Being Booed by Fans at Coliseum Is Surely Sign of a Bright Future

It’s only natural for a young athlete, following in the footsteps of the stars of yesteryear, to wish to emulate, even outdo, their idols’ performances.

The fellow who followed Babe Ruth must have dreamed of hitting these long, incredibly high home run shots over the right-field bleachers.

The guy after Red Grange must have had visions of swivel-hipping past the massed defenses of Michigan for four touchdowns, and every young Notre Dame back in the last 60 years must have yearned to make the world forget the Four Horsemen.

Well, Marc Wilson caught up with the ghosts of Coliseum past on Sunday. He did something only the greats have done there before him--he got booed to the echo.

It was heartwarming. For a while, we were all young again and the years rolled away and it was the 1950s and if you closed your eyes you could hear the ghostly refrains of “We want Wade,” or “Give us Munson.”

It was on this hallowed turf that Norm Van Brocklin endured the slings and jeers of the put-off multitudes. It was here one heard the sacrilegious “Hey, Waterfield. Call yourself a quarterback, do you?”

These are the fans who drove Billy Wade to Chicago, and an NFL championship; who shipped Van Brocklin to Philadelphia, and an NFL championship, who drove Bob Waterfield into premature retirement and who sent Roman Gabriel and Ron Jaworski screaming for the exits and, in Jaworski’s case, the Super Bowl.

Marc Wilson should be proud of himself. He’s arrived. We’ll knout him out of town any day now, to greater fame and glory, but for now he has joined an elite group--quarterbacks who have been booed by the home fans in the Coliseum. That sound you hear in the background is the astral chorus of the Dutchman, Buckets, Wade, Bill Munson, Gabe, and, yes, Pat Haden, Vince Ferragamo and Shack Harris applauding and saying, “Way to go, Marc.”

You’re nobody until Coliseum fans get on you.

Look at it this way: They don’t boo just anybody. Two of the guys they booed out of there are in the Hall of Fame. They would have booed Unitas in those seats. Sammy Baugh.

Coliseum fans don’t boo mediocrities. Karl Sweetan never heard a discouraging word. It’s the smell of greatness that drives them into paroxysms of fury. They’re like an animal that smells fear. They get the faintest whiff of virtuosity and their fangs start to grow, their features coarsen and they start to howl like werewolves.

In a way, Wilson has even outstripped the famed boo-ees of the past.

Presumably, when the crowd howled, “We want Van Brocklin,” at Waterfield, “We want Wade,” at Van Brocklin, “We want Munson,” at Wade and “We want anybody,” at Gabriel, they were frothing at the mouth at a healthy quarterback.

The Marc Wilson they were jeering Sunday was a one-armed quarterback. He had been crippled in an industrial accident some minutes before. Part of his left shoulder was sticking up in the air. Sometimes, Sunday, his feet were, too.

The circumstances were these: In the first quarter of the game against the New Orleans Saints, with about four minutes gone, the Raiders got the ball on their own four-yard line. Marcus Allen moved them to the 17, where Wilson faded to pass. He was assaulted by a 285-pound woolly mammoth of a man named Bruce Clark, who picked him up and, like a receiver after scoring, spiked him.

Clark got 15 yards. Wilson got a separated shoulder.

Wilson was taken to the locker room, where X-rays showed shoulder bones sticking up in the air in something Dr. Robert Rosenfeld called an A.C. separation, not a dislocation. Wilson was given a pain killer and put back in the game.

While he was gone, the Raiders recovered a fumble in New Orleans territory and scored swiftly under backup quarterback Rusty Hilger.

It was a gift-wrapped touchdown, but it was all the crowd needed. When Wilson returned to the game, his left arm dangling at his side like a wet wash rag, the invective poured out of the stands. It was like old times.

Laid-back Los Angeles, which gives fund-raising parties for guys wanted for multiple murders in New Jersey, acquits guys caught on film trading in dope, and would probably make Jack the Ripper a media hero if he ever returned, turns to lynch law when it comes to home team quarterbacks.

It’s the most sincere form of flattery. It should do wonders for Wilson’s ego.

Hilger can only be envious. But, his turn will come. If he ever gets good enough, that is. We can’t have just anybody stepping into the shoes, or the boos, of Waterfield, Wade, Van Brocklin--and Wilson.