Montana Due A Royal Retirement Party But Don’t Look For Steve Young To Be Among The Well-Wishers Today
Eddie DeBartolo will be there, ready to cry at the drop of a Super Bowl ring. So will Ronnie Lott, Dwight Clark and a lot of the other San Francisco 49ers who helped Joe Montana bring San Francisco four titles.
But Steve Young, who thought he’d be at Montana’s retirement party, won’t be there.
It turns out that the person who invited him wasn’t Montana’ agent, Peter Johnson, but an unidentified 49er, adding a bit of mischief to the much ballyhooed event today and ruffling the somewhat stiff feathers of the International Management Group.
“I didn’t call Steve; it was all a hoax,” Johnson said Monday night after IMG’s public relations consultants denied he had issued an invitation to the quarterback whose presence led DeBartolo to trade Montana to Kansas City and whose relationship with Montana has been anything but cordial.
“The only ones from the 49ers I invited were Eddie, Dwight and Carmen Policy,” said Johnson. “Joe invited a few other of his old teammates but … certainly not Steve.”
But if the hoax added a touch of the comic to what has become a rather staid occasion, it shouldn’t take away from Montana’s Day. It’s likely to be far more emotional than the day five summers from now in Canton, Ohio, when Montana’s induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame is made official.
For in a city where being different is an art form, an ordinary guy named Joe brought the city four NFL titles in nine seasons and is without question its most popular citizen.
And if, in fact, Montana left his heart in San Francisco during his two seasons in Kansas City, it’s also true that San Francisco’s heart went with him.
“I don’t feel weird about Joe’s retirement because I was hoping it would come a little sooner. It was so hard to watch him play somewhere else,” says Clark.
Various friends and relatives from Montana’s first hometown, Monongahela, Pa., will be there, along with the brass from the Chiefs, with whom he ended his career, but this is San Francisco’s treat.
IMG made that clear when it organized the celebration, leaving Wednesday for a second, lower-key tribute in Kansas City.
The official announcement will come at noon in Justin Herman Square, and among the guests will be Huey Lewis, the official rock singer of the 49ers, who stopped singing the national anthem before 49ers’ games about the time Montana left town.
Then comes a luncheon that will include DeBartolo and all those former 49ers.
Clark, now the 49ers’ vice president for football operations, was Montana’s closest friend when they played together. But until last Tuesday, when Montana invited him to the celebration, the two barely spoke after the trade two years ago that temporarily shattered Montana’s ties to San Francisco.
“We are,” says Carmen Policy, the team president, “like a tight Italian family. All tears, all emotion. Letting Joe go was the hardest thing we’ve had to do.”
But now it’s all hugs and tears.