By INGRID McCLEARY
It wasn't until 1981, when the San Francisco 49ers made it to the Super Bowl, that I began to understand the rudiments of football. Now, I'm hooked. I study the stats like a stockbroker studies Wall Street.
I'm a 49ers fan, but not a football fan. There is a distinction. You won't find me glued to the television with just any football game; it has to be the 49ers. I'll watch the playoff games, but only to see who the 49ers will be up against.
I'm a die-hard fan, too. When they play lousy, I feel like I'm coming down with a cold. When they're hot, I walk around with a goofy smile.
The 49ers are my home team. I don't have to live in San Francisco to claim them, because the 49ers belong to the entire Bay Area.
My friend Bonnie recently took her father to 3COM Park for a Monday night game between the 49ers and the Minnesota Vikings. They were celebrating his 79th birthday.
Bonnie's father has lived on Knickerbocker Drive in Sunnyvale for more than 30 years. He's kind and gentle and normally a quiet man. But put him behind the 49ers' end zone, and he's screaming with the rest of the fans. John said it was the best birthday he'd ever had. The best birthday in 79 years? I think that illustrates how the Bay Area feels about the 49ers.
Whenever the 49ers make it to the Super Bowl, I throw a huge party with balloons, prizes, a barbecue with all the fixings, a piñata for the kids and a television in every room, including the bathrooms.
However, I don't have the luxury of planning months ahead of time for the party. I won't hold one without the 49ers, so every week during the playoffs, the excitement builds: Will I or won't I? When they do, I have two weeks to put everything together. In that time, I'm a whirling dervish and could probably keep up with Jerry Rice dashing for the end zone.
Every time I've held the party, the 49ers have won the Super Bowl.
Not to take any credit from the team, but if a butterfly flapping its wings in Africa contributes to a tornado in Kansas, who knows what kind of energy pulsates from a crowd of 50 screaming fans?
I guess this year, though, the butterfly sent the energy to the Green Bay Packers. Now I'm left without a Super Bowl party, and it feels like somebody's robbed me of a holiday.
I have a few friends who aren't 49ers fans. Rob is a Dallas Cowboys fan, and Wally just cheers for whichever team is playing against the 49ers. In the past, we've relegated them to the sunroom and then we run back and forth, taunting one another. It provides another dimension to the competition.
Since Wally isn't a 49ers fan, he's holding a Super Bowl party. He recently bought a 61-inch screen (so he can taunt us with the immense absence of the 49ers, I'm sure). This year, I'll attend his party and derive a modicum of satisfaction in booing both teams.
But it isn't the same.
When the next football season rolls around, I surely hope there's a butterfly in Africa with the 49ers name etched on its wings.
Ingrid McCleary is a columnist for The Sun.
This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, January 24, 1996
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