Sometimes You Have to Cross When It Says Don't Walk

by Lesley Visser

  “It’s for children who witness or experience abuse; it’s also about their self-image,” said Ali. “Young women get a message in this country that they have to look a certain way—it’s constantly reinforced through images twenty-four hours a day. We don’t want young girls to think they have to be somebody for somebody else. We want all children to be healthy.”

  Alice Wolterman Torre grew up among fifteen brothers and sisters in a small town outside of Cincinnati. She liked baseball, went to a few games at Crosley Field (home of the Reds from 1912–1970), but “mostly wanted to go someplace different than the Midwest.” When she turned eighteen, she told her mother, “I was buying a one-way ticket to Hawaii, and I did.” Always fearless, Ali loved anything physical, from golf to tennis, to skiing and hiking. “I tell Joe that I want to see every national park,” said Ali, “and I don’t mean Fenway!” While their travels have not taken them to Europe nearly enough—“I want to see Wimbledon in person,” she said—one of Joe’s proudest moments came in December of 2005 when he carried the Olympic torch relay to the foot of the Ponte Vecchio in Florence in preparation for the Winter Games in Torino, Italy.

  “We want to travel more,” said Ali. “We’ve lived more places than many people get to experience—New York, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Atlanta, and Cincinnati—but there is so much we want to do. Our daughter, Andrea, is headed for NYU; she’s wanted to be a performer since she was a child.”

  In Los Angeles, Joe’s been willing to experiment. He took yoga classes—“I’m not really into eighteen different positions for my arms and legs, but I finally got that ‘downward dog.’ ” He went surfing, complete with skintight wetsuit and Dodger cap, and has made many trips to the famous tracks around Hollywood. After being introduced to thoroughbred racing in the mid-nineties by his longtime assistant coach and good friend Don Zimmer, Torre took to the sport like horses to hay. He’s been the owner, or part owner, of such horses as Sis City, winner of the Ashland Stakes at Keeneland, the filly who finished fourth at the Kentucky Oaks. He won the first leg of the Canadian Triple Crown with Wild Desert, and he’s had the favorite, Game On Dude, in the Breeders’ Cup Classic. His stable is called Diamond Pride.

  “Don Zimmer convinced me to put up $300 almost twenty years ago,” said Torre, whose Game On Dude has been ridden by Hall of Fame jockey Mike Smith and trained by Hall of Famer Bob Baffert. “I’ve never been the same since. I love the game, love everything about horse racing. But after my family, Safe At Home is at the top of my list. I know the program works; I’ve seen kids recover. People in this country say, ‘Well, it’s not really my business.’ But you know what? It is your business.”

  The seventy-six-year-old Torre was inducted in Cooperstown along with his great friends Tony La Russa and Bobby Cox. The three legendary managers traded stories and toasts, and talked about the dreams and dances they have shared. The most important manager in the history of the iconic Yankees, who managed fabled victories with thoroughbred players named Jeter and Rivera, Williams, Pettitte, and Posada, also lived through the wild collapse against the Red Sox in 2004. But those Yankee teams, like Torre himself, have been both popular and successful. In his position with Major League Baseball, Torre is asked constantly about instant replay, home plate collisions, and the global game. But he will take more than a few moments to understand what has happened to him personally. He was not a fan of Donald Trump’s campaign, although he enjoyed playing golf with the president-elect. Torre told me he thought Trump’s campaign was disrespectful to both women and children, and that those topics aren’t specific to Democrats or Republicans.

  With his patient demeanor and decades-long perspective, Torre managed five major league clubs (the Mets, Braves, Cardinals, Yankees, and Dodgers), and spent another five years as a broadcaster. With a love of green tea and pink bubblegum, in addition to adoring his wife and good red wine, Torre is the only manager to have more than two thousand hits as a player and more than two thousand wins from the dugout. Even though people told him he’d most surely end up in Cooperstown, he said that Hall of Fame call he got still hit him like a “sledgehammer.”

