In gold blood
They say the Chinese Year of the Dragon, which officially began this week, is a year of good luck and fortune — but not for tragic San Francisco 49er fans like myself, whose hearts were flooded with human hate last Sunday when our team suffered a mind-shattering loss against the treacherous New York Giants in a rain-soaked disaster of a game that sent the Giants marching off to the Super Bowl and the Niners slinking off to the showers in shame. It was a game that invited violence, and fans were so horribly shaken and angered by the defeat that some reacted inappropriately by saying things like, “Well at least we still have the Transamerica Pyramid…”
Holy Smokes, what a nightmare, particularly because it was a well-waged football war that went into overtime only to end up in a mudpool of blood, sweat, and tears. In the first half, the hard-stomping Giants virtually controlled possession by converting several third downs. New York quarterback Eli Manning, who was no less demanding on himself than he was on his teammates, was cranked up with 300 yards of passing and two touchdowns as the Niners squashed the Giants’ running game and forced Manning to use his throwing arm. His favorite target was the salsa-strutting Victor Cruz, who set a Giants post-season record by catching the ball 10 times. With over 150 rushing yards, the Niners ran that ball like a stampede of angry bulls, but to the head-knocking frustration of many, could not for the life of them seem to convert in a third down situation, going 0 for 11. Sadly, the two high-class Vernon Davis touchdowns were not enough to spell salvation for the feverish 49ers.
In the second half, the solid San Francisco defense kept it close to the razor’s edge by stopping a bunch of third downs. If it weren’t for the two humongous plays to Davis, however, our boys wouldn’t have factored much into the equation of the game. Defense was the name of the game in the second half, especially in the fourth quarter when frustrated plays led to a cliff-hanging overtime period. This is when everything fell apart like a flimsy Jenga tower. After two possessions wherein the Niner defense stuffed New York like a turkey again, the Giants punted to San Francisco’s hapless Kyle Williams who, in the clutch of a helpless panic it seemed, fumbled the goddamn ball again on the Niner 20-yard line like his hands had been greased with Vaseline. Giants place-kicker Lawrence Tynes, the son of a former Navy Seal, drove the final stake into the heart of my beloved Bay Area by kicking the game-winning field goal that would pit New York against New England in a rematch of the 2008 Super Bowl, which the Giants won by three points.
So Kyle Williams is not very popular in San Francisco right now. In fact, the son of White Sox general manager Kenny Williams has already received serious threats to his life by furious fans and burned gamblers, forcing his father to publicly question the very culture of sports. Some of these psychotic tweets were as blunt as rusty ice-picks:
“@KyleWilliams_10. I hope you, you’re (sic) wife, kids and family die, you deserve it
@KyleWilliams_10 you should jump off the golden gate bridge for that one
@KyleWilliams_10 HOPE U RUN n2 A BULLET DA WAY U RAN INTO DAT BALL…
Jim Harbaugh, please give @KyleWilliams_10 the game ball. And make sure it explodes when he gets in his car.”
The 23-year-old second year player out of Arizona State doesn’t even have a wife and kids, as far as I know. “I told his mother on the way out exactly what was coming,” said Kenny Williams. “That’s the nature of the beast.” The fatal fumble was bad enough, but what made Williams’s performance on the field that day truly abominable was that it was his second screw-up of the day; the first occurring early in the fourth quarter when a rolling punt bounced off his knee, allowing the Giants to recover the ball at the 49ers’ 29-yard line and score a touchdown two minutes later. His two klutzy blunders led directly to 10 more points for the Giants. There was simply no excuse for being that careless with the ball in a big, crucial game like this one, and Williams will no doubt be dealing with some new demons for a while.
The low-key Manning’s performance, on the other hand, must have inspired his teammates adequately to face up to the challenge of a high-pressure sporting spectacle like the Super Bowl. He was hit a dozen times and sacked half as many times, but he soldiered on and kept focused against the brick-wall defense of the Niners’ magnificent front seven. Manning is a tough-as-nails jack-bastard of a quarterback, and one day he will pay for this holy crime against the boys of Candlestick Park.
In the meantime, I’ll end this sour note with an assessment of the game by 49er coach Jim Harbaugh, who along with his elder brother, Baltimore Ravens coach John Harbaugh, is the first pair of brothers in NFL history to serve as head coaches. Claiming the football gods had a different ending in mind than the one his 49ers envisioned, Harbaugh, a driven perfectionist, said his team, our team, was “hurt but not slain. I’ll lay down and bleed for a while, then rise and fight again.” Amen.
