Ah, I remember it like it was last week.
All week I had anticipated this game. Ah knew the cowboys would have a great game plan and use brute power with the crafty Irvin.
On that morning, I ate my oatmeal and made a checklist of what I would do iffin the Cowboys won.
Celebratory steak
Paint the Old Folks Home
Phone my pal in Sacra Capital and rub it in.
10 Hail Mary's in devotion to Our Lady of Perpetual Hope and Mansta who lives in Mary Land.
On that big day, I got a map of the sports bar where that game would be closed-circuited and walked into a sea of red and gold.
Ah felt like the loneliest man in the world in that bar in Orange County, Califor-Nih-Ay. A sea of 49er fans swayed before me. My Blue Jersey -- I blame the blue jersey in retrospect -- parted the ocean of odeous and obnoxiousness that is the 49er gang. All that late afternoon, on a warm beguiling California sports bar near the coast, the roar of the crowd rocked back and forth like some belicose beast of brutality and benign banality.
As the clock wound down, the roar was that of the 49ers.
Beaten, I was. And also my team. Beaten and silenced and furloughed into a pergatory of nonwinners, also-rans and embittered fans. To suffer in the depths of "winter" in California.
My heart ached when I left that 49er den of derision and disappointment. A young boy who felt the call to mecca, or, at least, to the sports bar where the Cowboys could be seen. A devasting day to this charming kid who always exceeded his quota of aluminum siding and sent checks to his mother in Reyjkavik.
They stole that game from us.
He ran into Irvin.
49ers win it. I am crushed as I motor back in my sleek German car that hangs on to the road like Wade's son does to his job.
The "bump" should have been our "catch" of that decade.
We was robbed.