  “It was about three thousand miles from T Street in Brooklyn to my home in Los Angeles,” said Torre, “but emotionally, not so far.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Another coach who made a great impression on me was Bill Walsh of the San Francisco 49ers. Yes, he missed out on drafting Joe Montana early, and yes, he agreed to start an aging O. J. Simpson to sell tickets, but even his struggling teams showed signs of improvement. I only watched from afar in the late 1970s, when Walsh sent assistant coach Sam Wyche to work out three players before the 1979 draft—quarterback Phil Simms, receiver James Owens from UCLA, and quarterback Steve Dills from Stanford. Walsh told Wyche to find someone to throw to Owens. Wyche went back to Walsh and told him he had to take a look at this kid who threw to Owens, Joe Montana out of Notre Dame.

  The 49ers had the top pick in 1979 (after a disastrous 2–14 season in 1978, they traded away the number one pick for O. J. Simpson). The 49ers used their first pick of the second round on Owens and took Montana with the third pick of the third round. Both Montana and Walsh had the good fortune to be backed by owner Eddie DeBartolo, the kindly owner who loved his players, won five Super Bowls, and is now in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He was the most competitive owner in any sport, but one who respected his players and expected greatness from everyone in the organization. The first time I met him was in the mid-seventies when the Boston Globe sent me to Youngstown, Ohio, to do a story on Eddie’s father. After the interview, Eddie and his lifelong friend Carmen Policy took me out on the town and flew me back to Boston on the DeBartolo jet. They also had someone return my rental car to Pittsburgh. When DeBartolo got together with Walsh, there was no stopping them; they drafted Montana and traded for Steve Young. At one point in the NFL, twenty of the thirty-two head coaches had trained under Bill Walsh or were in his coaching tree.

  With hall of famer Ed DeBartolo, former owner of the world championship San Francisco 49ers, and ESPN’s Sal Paolantonio

  Walsh was a thinking man’s head coach. I remember a friend of mine named Dr. John Murray, a sports psychologist, said you could predict how certain people would react in certain situations by applying a mental performance index. Walsh always came out on top, because his mind, his imagination, was always engaged. He had a goal and a fierce drive. The first conversation I had with Bill Walsh was in 1983. I was asking about his innovative offense, but he wanted to talk about Muhammad Ali. I’d done one or two interviews with Ali, and Walsh wanted to know everything even though he’d been an expert boxing observer himself. He asked me where I thought Ali’s skills came from, what was his motivation. Walsh wanted to know how Ali sustained his excellence over so many years, and the source of his mental stamina. An amateur boxer himself, Walsh wanted to know how he could apply the answers to his football team.

  Walsh had read everything about Ali, and what intrigued him the most was that despite Ali’s ferociousness, the boxer also had an element of finesse. Walsh wanted to implement that style with his 49ers; the appearance of intellect over muscle. With his white hair and immaculate presentation, Walsh seemed less savage than he really was, but players like Ronnie Lott proved him different. When Lott had the tip of his injured finger cut off to stay in the game, Walsh thought nothing of it—he was both tough and no-nonsense, cerebral and calm.

  In 1953, Walsh was a 190-pound boxer who won his college tournament at San Jose State. Players recall him shadow-boxing on the sidelines after 49er practices. The great center Randy Cross once told me that Walsh liked “both the artistic and the violent side of football.” Walsh enjoyed being known as a complicated man—well read and thoughtful, but he also put a sign in the 49er locker room that read, “I Will Not Be Out Hit at ANY Time This Season.” Walsh was a coach, a teacher, and skilled in the art of combat.

  His motivation didn’t come through intimidation, like so many of today’s coaches. T
o drive his players, he used attention to detail and expectation of self-awareness. Jerry Rice once told me, “He was relentless with us.” Widely regarded as the greatest receiver ever to play the game, Rice recalled that, “One game I had twelve receptions, three touchdowns, and two hundred yards, and Bill called me into his office.” Walsh didn’t meet with Rice to congratulate him; he told Rice the 49ers needed more. Walsh’s longtime assistant Mike Holmgren, who went on to win a Super Bowl with the Green Bay Packers, once said, “While the rest of us were pounding an anvil, he was painting a picture.”

  Walsh wanted an offense that flowed, that moved down the field in an orderly and precise manner. With Joe Montana, he had just the quarterback to do it. It was artistry, football on little cat’s feet. And, of course, “Joe Cool” led the perfect offense of short, surgical passes that controlled a game. In ten years, Walsh led the 49ers to three Super Bowl wins and six division crowns, and put together a team that won two more Super Bowls under George Seifert. I covered most of those games, celebrating afterwards with Eddie DeBartolo and his family, while complaining how crummy and wet Candlestick Park was in the winter.

