Sorry, but Your Call Is a Wrong Number

It was the Monday night football game. Nothing much more was at stake than the division championship, home-field advantage, that sort of thing.

The Rams had the lead and the ball. There were three minutes to play in the first half. The Rams, ahead by 17-3, had the ball on the 49er four-yard-line, fourth-and-goal. Naturally, they were lined up in field goal formation. It was a chip-shot three-pointer. Point-after-touchdown range. Piece of cake.

Only it was a fake. The holder, Pete Holohan, grabbed the ball and set sail for the end zone and a touchdown. He didn’t make it.

The 49ers won that game--and maybe the season--by three points. The Rams may never recover.

But after the game, Ram Coach John Robinson was still full of fight. “It was a good call,” he said defiantly. “It just didn’t work.”

Heroic words. He actually upgraded the call to “excellent” later and said it “came within six inches of working.”

But the notion set my colleague, Dynamite Page, and I to thinking and making a list we dubbed, “The Good Calls of History.” Such as:

1. The captain of the Titanic stood on the bridge as an officer ran up to him with a sheet of paper. “Sparks says he has a message there are icebergs coming down to starboard.” The captain smiles. “We’ll go through them. All ahead full!” Seconds later, there was a sickening crash. The captain looked down and said, “It was a good call. Six more inches and we stay up. Oh, well, you win a few, you lose a few.”

2. Of course, there was Custer. “I don’t think it’s such a good idea to go through Little Big Horn, sir,” his aide-de-camp tells him worriedly. “Nonsense!” snorted Custer. “We’ll surprise the Indians!” History records that, as he lay dying, Custer defended the move. “It was a good call,” he sighed. “Who knew the Indians would be in a zone?”

3. Then, there was General Von Paulus on the steppes of Russia. He is briefing his officers. “The Fuehrer wants us in a pincer movement south of Moscow. But I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t we go by way of Stalingrad?”

4. During the Texas rebellion of 1836, Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie were trying to think of a good place to get together and compare notes--or knives. And Colonel William B. Travis said, “Hey! I got a good idea! Why don’t we all meet at the Alamo and take it from there?” Crockett said: “Good call, Bill. It’s central and they got room service.” But in the middle of the battle, he turned around and said, “Whose dumb idea was this?!”

5. In the 1985 playoffs against the Dodgers, the Cardinals had two men on with two out, trailing by a run in the ninth inning of Game 6. Slugger Jack Clark came to bat. It was Manager Tom Lasorda’s call. “Pitch to him!” he instructed pitcher Tom Niedenfuer. Later, after Clark’s home run put the Cardinals in the World Series, Lasorda defended it. “It was a good call,” he claimed. “I said, ‘Whatever you do, don’t walk him!’ ”

6. Just before the Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimea, a young subaltern came up to the commanding officer and said, “Sir, I know it’s a good call but it won’t work. I mean cannon to the right of them, cannon to the left of them, cannon in front of them, ride the six hundred!? Come on!” But the commander tweaked his mustache, put on his fur hat and brushed him off. “Now, now, Leftenant, yours is not to reason why. It’s a good call because Tennyson will write a poem about it, Warner Bros. will make a movie about it and it’ll be a great part for David Niven!”

Chloe was a good call, too. But they never found her. Dynamite thinks Robinson’s call should rank right up there with Indian Love Call, Call of the Wild, Call Me Madame and don’t-call-me-I’ll-call-you. Jack Jones even had the right song for it. Call Me Irresponsible. Of course, for the Niners, it was a wakeup call.