Montana, 49ers Love Paris in Ring-Time

Bubba Paris, whose calling is offensive tackle for the San Francisco 49ers, had a talk the other day with Joe Montana.

Bubba said to Joe: “You will be remembered in history, but it’s important for you to know I will, too. I have blocked for you eight of your nine years in the league. If my grandchildren ask, I have film to prove it. I have played a part in your greatness.”

You have to assume Montana agreed, because Bubba rises 6 feet 6 inches and weighs what is believed to be 340 pounds.

That isn’t so much, if you want to consider the weight of the USS Ranger, but, standing on the doorsill of his third Super Bowl, Bubba could be the heaviest entertainer ever to appear in this promotion.

“Weight doesn’t stop a man from competing,” Bubba reminds you. “What stops him is bad shape. I am not in bad shape. I am playing better at my weight than I did at 290.”

He is asked: “Does George Seifert, your present coach, harp on your weight as Bill Walsh did?”

“Seifert doesn’t watch my weight,” Bubba says. “All he watches is what I do. That’s all my coach should watch.”

Bubba not only played for Walsh, who was dedicated to detail, but, a graduate of Michigan, toiled for Bo Schembechler, too.

Which leader did he find the tougher?

“Both were very tough guys, but each very different,” Bubba says. “I never really knew what Walsh was thinking. If he hated me, he never said so. Bo was easier to read. He walked around the practice field with a yardstick. If he didn’t like something you did, he swatted you with it. One time, he actually kicked me in the rear. You never had any doubt where you stood with Bo.”

You had to concur a boot in the rear divests an issue of any subtlety.

Since the day Bo delivered a foot to his hindquarter, Bubba hadn’t been kicked until the recent playoff game with Minnesota when Chris Doleman, accusing Bubba of getting in extra licks, booted him in the groin, an act captured graphically for a disbelieving republic on instant replay.

“Did it hurt?” Bubba is asked.

“It hurt plenty,” he says, “but I wouldn’t show it. I would never give Doleman the satisfaction he hurt me.”

Which, of course, parallels a batsman, struck with a fastball, refusing to rub.

“Did you say anything to Doleman?” Bubba is asked.

“I stared at him a minute,” he replies, “then said, ‘Now why did you do that?’ ”

Certainly, it was a reasonable question.

“He wouldn’t answer,” continues Bubba. “But four plays later, he apologized. That’s something Lyle Alzado never did.”

“Did Alzado kick you in the groin, too?” we ask Bubba.

“No, he grabbed me there,” he says. “I held him on a play. He fell to the ground and lay there in ambush. When I walked past, he reached up and grabbed me. He was the most horrible player I ever ran into in football. He threw dirt in your face. He pulled off your helmet and threw it. I said to him one day, ‘I can’t believe this is the way you are.’ He cursed me.”

The Raiders report that Bubba said to Alzado, “I’ll pray for you.”

Lyle responded, “I’ll pray for you, you . . . .”

Raised by a widowed mother in Louisville, Bubba recalls he was trained to build, and retain, his self-esteem.

“We weren’t allowed in our house to say we were poor,” he remembers. “My mother, who was a community worker, told us that people who lack necessities needn’t see themselves as poor. She likened life to a Lamborghini out of gas. Without gas, she said, it was still a beautiful Lamborghini.”

Bubba’s appetite is long established in the San Francisco Bay Area, but he hints that reports on his table activities can be exaggerated.

He has a fondness, for instance, for chicken wings, a victual he is known to consume in major quantities. But, he insists, he doesn’t eat them as nibblers, as some have suggested.

“I have them for dinner,” he says. “My wife cooks them very special.”

How many chickens go to their reward to provide wings for Bubba isn’t known, but before it becomes a social issue, involving demonstrations in front of the federal building, a point can be made in Bubba’s behalf.

Is it his fault a chicken comes with only two wings? Why hasn’t science produced a chicken with four?

Anyone hollering Bubba eats too many wings should be thankful he doesn’t care for liver. A chicken comes with only one.