Even for 49ers’ Montana, This Was a Real Beaut

I thought they’d miss Bill Walsh.

I thought Joe Montana was human.

I thought Roger Craig could be tackled, John Taylor contained.

Forget it.

The 49ers wouldn’t miss the Archangel Gabriel. You and I could coach them into the Super Bowl.

Joe Montana glows in the dark. I don’t think he can see himself in the mirror. Check and see if anyone’s ever seen him after midnight. His name should be Joe World. A state isn’t enough for him.

The score was 30-3, if you’re into trivia. It wasn’t that close. The 49ers just got bored. So did everyone else.

It was supposed to be Dempsey-Tunney. It was more like Tyson-Spinks. The last time anyone saw anything this one-sided, they got the lifeboats out. And radioed for help.

The Rams’ game plan, if they had one, appeared to be a complicated suicide pact.

Look, you don’t get in a slugging match with Dempsey, a shootout with Wyatt Earp.

You don’t give Nick the Greek the deal and his own deck. You don’t give Minnesota Fats a table to run. You don’t give a guy named Slick the dice and then bet against him. You don’t give Ruth a fastball. You don’t send Magic Johnson to the line in a tie game. You don’t come to the net on Boris Becker. You don’t hit a ball to center field with Mays there. You don’t walk Rickey Henderson.

And you don’t give Joe Montana the ball any more than you have to.

Giving Joe Montana the ball is like giving Rembrandt a brush or Hemingway a pen.

He doesn’t need it much--the ball, that is. For Joe Montana, “good field position” is his own three-yard line. If he can be guaranteed the ball a maximum of 10 minutes a game, that may be enough.

Joe World gave a clinic in quarterbacking at Candlestick Sunday. The Rams were just the blackboard.

You had a mental picture of Joe Montana standing in front of the class and turning to the Ram corners and safeties and linebackers and saying “Now, Jerry Gray, you stand over here. Yeah, that’s good! Now, LeRoy Irvin, you’re in a zone, Michael Stewart, you guard the middle. Now, try to knock this pass down as I throw it through you.”

It was like watching a guy with a snake in a basket. He had the Rams hypnotized. He was taking quarters out of their ears all day, producing their wristwatches in knotted handkerchiefs. He was pulling Rams out of a hat all game.

It was a dazzling performance. If you never saw Tracy act, Heifetz fiddle, Cobb bat or Nijinsky dance, watch Montana quarterback. It’s the same thing. Art.

So, what the Rams have to do is make sure this artist doesn’t get his easel, his stage. Take the ball and hide it, if you can.

The Rams were as careless with the ball as a sailor on leave with his pay.

In the first quarter, they were leading, 3-0. They had stopped Montana on his first series and they were driving toward another score. They had the ball on the 49er 40-yard line, second down and three to go.

The got greedy. Twice, Ram quarterback Jim Everett disdained the first down and launched buzz bombs at the horizon. They missed. Now, the Rams--on the 49er 40--punted.

The 49ers got the ball on their own 11. And marched 89 yards for their first score.

The Rams didn’t learn much. In the second quarter, trailing 14-3 now, with only three minutes to play in the half, they had the ball on San Francisco’s 40 again, fourth down and two. Again they punted. To the San Francisco 13. Again, the 49ers marched the length of the field to a touchdown, scoring just as the half ended.

Now, the moral of the story is, you don’t give Montana the ball when you have only a yard or two to gain for a first down in his territory. Because, Joe Montana only needs the ball--it doesn’t matter where he gets it. He marches 40 yards or 90 with the same degree of skill and enthusiasm.

Now, blaming the ultimate deluge on these lapses is, as the late sports editor, Stanley Woodward, once said of a similar cataclysm, “like blaming the Johnstown Flood on a leaky toilet in Altoona.”

But, it was symptomatic of the Rams’ cavalier approach generally. Not even Joe Montana can win from the bench. If you can find a way not to blow up the football, he can be had. Once the ball is inflated, your next ploy should be to see to it that Montana doesn’t have it long enough to read the commissioner’s signature. Giving Montana the ball is like giving a German general an army. You’ll be sorry.

It wasn’t a game, it was an exhibition. A recital. Joe Montana at the console.

Joe’s next concert will be the Super Bowl in the Superdome in New Orleans. But, it doesn’t matter where Joe makes an appearance. Wherever he goes, it becomes Carnegie Hall. And it doesn’t matter who the other guys are. They’re just the chorus. Twenty years from now, no one will remember whom he beat, just that they saw Joe Montana beat whoever it was. Anybody remember whom Babe Ruth hit his home runs off?

The way Montana plays football, every note is high C. When you complete 26 of 30 passes--and throw two of them deliberately out of bounds--you belong to another dimension of your craft. He makes coaches geniuses, receivers millionaires and teams dynasties. It was a good thing it was cloudy and damp in Candlestick Sunday. He probably doesn’t cast a shadow.

As far as the Rams are concerned, they couldn’t be sure he’s flesh and blood. They never got close enough all day to know whether he’s animal, vegetable or mineral. As long as they keep giving him the football, he’s the creature that ate (and is eating) the NFL.