NFL PLAYOFFS : COMMENTARY : Joe Who? For 49ers, It’s Now ‘Steve, Steve, Steve’

It was closing time for Steve Young’s private hell, the final seconds of the Why-Can’t-He? era melting off the clock, and San Francisco 49er offensive tackle Steve Wallace marked the occasion by raising a muddy paw above the huddle and pointing down at his quarterback’s head.

The Candlestick Park crowd responded as if on cue, a fascinating study in the fickleness of human nature.

“STEVE!”

“STEVE!”

“STEVE!”

Now, they love him.

Now, with 1:25 on the clock and “S.F. 38 DALLAS 28” on the scoreboard and the Super Bowl back on the monthly planner--it’s a San Franciscan’s birth right, don’t you know?--Steve Young is suddenly on a first-name basis with 69,125 49er football zealots.

This is rich, Wallace thought to himself, remembering when many of those same voices were chanting “Joe! Joe! Joe!” only weeks ago.

“I was saying to the population of San Francisco and all the bandwagon jumpers out there, ‘You wouldn’t give him a chance,’ ” Wallace said.

“I was telling them, ‘Somebody had to replace Joe Montana. Joe Montana couldn’t play forever. Here’s a guy who came in and makes the offense go, trying to win games for the city of San Francisco, averaging 12 wins a season for the last five years, and you couldn’t stop dogging him.’

“Well, we couldn’t get it done without him.”

That again was the case in Sunday’s NFC championship game, even if Young’s final passing numbers--13 for 29, 155 yards--were about what he usually manages before halftime.

But two of those completions went for touchdowns. The first, a swing pass that Ricky Watters carried 29 yards down the right sideline, gave the 49ers a 14-0 first-quarter lead. The second, a perfectly delivered 28-yard strike to Jerry Rice upped the ante to 31-14 eight seconds before intermission--”the play of the game,” in San Francisco Coach George Seifert’s estimation.

A quarterback draw on second and goal from the Dallas three made it 38-21 late in the third quarter, Young’s second-most notable run of the day.

Top honors he saved for the end.

As soon as the final gun cracked, Young was out of the blocks and in full sprint, waving the game ball like a baton.

He ran to the sideline behind the 49er bench, confronting a weaving sea of red and gold, and shook the football in front of several thousand faces.

Then his victory lap took him behind the end zone, alongside the Giants’ dugout, where the same scene was re-enacted.

Someone held up a hand-made sign that read: “YOUNG, THE WAITING IS OVER.”

Someone else screamed, “Hey, Steve, you’re going to the dance, baby!”

And then, a new chant:

“MVP!”

“MVP!”

Taking it all in a few yards away was Leigh Steinberg, Young’s omnipresent agent, who has seen the worst and said he was “proud” to witness this.

“That was a cry of liberation,” Steinberg said of Young’s impromptu jog around the warning track. “This is what he wanted. I’m proud of him.

“If he had lost this time, for the third time, we’d have gone right back into the paradigm, ‘He can’t win the big one,’ as unfair as that is. It would’ve been brutal.”

This was Young’s Joe Montana moment, or as close to it as he’s likely to come. Cheered along every step, all the way to the postgame interview room, where several supposedly unbiased sportswriters whistled and called out “Way to go, Steve!” as Young climbed up behind the podium.

“Is the monkey off your back now?” Young was asked.

Young beamed.

“Honestly, I swear to you, I haven’t felt any monkey,” he replied. “If a monkey was there, well, he’s light. If you guys say he’s gone, great.”

And the “Steve!” chant, a newly spawned Candlestick Park tradition?

Young feigned a double-take.

“I heard that,” he deadpanned.

“Was that for me?”

The room broke into laughter and Young shrugged.

“You never know.”

If Young stopped short of calling it total vindication and validation, Wallace went the distance for him.

“Nobody gave him a chance,” Wallace said. “It got so bad, I wouldn’t even listen to the 49er Talk radio show. All this guy is trying to do is win games for this city and people are calling in, cursing him, saying unbelievable things.

“Even the year we went 14-2 and had a chance to go to the Super Bowl, they called in and cursed his leadership ability and him as a quarterback, period. If you expect someone to replace Joe Montana and take the team immediately to the Super Bowl, something’s wrong there.”

Young needed five years, and admitted the waiting was difficult.

“The fans are demanding here,” Young said. “They’re tough on us. And we’re tough on ourselves. When you’re pushed as hard as they push us, and we push ourselves, it’s fun to share a moment like this with them. . . . I’ve had a lot of uphill battles on this field.”

Young launched into a discourse about the pressures of playing in a city where Super Bowls are not only expected but demanded, when a reporter interrupted him.

“But isn’t the pressure you’re talking about the same thing as a monkey on your back?”

For a moment, Young was stumped.

“A monkey is a lot of pressure,” Young finally replied. “Pressure is not that much pressure.”

Realizing he had stopped making sense, Young laughed.

“This is too deep for me. I don’t think about these kind of things, because I’ve come too far. That hurdle. That obstacle. You’ll drive yourself nuts thinking like that.

“I did it early in my career and I had to learn to stop. Because if you don’t, you’re going to have a tough life.”

At the moment, Young’s chief obstacle was pushing his way into the locker room, where he could shower, dress and find a place to celebrate.

“We’ll try to take over some joint and run the place all night,” Young said. “Even for a Mormon guy, it’ll be some night.”