Fans Don’t Make It Easy for 49ers : Now, Crowds Are Getting More and More Demanding

Once again, the song of the boobird is heard along the parapets of Candlestick Park, although it’s not like the nearly forgotten bad old days of the late 1970s when each bird could have had his own section.

They’re packed in feather-to-feather. They’re dressed in 49er gold-and-scarlet, which has recently unseated Cowboy blue-and-silver as the leading seller nationally. This means (a) the club is making major money, and (b) the booing is louder.

Down on the field, the 49er dynasty has located further unexpected difficulties on its march to greatness. Are the defending Super Bowl champions, 18-1 last season, to be just another in the NFL’s series of one-year wonders?

It has been suggested that San Franciscans never fell for anything--cable cars, Tony Bennett, Carol Doda--as they have for these 49ers. And if things keep going this way, they’re going to be leaving their hearts south of town, at Candlestick.

Their beloved came home last week 0-1, ostensibly determined to atone for their opening-day upset in Minnesota by trashing the poor Atlanta Falcons. At halftime, the 49ers trailed, 10-0.

That the 49ers won, 35-16, lessened local apprehension only slightly.

“This is entirely different,” says the San Francisco Chronicle man-about-town columnist, Herb Caen. “The old 49ers played at Kezar. The stands were populated with drunks. They played exciting football. It was an exciting time for San Francisco.

“Many of us were closet Raider fans for many years. I always preferred the Raiders. They were rough, tough, rotten guys. The Niners were Mr. Clean. They still are. (Coach) Bill Walsh is a rather god-like figure. (John) Madden and the Raiders were like the Grateful Dead. There were wonderful scenes in the parking lot before Raider games. It looked like Road Warrior. It was fun to go around and see the people barbecuing what looked like other people.

“Now, we’ve gone big league. Big park, championship team. Now, the crowds are very demanding. Not as many drunks in the stands, which is against San Francisco tradition. There are a lot of people from the Peninsula, yuppie-types.

“We’re not used to having winners. The only sport we ever excelled in was opera. We don’t know how to react. Now that the team is No. 1, a lot is expected. When they lose, everything is magnified.”

Magnified, indeed. Last week, once-beloved quarterback Joe Montana called the reaction by the fans and media “sickening sometimes.

“What do we have to do? Do we have to blow everybody out? Those guys are getting paid on the other side of the line. Damn. It’s a game. It’s four quarters.”

Montana made his remarks to the Chronicle’s Ira Miller. Miller’s published grade for the 49er performance was C-minus. Whom can a poor quarterback turn to?

Montana, the highest-rated quarterback in NFL history, is currently running No. 12. A year ago, he had three touchdown passes and no interceptions. Now he’s 3-3.

Cornerback Ronnie Lott, a Pro Bowl player in all four of his seasons, is under fire after allowing three touchdowns in two games. The populace wants him moved to safety, the position he played at USC. Lott is a hitter as opposed to a burner, and Walsh did try him at safety last season.

“The fact is, we have two Super Bowl rings with this combination,” Lott said. “That in itself speaks enough.”

Walsh told his midweek press conference: “We have confidence in Ronnie. He’s a great football player. We’re continually evaluating our strengths and weaknesses. This will be continually evaluated. At this point, I see no change.”

Except for the parts about “continually evaluating” and “at this time,” this was a complete endorsement.

Halfback Wendell Tyler, an ex-Bruin and Ram but sometimes still a great fumbler, lost two of them at Minnesota. That prompted Walsh to reflect on the “privilege” of carrying the ball, which carries with it “a responsibility to (one’s) teammates.”

Against Atlanta, Tyler was granted the privilege of carrying the ball only five times until the game was 40 minutes old.

Of course, it could be pointed out that it is kind of early yet.

They say you can’t repeat. If we don’t, we’ll take some of them down with us. --BILL WALSH, before the opener

“It’s almost a given,” Walsh is saying a couple of weeks later. “After you win, the expectations of the fans, the media, everyone, are so much higher, almost to the point it’s--what’s the word?--euphoric. It’s very difficult to live with.”

Do you detect a change in tone? Walsh says he knew there’d be days like these, but he may not have known they’d start so soon.

It’s Tuesday in the 49ers’ Redwood City base and he is squeezing out-of-town reporters into his schedule. He does it gracefully and unhurriedly, sitting them on a sofa in the living-room corner of his office. He handles prickly lines of questioning smoothly, a cross between Cary Grant and Sid Gillman.

At 53, his legend has been made, ruffled and put back together again. Denied a pro head coaching job until he was 47, he won a Super Bowl three years after taking over a 2-14 graveyard of coaches.

