Purdy: Walsh snubbed by Bengals, but `it all worked out'
By Mark Purdy
Mercury News
The last time I spoke with Bill Walsh, in April at his Stanford office, we covered a lot of ground. I was interviewing him for a column about the 150th anniversary of San Jose State, his alma mater. But we also talked about the 49ers, the Raiders, Stanford and old times.
Maybe he didn't think it would be our last conversation. I knew it probably was.
So at the end, I told him the truth. I told him he was the most interesting person I had covered during my 23 years of writing sports columns in Northern California. I thanked him for never being dull. And for always answering my stupid questions.
"Oh, come on," Walsh said. "Well, I guess we always just sort of . . . got along."
Actually, that wasn't true. There were moments when Walsh definitely didn't like what I wrote. And let me know about it.
"Anyway, thanks for everything," I said as our conversation concluded.
"Look, I'm not dying today," Walsh answered with mock disdain.
We shook hands. I knew he was right. But I also knew he was in the home stretch of a remarkable time on Earth. Walsh's passing is sad because his brain was obviously still functioning at warp speed. As recently as spring 2006, even after his leukemia diagnosis, Walsh was running the entire Stanford sports program while the school was between athletic directors - and oh, yes, was building a new football stadium.
But that was Walsh. With his ties to all three local Division I programs and both pro franchises,
he was easily the Bay Area's most influential sports personality of the past 50 years. No dissenting opinions, please. Walsh changed the entire dynamic of local sports in 1979 when he was handed the keys to the 49ers by owner Eddie DeBartolo Jr.
At that point, the franchise was a sad sack of mediocrity. Walsh built a dynasty, won three Super Bowls and turned the 49ers into the region's premier sports entity.
Yet for all that, the thing I most appreciated was how Walsh never forgot his South Bay pedigree, about the days when he and wife Geri lived in a North First Street apartment in San Jose as he was finishing up his studies at San Jose State. He often helped the school with advice and money. He was a big supporter of the San Jose Sports Hall of Fame.
My favorite story about Walsh's early coaching life also happened here in the South Bay - and it was so humbling to him that he later ordered the details deleted from his biography in the 49ers media guide.
In 1967, impatient at 35 to become a head coach, Walsh left the Raiders to become coach and general manager of the San Jose Apaches. They were a semi-pro team that played at San Jose City College and lasted just one season before folding.
It was just as minor league as it sounds. Only a few thousand people showed up for games. The Apaches used hand-me-down Raiders uniforms. The personnel was so shaky that, after picking his 35-man roster in summer training camp, Walsh fired 25 of the players when NFL teams made their final cuts and better talent became available.
Players practiced six hours a week and made $125 to $150 a game. Walsh earned a bit more than that. But not much.
"I don't even know if Bill was paid his salary toward the end," Tom Myers, a former Apaches player, once told me.
Yet even with all of the Apaches' problems, Walsh coached the team to an 8-4 record. After the season, the team auctioned off its assets to settle a $14,887 tax debt.
A few months later, Walsh accepted a position as an assistant with the Bengals.
I always thought that Walsh should have been proud of the job he did with the Apaches because it so perfectly reflected his dogged nature and his modest roots. But I am convinced that he used the humiliating experience as an incentive to succeed, a motivation that only increased when Paul Brown snubbed him a decade later by naming someone else his successor as the Bengals' head coach.
If there was a blessing in Walsh's slow-acting form of leukemia, it was that everybody he touched had a chance to tell him how important he'd been to their lives. Reaching closure is important - even for a legend. In our own last conversation, I asked Walsh about something else.
"Before Paul Brown died, did he ever apologize or admit his mistake in not hiring you as the Bengals' head coach?" I wondered.
"Not really," Walsh said, then caught himself and remembered that he once interviewed Brown for a feature piece while working as an NBC analyst.
"After we were done with the interview," Walsh said, "I was opening the door and leaving and Paul stood up and pointed a finger across the room. He said: `I made a mistake when I didn't hire you as head coach.' "
"What did you say?" I asked.
"I told him, `No, no, Paul, it all worked out,' " Walsh said. "And Paul said: `No, it was a mistake.' Then I walked out the door."
"Did it mean something to you?" I asked.
Walsh thought for a few seconds.
"Yes," Walsh said. "Yes, it did."
