takes a vicious hit and loses the ball to the 49ers.  Thomas is concussed and will miss the remainder of the game.  The red beast in the stands is roaring.

Football is a violent game.  A reflection of a violent American tradition?

 “Let’s face it; most of the people in our society enjoy watching one guy knock down another one.”  John Niland, former tackle with the Dallas Cowboys

“You see a tremendous block from the blind side and you can hear 50,000 “ooohs” all at once.  So they must like it."  Elroy Hirsh, Hall of Fame flanker.
"Anybody who says this game is beastly, brutal and nasty, he's right.  You are out there to inflict punishment, but not to take it."  Wayne Walker, former linebacker with the Detroit Lions. 

Going into the game my idea is to sit and watch but the emotion of the beast sucks me in.  Saints quarterback Drew Brees takes the ball and rolls to his right and the crowd wants a hit. “Stick him,” I yell. “Kill him,” screams my son.  We don’t want a hit we want a de-cleating; a hit so hard he’ll fly out of his shoes. 

2:17 left in the first quarter:  Alex Smith throws a pass to the left to Vernon Davis for a 49 yard touchdown.  With :44 seconds left Smith finds Michael Crabtree for a 4 yard scoring pass. It’s the end of the first quarter and the 49ers are ahead 14-0.  All around us the organism is in a wild frenzy.  The fellow in front of us, stewed to the gills, has been high fiving everyone around him after nearly every play.  He wants to hug and I manage to keep him at high five distance.  He turns to us and screams, “We beat the Saints.  We beat the Saints.”  I turn to Matt and tell him that since we’ve won we might as well just go home now and beat the traffic.

Alcohol has fueled a few memories some foggy, some not so flattering.  One Monday we showed up in the parking lot to begin tailgating early (Noon) for a 6:00 kickoff.  The Jack Daniels flowed early and often and my conduct in the stands was less than distinguished.  After the game, well, days after the game I realized it and decided it was time to take it down a notch. My friend Rick figured out how to solve the closure of beer sales at the end of the third quarter.  During that third frame he would visit the concession and buy two beers, drinking one and storing the other under his seat.  After a few trips he would have beers lined up under his seat like foamy little soldiers.  After one such game, leaving the stadium he was reveling in victory skipping happily until he lost his balance, staggered forward and was stopped in his wobbly tracks by a parked Buick.  It was smashing; his face smashed into the car's grill.  The car was undamaged but I imagine Rick felt it the next day. 

4:16 left in the second quarter:  The Saints have scored their second touchdown and the score is 17-14 in favor of the 49ers.  The animal is quiet. The fellow in front of us is sitting quietly with his head in his hands.  Is he trying to hold in his lunch or is he fearing that the victory he proclaimed a few minutes earlier has slipped away?

In 1994 I brought my son to watch the 49ers roll to a 44-15 divisional playoff victory against the Chicago Bears.  We had decided to take the bus from downtown to the game after having a nice breakfast at Sears' Fine Foods in the City (no not that Sears).  The wait for a bus to return was interminable and Rick decided to hire a limo.  My 11 year old son had just watched the game of his life and was leaving it in a limo, standing on the seat with his head out of the sun roof.

11:42 left in the game and the 49ers are holding on to a 3 point lead:  The 49ers Kyle Williams drops a pass over the middle and the animal groans.  The air is being sucked out of the animal as it senses impending disaster.  A fan yells out in the silence, “It hit him in the fucking hands.”

Football is played in rain or shine.  One memorable Monday night I took a friend to watch the 49ers play the Dolphins in a driving rainstorm.  He was from Chicago and had spent many a cold Sunday at Chicago’s Soldier field watching games in the snow.  We left that game early as Derek, soaked to the skin, could no longer stand the cold.  He later told me that it was the coldest he had ever been at a game.

4:11 left in the game:  The Saints score a touchdown to go ahead 24-23 and you could hear a pin drop; or the sounds of a few cheering Saints fans. Less than two minutes later Alex Smith runs off the left side for 28 yards, a touchdown and the lead.  Pandemonium. Thirty seconds later the Saints score a touchdown to go ahead 32-29.  The animal in the stands is quiet, forlorn and desperate.  The couple on my left, longtime 49er fans and season ticket holders bolt for the exit with 1:48 remaining.  I keep remembering that five days ago was the 30th anniversary of “the catch.”

Thirty years ago the 49ers reached the NFC Championship game against the Cowboys and were expected to do nothing against their longtime rival.  In 1982 you didn’t get tickets on the internet; there was no internet.  If you wanted tickets, you went to the box office and fell in line, like my friend Scott did.  And you stayed overnight in line; like Scott did.  He got a pair of seats to the game and gave me one.  We sat through one of the best games in my memory.  Trailing 27-21 the 49ers got the ball on their 11 yard line with 4:54 left and began their final drive of the game. 

1:37 left in the game and the 49ers have the ball on their own 15 yard line trailing by 3 and begin their final drive of the game.  

"We're going to call a sprint option. It's going to break up and break into the corner, you got it? Dwight will clear. If you don't get what you want simply throw the ball away."  Bill Walsh to Joe Montana.  

There were 58 seconds left and the 49ers were facing third down at the Dallas six yard line.  Joe Montana took the ball and drifted to his right chased by Cowboy defenders.  He lofted a ball that looked as if it would sail out of the end zone until Dwight Clark snagged the ball between his fingertips.  Victory, a trip to the Super Bowl and pandemonium.  On the way home I was driving down the freeway with Scott hanging out of the passenger side window from the waste up screaming in a worn out gravelly voice, “We’re going to the bowl.  We’re going to the bowl. We’re going to the fucking bowl.” 

14 seconds left in the game and the 49ers are facing third down at the New Orleans 14 yard line.  Alex Smith drops straight back to pass and throws a laser down the middle to Vernon Davis who catches it in the end zone for a touchdown. Victory and pandemonium.

Until something else comes along to grab the nation's fancy, football will remain the quintessential American sport.  It's a billion dollar industry that grabs the national attention from training camp in July through the season and the Super Bowl in February and on into the draft in the spring.  People have called for a national holiday on the Monday after the Super Bowl ostensibly to come down from the high of the game, clean up the house and clear the cobwebs from an alcohol addled brain.

I have to admit that if I had a sports bucket list a football game would be on it.  Not the Super Bowl and not the college national championship.  It would be to a place where football is the life blood of the region.  It would be an autumn game in South Bend, Indiana to watch Notre Dame or in Ann Arbor to watch the Michigan Wolverines.   

In 1982 I enjoyed one of the greatest games in 49er history with my best friend, the best man at my wedding and 30 years later still a dear friend.  Thirty years after that game I enjoyed one of the greatest games in 49er history with my son, my daughter and my son in law.  At heart and in my sentiments I'm a baseball guy, but football has brought me two of my most cherished memories with friends and family.