That was in 1981, after which he was regarded as more a franchise than a coach. He was literate and compassionate. But a funny thing happened on the way to Renaissance Manhood.

Walsh suffered through the 49ers’ subsequent 3-6 season, as did everyone around him. Some members of the Bay Area press corps began referring to him sardonically as “the silver-haired humanitarian-slash-genius.”

And within two years of that, he had coached another even more impressive Super Bowl victory. If that wasn’t a second miracle, it was pretty good.

And now for his second title defense.

“You tell yourself to be cool but you really can’t,” Walsh says. “You’re directly involved. There really isn’t a way to cool it. A laid-back guy might be able to, but a laid-back guy isn’t going to be in this position.

“After we won the first time, we worked and studied and exchanged information with previous winners, your fellow champions, trying to gauge an appropriate philosophy. . . . I talked to Chuck Noll. I talked to Don Shula. I certainly talked to Tom Flores and Al Davis.”

Walsh was a Raider assistant under Davis in 1966, coaching the quarterbacks, among them Flores.

Had Noll, coach of the last repeaters, the 1974-75 and 1978-79 Steelers, known something?

“Chuck Noll had such a great team,” Walsh says. “They were so dominant, they almost could play at less than maximum efficiency and still win. They’re a tough team to be compared to. I know one of their great years, they lost to San Diego, 31-0, and still came back and won the Super Bowl.”

Montana has said since that the 49ers played in 1982 as if they could hardly wait to get the season over. Afterward, Walsh suggested that one of the problems might have been Montana’s off-field appearance schedule.

This was a surprise, Walsh critiquing his star publicly, even if it was on the mild side. The two had been considered halves of something special, Montana playing Eliza Doolittle to Walsh’s Henry Higgins.

And, in that nine-game season, Montana had five successive 300-yard games, an NFL record.

“I think people were just looking for some evidence of difficulty, but I really didn’t say anything harsh,” Walsh says. “I thought Joe--without my realizing it--might have been making too many appearances.

“But our problem in 1982 was much more related to extensive injuries. We weren’t a deep team. We were a high-effort team. When we did have injuries, we just couldn’t come close to replacing them.

“That season really did take a toll. At that point, I was general manager and head coach. I was emotionally drained. I thought I’d like to retain the general managership and bring in a coach to work with, much as the Raiders do. I thought that was a fitting way to step away. As it turned out, our owner (Eddie DeBartolo) asked me to give it some time. I really feel DeBartolo handled it well.”

The way DeBartolo handled it was to lure Walsh back with a raise and the title of president-head coach. There was some suspicion that Walsh had never really wanted to go, that he just needed to be asked to stay.

The 49ers then went 10-6, crushing the Cowboys, 42-17, in the season finale. Walsh held a curt postgame press conference, adjourning it soon after asserting that few Bay Area reporters had thought the 49ers could win.

The 49ers then lost in the NFC final in Washington, only after several controversial pass-interference calls blunted a second-half comeback. It is the only time that Walsh’s 49ers have lost in seven playoff games.

Last season, they dismantled three playoff opponents, 82-26. That team was deep and physical. It seemed to have greatness written all over it.

But then, so many teams do.

This time, Walsh didn’t have to poll past champions to find out what it was like. He was a past champion.

“When you win, the players, without realizing it, may be somewhat spent after the emotional commitment they’ve made just previously,” Walsh said. “That’s why it’s not that unexpected if you have a slow start the next year.

“We’re bringing them along as fast as we can, but we’re prepared for a lot of tough times. Last season our schedule wasn’t as tough. People weren’t as prepared to play us.

“What we need at the end of the season is to have everybody healthy. If, in the meantime, we’re a division champion or a wild-card team, then we can be a factor in the playoffs.

“But along the way, there isn’t any question we’ll lose some games. I don’t like to think about it, or project it, but in the run of our schedule are some of the top teams in the NFL. And they’ll be at the point where they’re driving for the playoffs when we play them.”

He doesn’t like to think about it? The people who really don’t like to think about it are the people who run McDonald’s, which is giving away 500,000 49er caps.

Or the Bay Area 7-Elevens, which are passing out commemorative 49er posters.

Or all those gold-and-scarlet troops preparing to board planes for Los Angeles. United Air Lines, which runs flights every 60 minutes between San Francisco and Los Angeles, reports a sellout between 6:30 a.m. Sunday and game time.

“Those are all 727s, which hold 110 people,” said United district manager Terence Johnson. “And I can tell you all the other airlines are heavily sold that morning.”

United is also running three charter flights. Other airlines are running another three or four. There were rumors in the Bay Area of a 15,000-fan invasion.

It’s football. It’s progress. It’s fun for everyone but Bill Walsh and 45 49ers.