Super 49ers and Their Fans Rub It In on Rams Rooters

It didn’t take long for Orange County’s Super Bowl hopes to come crashing down Sunday, as fans, friends and family of the Los Angeles Rams dejectedly watched their team falter early and never recover against their Northern California rivals.

Hundreds of Rams faithful made the trek to Candlestick Park, wearing their lucky underwear, football-shaped earrings and the Rams’ blue and gold. It wasn’t enough.

Ultimately losing 30-3, the Rams never seriously challenged the San Francisco 49ers in the National Football Conference championship game, an outing that went from bad to worse for the Rams backers.

“This is my husband’s 14th season with the team without ever having won a Super Bowl,” a tearful Annie Slater, wife of Rams offensive tackle Jackie Slater, said after the final gun sounded. “He’s the oldest player on the team, and his chances of winning a Super Bowl are getting dimmer and dimmer. So you can imagine how I, as his wife, feel.”

In the stands at Candlestick, a thin sprinkling of players’ friends and families was slow to give up the ghost, even after many fans had already written off the game and the season.

At half time, Kristin Beatty, 25, girlfriend of Rams quarterback Jim Everett, admitted that she was nervous. “But hey, we’re a second-half team,” she said. “They (the Rams) fought tooth and nail to get here so I am not too worried. I have faith in my boyfriend.”

Even at the end of the third quarter, with the Rams losing 24-3, Beatty was still hopeful, saying Everett had been “really confident.”

“I’ve been more nervous than he has. He said I should leave the stress to him,” she said.

But when time began to run out, Beatty confessed that she was getting “really worried.” She hung her head for a moment, wiping a tear from her eye. “What disappoints me the most is I would have been able to watch someone’s dream come true.”

For a brief moment near the beginning of the game, there was cause to cheer. The Rams stopped the 49ers on their first possession, forcing a San Francisco punt. At Champions, an Irvine sports bar, hearty yells and a flurry of high-fives went up for the local team vying for its first Super Bowl berth in a decade.

But from then on, enthusiasm around the bar waned along with the Rams’ fortunes, giving way first to jeers, then to a few surly outbursts and finally to subdued resignation.

“I’m very disappointed,” said Bonnie Lawson, an Irvine woman who staked out her place at the bar early and stuck with the Rams all the way to the conclusion. “It’s like they weren’t even there.”

In the minutes before the opening gun, the bar’s customers cast the game as something larger than football, more as an epic clash of Northern and Southern California, battling for the state’s bragging rights in an ancient and decisive forum. Under those circumstances, Rams fans boasted, a loss was simply unthinkable.

“There’s no place like Southern California, and there’s no team like the Rams,” said Gini Horn, a Delta Airlines worker from Fountain Valley. Others around her nodded vigorously, and those near the bar offered to take any bets on the 49ers that came cushioned with a modest point spread.

Horn, who came loyally bedecked in Rams’ blue and gold, stuck by her team when it sputtered through the first half and took an 18-point deficit into the locker room.

“This is the Super Bowl as far as I’m concerned, and we’re going to beat them,” Horn confidently predicted. As she spoke, however, her less optimistic companions chimed in with what they thought it would take to turn the Rams’ fortunes.

“Another earthquake,” one exclaimed.

“Brain damage to Joe Montana,” another suggested.

“I think it would take a miracle at this point,” agreed Kirk Rocke of Laguna Beach.

There were no miracles in the offing for the Rams Sunday, and the third quarter had barely ended before fans at Champions starting throwing in the towel. A brief scuffle between gloating 49er fans and angry Rams supporters flared for a moment as the game’s outcome became increasingly clear.

Tempers also ran high at Candlestick, where a week of hype and revelry had heightened the tension between the two teams’ camps.

Rams boosters, along with some of the players’ friends and families, huddled together under gray skies, enduring a steady stream of insults. Showered with warm beer and peanuts, they ignored the jeers, looking the other way when a 49er fan blew a deafening horn and shouted: “Montana eats Ram chops with Rice!”

Far above the fray, however, friends and family members of Rams owner Georgia Frontiere viewed the game from a comfortable, glassed-in box.

The suites, which accommodate about 12 guests each, came equipped with spreads that included baked lasagna, Coney Island hot dogs, pasta salad, cheeses, turkey and loaves of San Francisco sourdough bread. Cookies were served up on mirrored trays.

A basket containing a taste of San Francisco--condiments, cheeses, sauces and cookies--stood in one corner of Suite 77. It was a gift to Frontiere from 49ers owner Edward De Bartolo Jr. “That’s tradition,” said Al Stearn of Malibu. “I’m sure Georgia sent something to De Bartolo, too.”

As the game concluded, jubilant 49ers supporters snatched chunks of red-colored turf from the end zone, throwing them wildly. Fearful that the revelry could lead to violence against the visiting Rams fans, police escorted the Southern California contingent out of the stadium.

Tired and beaten, Rams fans trailed single-file past jeering 49er rooters, some of whom had painted their entire bodies red. The Rams faithful carted their blue and yellow banner, promising to return next year to avenge the loss.

“Hey, Rams Booster Club!” bellowed a 49er fanatic as the group scurried out a side entrance. “Boost this!”

Yet, despite the outcome and the indignity, Rams fans remained optimistic, praising their players for an outstanding season and promising to continue their support.

“We’ll be back. Next year is a new season,” said Jim Ort, a booster club board member. “Once a Rams fan, always a Rams fan.”

Booster member Linda Moomau, who made the trip from Fullerton, agreed.

“I can hear my family back at home saying, ‘Poor Linda,’ ” she said. “But that’s OK. There’s 24 other teams that didn’t make it this far, and we still love them.”

Times staff writer Ann Conway contributed to this story.