49ers fete Clark, then are blown out by Cowboys
Former 49ers receiver Dwight Clark, diagnosed in the spring with ALS, addresses the crowd during halftime ceremonies honoring him at Levi’s Stadium. On the field, his former team remained winless as Dallas rolled to a 40-10 victory.
The men who were there Sunday — the 49ers from 1981, the franchise’s first Super Bowl season — love to talk about “The Catch,” to recall it fondly, but there is an almost unspoken fear factor.
What if it never happened? What if Joe Montana’s fallaway pass does not thread that cosmic needle? What if Dwight Clark does not bound off that invisible trampoline and snag the ball with his fingertips?
Because of everything that The Catch set in motion — all those Super Bowl wins! — it’s scary to think what would have happened if ...
“I don’t let myself go down the road of what would have happened if he doesn’t make that catch,” Carmen Policy, who ran the team’s front office back then, said Sunday. “Without that play, I wonder where we would have been. And I
stopped thinking about it. Because so much happened after that.”
Policy and a couple dozen other 49ers players and execs from the old days gathered at Levi’s Stadium on Sunday to honor The Catcher. Clark has ALS and uses a wheelchair. The 49ers, who consider themselves a family, threw a party for him.
They came to honor his impact as a player, and as a man.
In a halftime ceremony, the old 49ers gathered at midfield. Montana took the mike and talked about “my roommate, who never unpacked his bag (during his first training camp). He thought he was going to get cut . ... For all of us, we thank you for the joy you brought to our life, and we all love you.”
Clark, from a luxury box, addressed the crowd.
“Hello, my 49er Faithful,” he said. “I wanted to thank you for all your support while I was a player, and I think you all know I’m going through a little thing right now, and I need your prayers and thoughts.”
Clark said that when he was asked how he wanted this celebration to be, he said, “I just said, ‘I just want to see my teammates.’ And the 49ers heard that, and flew all these players in so I could see them one more time.”
Those last three words hit hard. This really might be the last party, but it wasn’t Clark’s first. Back in the day, as teammates said with a laugh, the boys had some fun. Clark, handsome and genial, was, more than any other 49er, determined not to get cheated out of his swings, on and off the field.
“His work ethic rubbed off on everybody,” said Mike Wilson, who was Clark’s backup at wide receiver. “Jerry Rice gets a lot of credit for being a hard worker. Dwight worked his butt off, and really instilled in me and other guys who came along that work ethic.”
Clark was an accident, his pro football career pure serendipity. Bill Walsh found Clark when he was scouting quarterback Steve Fuller, a Clemson teammate of Clark’s and needed a warm body to catch passes.
I have long suspected that what Walsh saw in Clark, along with sneaky-good football skills, was a little brother. Walsh was a good-looking, charming rogue with a definite tough-guy side, and so was Clark.
Policy described Clark as “A Southern gentleman with a redneck (football) attitude.”
For sure, Clark, a 10th-round draft pick, didn’t make the 49ers on charm alone.
“The big thing with Bill was running slants,” Wilson said Sunday. “If you couldn’t catch a slant, or you were scared to run across the middle, you wouldn’t be here very long.”
Clark was there for nine seasons, averaging 13.3 yards per catch and scoring 48 touchdowns, plus another three in the playoffs — including The Catch.
The toughness is one thing that hasn’t changed with Clark. Michael Zagaris, the 49ers’ longtime photographer, has poignant locker-room photos of a dazed Clark being treated for head injuries, before trotting back to the field. That’s how it was back then, and maybe now Clark (and others) is paying the price.
There is no definitive connection between football head trauma and ALS, but the old players don’t need scientific studies to tell them what they see with their own eyes.
Clark didn’t take a lick on The Catch, but the mentality and toughness that made The Catch possible is what has brought Clark to his current condition.
But now, thanks to the teamas-family culture fostered by former owner Eddie DeBartolo and revived under Jed York, the fellas can celebrate the good times, honor the good guys ... and remember The Catch.
“To me, that unified the Bay Area,” Wilson said. “It represented a lot to this community and the city. That was the most exhilarating fun I ever experienced. We were headed to Pontiac, we were going to Detroit for the Super Bowl.”
Many of the players attending Sunday’s party for Dwight wore Super Bowl rings. They came to share a smile and a laugh with the gentleman tough guy whose fingerprints are all over those rings.