Nobody Won Like Montana

Old quarterbacks never die, a saying goes. They just drop back and pass away.

Joe Montana has called his last signal. Montana will announce his retirement Tuesday in the city where he should have ended his career, San Francisco. He goes out as the greatest quarterback of a generation--no, the greatest of a lifetime.

He won more and was booed less than any quarterback we have ever seen. Other quarterbacks could throw farther, run faster, scramble better, tell funnier jokes. The only thing Montana could do better than any other quarterback was win.

Jack (the Throwin’ Samoan) Thompson, an old quarterback out of Washington State, once said of his profession: “It’s amazing what the human body can do when chased by a bigger human body.”

Montana was proof of that. No matter how well protected he was by 249-pound or even 349-pound 49ers, Montana was constantly under attack. He wasn’t big and he wasn’t quick. What he was was fearless.

He also did one of the most difficult things in sports--winning when you’re supposed to win. Everybody talks about Joe Namath and his famous upset. But try being Montana and always being the favorite.

Some people never win the big game.

Montana always won the big game.

He did so for 49er fans so spoiled by success that what Steve Young would do later seemed second nature to them. They felt entitled to another Super Bowl championship with Young at quarterback, simply because of the four that Montana had won.

Being a quarterback, to quote another old one, Sonny Jurgensen, is “like holding group therapy for 50,000 people a week.”

Montana’s therapy actually served millions more, counting all of those who never came to a game. They watched his every move, waited for him to make a mistake. He rarely did.

I was lucky enough to have witnessed in person Montana’s greatest moments--the comeback against Houston in the Cotton Bowl, the pass to Dwight Clark against the Dallas Cowboys, the atomic bombing of the Denver Broncos in the Super Bowl at New Orleans.

I cannot remember one word Montana spoke after any of these games. He was as quotable as Al Gore. But I remember play after play after play. Montana did not talk the talk, but man, did he ever walk the walk.

After winning a Super Bowl of his own with the New York Giants, current Raider quarterback Jeff Hostetler said in his biography: “Winning is what counts in the National Football League, and if you win, nobody is going to say anything critical about how you did it. It’s losing they don’t like.”

In other words, Young could be twice the athlete Montana was, but if he hadn’t won a Super Bowl, he might have been considered a super flop. It isn’t fair, but that’s the way it is. And that’s the way it is because of Montana.

To get to the Super Bowl that year, Hostetler and the Giants had to go through Montana and the 49ers. They won the game, 15-13. But what some people have forgotten is that New York’s Leonard Marshall knocked Montana right out of that game with a legal but vicious tackle.

Montana was one of those hard-as-coal kids Pennsylvania keeps digging up. He took most of the hits and came back for more. But the older he gets, the more his wife, Jennifer, prefers that Joe stay home. She doesn’t want him taking one last hit that leaves him in a wheelchair.

Montana had sufficient skill and willpower remaining that he preferred to play somewhere other than San Francisco rather than not play at all. Good for Joe, but the 49ers were wise to choose Young over Montana when one of them had to go. You don’t keep running an old horse and leave your young one in the barn.

Seeing him in a Kansas City uniform, however, made me wince. It was like seeing Johnny Unitas as a San Diego Charger, or Bobby Orr as a Chicago Blackhawk, or Robert Parish as a Charlotte Hornet. It was one of those “What’s Wrong With This Picture?” things.

It’s time for Joe to go.

I leave you with one last word from one more old quarterback. Someone once asked Sammy Baugh if his next season would be his last.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe last year was.”