  Walsh was born in 1931 in Los Angeles, the son of an auto repair shop worker who moved his family up to San Francisco in the 1940s. Bill was a wide receiver at San Jose State and went on to earn a master’s degree with the thesis, “Defending the Spread-T Offense.” In 1960, Marv Levy, who’d earned his master’s at Harvard, hired Walsh as an assistant at Cal-Berkeley. Walsh became a fixture in the Bay Area, coaching at both Cal and Stanford. He even did a stint with the Oakland Raiders while he and his wife Geri lived in an apartment in San Jose. When the expansion-team Cincinnati Bengals were looking for an offensive assistant, Walsh was hired as the receivers coach under the legendary Paul Brown.

  The now storied career of Bill Walsh, who’s often forgotten when people mention Lombardi or Shula, Belichick or Parcells, Halas or Paul Brown himself, had its modest roots with the Cincinnati Bengals. Those who remember Brown know that he was a football and cultural warrior. In the mid-1940s, he modernized the game and brought in players from all walks of life—sons of Italy and Ireland, Poland and Hungary. Many of the players were just home from World War II, so when Brown stressed discipline, the young men completely understood. Walsh learned from Brown how to be presentable—players were expected to sit up straight and wear white shirts at dinner, and to motivate themselves.

  Wearing a topcoat and a fedora, Brown was a pioneer, inventing the two-guard system where he would shuttle in offensive linemen (the great Chuck Noll was one of them) to change a play. In addition, Brown stressed scouting. His Cleveland Browns, using this approach and quarterback Otto Graham, completely dominated the old All-America Football Conference. When both Brown and Walsh were with Cincinnati, they came up with the West Coast Offense, based on perfectly timed short passes, where a receiver ran to a specific spot. Brown called it his “nickel and dime” offense, but eventually Ken Anderson and Isaac Curtis became the prototypes for Joe Montana and Jerry Rice.

  Walsh began “scripting” his plays, unusual at the time. Paul Brown would intensely ask Walsh what he thought the opening plays should be and Walsh was ready for the inquisition. Eventually, Walsh would have ten or twelve plays laid out, and they gave the team time to rehearse exactly what the players were expected to do. Walsh said it even gave him a better night’s rest. Brown retired in 1975, when I started covering the NFL, and he gave the head coaching job to Bill Johnson. Bill Walsh was crushed; he left, taking his West Coast Offense to the San Diego Chargers, and went on to beat the Bengals in two Super Bowls. Walsh said he had a quiet fury, and a drive born of not being the first pick. Roger Craig, the great 49ers running back, once told me that “Bill Walsh had a charisma, a kind of glow. I guess you could call it a champion’s glow.”

  And it was true. Walsh brought what he’d learned from both Paul Brown and Sid Gillman to Stanford, where he used the pass to set up the run. Eddie DeBartolo noticed the middle-aged coach and hired him for the 49ers when both were at the Doral Hotel in Miami, after the Niners had suffered through another horrible season in 1978. Walsh was finally ready, even though he’d been passed over for NFL head jobs until he was forty-seven years old. With DeBartolo, he drafted a skinny quarterback out of Notre Dame in 1979, Joe Montana, and traded for another future Hall of Famer, Steve Young, in 1987. Walsh and DeBartolo didn’t want to browbeat their players; they wanted to treat them intelligently.

  Walsh went at the job with a quiet vengeance, using many boxing metaphors to motivate his players. Instead of screaming or whipping them into submission, Walsh would say, “Beat your opponent to the punch,” or, “The first step is the quickest.” Walsh wrote a book with well-known beat writer Glenn Dickey, in which he declared, “Our team will mentally explode off the line.” That quickness, both mental and physical, became the team’s trademark. I was there when receiver Dwight Clark went behind Everson Walls in the end zone of the 1981 NFC Championship Game to beat the Cowboys, 28–27. It was the final drive of the game, which Montana had started on his own 11-yard line. The winning pass, known as Sprint Right Option, launched the legacy that the 49ers enjoyed that decade and beyond. Dwight told me last year that he hears about the play “at least twice a day.” And that was more than three decades ago.

