Word: montana
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Roger Staubach and John Brodie were there, on the sidelines, Cowboy and 49er quarterbacks of another time. "I'll tell you, he's something special," said Staubach. Brodie senses something more. "I saw Joe Montana the first time three years ago. He walked into the room and I said, 'There's a man.' I can't define it for you. He knows what he's doing. You know it and he knows it. Joe Montana, I think, will become the best quarterback who ever played the game...
There never seems to have been a doubt that Montana would become some sort of ballplayer. His father was chiefly responsible for his dedication to games and, it could be argued, was the dedicated one. Joe Sr. is a trim and youthful, silver-haired and hatchet-faced man, just 49, born on the same day but a year after Walsh. He is the custodian of his only child's memorabilia and his own memories. The "fundamentals" he preached to the boy were learned in the Navy, where Joe Sr. played all the games. He had filled out slowly...
...dealerships and finance companies. It is shot-and-a-beer country, "Iron City" beer. Real boilers are made there as well, and so are quarterbacks. Western Pennsylvania has turned them out as stoic as Johnny Unitas, as extravagant as Joe Namath and as plain tough as George Blanda. Joe Montana Jr. favors all of them somewhat...
...retelling, this probably sounds more like a story from a military academy than it should. Even thumbing his scrapbooks in absent reverie or sitting down to supper at home, where the dinner music is a taped interview of young Joe, the elder Montana seems a most benevolent stage father, and his boy's enduring emotion, of many complex ones, appears to be gratitude. "I love my kid, whether he ever played football or not," says the father softly, "but the part of him that made him so special, I loved that...
...time young Joe was a Ringgold High Ram, he had asked backyard waivers on his first receiver, and drafted a neighbor who liked to pretend he was Jim Seymour; Montana was Terry Hanratty. Those were Notre Dame's stars at the time. The setting of most of Joe's dreams began to be South Lend...