  Walsh needed a certain type of quarterback, and Montana was it. He once told me that his quarterback had to be a leader, had to throw a catchable ball under pressure, and had to throw with enough velocity that he could eliminate a defender. On the other side, his receivers had requirements, too. They had to be able to jam the defender at the line of scrimmage, be quick (though not necessarily lightning fast), and have soft hands.

  Cue the heavenly choir. From a little-known Division I-AA school called Mississippi Valley State, Walsh noticed a receiver named Jerry Rice. The son of a laborer who hauled bricks all day, Rice was raw and precious, a diamond in the rough. In his rookie year, I asked him what he was going to do with his signing bonus. He said he was going to buy “two cars.”

  “Two cars?” I asked. “What for?”

  He looked at me as if I were a fool. “One for heah,” he said in his soft Delta accent, “and one for theyah.” Oh, of course. Then we both laughed.

  Walsh even maneuvered up in the 1985 draft, trading for the Patriots’ sixteenth pick overall, even though Rice was considered no better than the fifth best receiver. Walsh didn’t want to take a chance. And Rice was everything Walsh needed, with just enough speed to stretch the field, and near-perfect skills to catch the pass. Some now say Rice has been the best player in the history of the NFL.

  Walsh knew that success wasn’t a matter of desire, but of talent and preparation. He once said he often repeated the legendary John Wooden’s motto, “Failure to prepare is preparing to fail.” In ten years with the 49ers, Walsh made forty trades, moving up, moving down, taking only those who interested him. He learned his draft strategy from Paul Brown in Cincinnati, and also from Al Davis, his head coach with the Raiders.

  I covered one of the 49ers drafts for ESPN and it was a study in organization. The offices were thirty minutes south of Candlestick and on draft day, Walsh sat with eleven of his coaches and six of his scouts in front of a ten-foot blackboard. (Yes, a blackboard—I often laugh with my CBS colleague Amy Trask, who was the CEO of the Oakland Raiders for nearly three decades, about how people had chalk and erasers back then!) Walsh had offensive charts, defensive charts, and position charts all around him, with General Manager John McVay on the phone from draft headquarters in New York. Eddie DeBartolo was on another phone hookup from Youngstown, Ohio. McVay told me Walsh would listen to everyone, then make his pick. “He was never paralyzed or uncertain,” he said.

  My CBS headshot

  Walsh was always teaching, always thinking. He told me once that while coaching at Washington High School in Fremont, California, in 1957, he made the cheerleaders take a class called “Football 101.” No concept was too big, no detail too
small. And he never looked ruffled, as if trailing by twenty-seven points would mean nothing by the end of the game. In all his years of determination and success, he told me his proudest moment came when coaching the 49ers to the Super Bowl XXIII Championship in 1989. And not even the whole game, just the final drive. Walsh said that all his years of purpose and practice came together in those three minutes and twenty seconds. “Eleven plays,” he said, “that made a symphony.”

  Of course, the 49ers were trailing the Bengals, and I saw Boomer Esiason practicing “I’m going to Disneyland!” with a camera crew as Montana moved the team down the field. Calling his own plays, the 49ers moved as if they were a machine. Montana hit Rice for 17 yards and Roger Craig for another 11. Esiason looked out the corner of his eye and was filled with dread. When Montana rifled the 10-yard winning touchdown to John Taylor with thirty-four seconds left, for the winning score, the Disney people ditched Esiason and went sprinting across the field. Cincinnati failed to move out of their own territory and the 49ers won, 20–16. Rice was named the MVP for his record 215 receiving yards, all on a tender ankle. It cemented the legacy of both the team and their “Professor” coach.

  CHAPTER 10

  It wasn’t so long ago that Bill Belichick, my third inspirational sports leader, said he could remember every play of the 1959 Naval Academy team playbook. Belichick was six years old when his father, Steve, coached at Annapolis. I challenged him. When he was well into his sixties, I brought a whiteboard to an interview in Gillette Stadium with Belichick and his childhood idol, Heisman Trophy winner Joe Bellino, Naval Academy class of 1960. I asked Belichick to diagram Bellino’s favorite play.