PLEASANTON – John Madden and I were long past lunch and just shooting the bull at Vic’s All-Star Kitchen when a woman walked by with her son. She instantly recognized Madden and stopped in her tracks.
“Oh my gosh, you’re my hero!” she gushed. “You taught me football. I grew up without a lot of men around me, and you explained everything about football so clearly to me.”
She asked for a hug, then a picture. He made her day. He made it his life’s work doing that for others, typically on Sundays, first as the Raiders’ Super Bowl-winning coach and later as an Emmy-winning broadcaster.
Madden, who died Tuesday at age 85, was more than America’s all-time best spokesman when it came to football – and steak houses, athlete’s foot, hardware stores or, of course, video games. He was a blend of father figure, good buddy, esteemed colleague, late-night comedian, writing muse, national icon and everyday sports fan.
He oozed common sense more than anyone I’ve ever met. A Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee. A Super Bowl-winning coach with the Raiders. A family patriarch who left his award-filled broadcasting career to spend more time with his grandchildren.
I relished every conversation I ever had with him, just as I did with Bill Walsh and Al Davis, two of Madden’s football compatriots who preceded him in death.
“Hey, Wait a Minute (I wrote a book!)” is the title of a book he wrote in 1984. It’s in my bookcase, in well-read paperback. Flip three pages and you’ll see this: “To Virginia, Mike and Joe,” a dedication to his wife and two sons.
John’s family extended beyond them and to anyone who ever watched football – and those who didn’t. He touched so many people, and won so many more friends than measly football games.
He taught us so much. He shared his insights, his humor, his love. I never took it for granted.
As I drove out of my neighborhood a few years ago, I came to a fork in the road. Turn left and go to the 49ers’ facility for their latest news? Or turn right and see if Madden was at his nearby office?
“He’s heading to lunch, but he wants to know how soon you can get here,” Joan, his longtime assistant, said on the phone.
Two minutes and a mile later, I walked into the lobby of Madden’s office and found him sunk in a comfy, leather chair while one of his cherished grandsons kept him company.
After grabbing a quick quote for a football-related story, we sat and gabbed for 45 minutes. As usual. As awesome as ever.
In recent years, with his health declining and him losing his hearing, we mostly kept in touch via text, though I recall a phone call two years ago when he was with Vic, from Vic’s All-Star Kitchen, and suggesting I do a Super Bowl-week story on Vic’s memorabilia — a Joe Montana helmet that was part 49ers, part Chiefs.
Oh, remember that lunch date I wrote early about from our time at Vic’s? We swapped tales about football, about our alma mater Cal Poly, about our Pleasanton-based families, about anything and everything, including some NFL big wigs he counseled long ago but now had lost respect for them.
We sat, in fact, at a table with his nameplate on it by the front door, ordering the “Coach Madden” menu item of corned beef hash and eggs. We spoke with no tape recorder or notepad on hand this time. We were catching up, continuing a friendship and mentorship that grew strong over 15 years.
A few months earlier, we sat at the other end of Main Street in the lobby of his family-owned Rose Hotel, and we recorded his first-ever podcast. It was a timely if not invigorating chat in the heart of football season, seeing how Madden became synonymous with Thanksgiving from his “Turducken” broadcasts.
That sitdown was especially comforting just to see Madden emerge from a hellacious year of health issues, starting with heart surgery in December 2015.
He noted he caught hell for that podcast for something he said. We struggled to remember what it was. Then we remembered it was about “Thursday Night Football,” and how he suggested the NFL give bye weeks in advance of those games which posed physically and mentally unfair demands on players. (It holds true as a serious issue.)
Before I really got to know him, John wandered into the 49ers locker room one day 20 years ago. As I introduced myself to him, so did a cocky running back who told him he was going to win a bunch of Super Bowl rings. “Win the first one,” Madden advised.
How did Madden and I click? I’d like to think we had similar backgrounds and perspectives. We both grew up in the Bay Area (he in Daly City, me in Cupertino). We both went to Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo. Our professional careers started in Santa Maria (he at Hancock College, me at the Santa Maria Times). We both moved to Pleasanton and started families.
Last but not least, we both shared a love for the game of football, resulting in the best, impromptu chats you can imagine.
It wasn’t until his 2006 Pro Football Hall of Fame induction, however, that I earned his ear, and thus his unmatched ability to muse about anything under the sun and goalposts.
I would occasionally drop by his office, where often quizzed me on who appeared with him in a prized picture that hung on his wall. The answer: boxers Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Robinson.
Madden loved boxing, and knew it well. In May, I watched Canelo Alvarez knock out Amir Khan on the big screen at Madden’s studio with his family and close friends. Madden called it before Alvarez’s first punch. (Two weeks ago, I texted to see if he planned to warch Frank Gore’s fight; Madden replied it was nice to hear from me but that fight wouldn’t be on at the studio, which I once clumsily dubbed the “Mad Den.”)
Football was Madden’s trademark topic, however. Even the Alvarez-Kahn fight night, Madden sought my first impression on the 49ers’ new coach, Chip Kelly. My first impression?
That reminded me of a year earlier, when I came across Madden at the local baseball field, and he wanted my take on Tom Brady and the brewing Deflategate saga. I dismissed it as overblown. Madden countered, saying the integrity of the game and Brady was at stake.
I can remember so many of our chats, and wish there were more.
Once, on my way home from a Cal football press conference, I wondered what Jeff Tedford meant by a quarterback’s “visual discipline.” So I stopped by Madden’s office to ask him. He knew the answer (how to not stare at receivers, how to fool linebackers, how to use peripheral vision). And we talked for 45 minutes about extraneous stuff. As usual.
Once, he reminisced about growing up in Daly City and sneaking into sporting events, from slipping under chain-link fences for golf tournaments in San Francisco to catching the nightcap of doubleheader baseball games in Oakland.
Once, on my way into my youngest daughter’s basketball game at a local school, I bumped into John. He was there for his grandson’s game, and we gabbed about the NFL with disregard to the kids’ basketball tip-offs.
Once, on my way home from the local gym, I stopped to say hello at John’s office. “What, are you training for a fight?” Madden quipped about my workout.
Once, he shared a simple recipe my kids would love: peanut butter sushi, which was flattened white bread rolled up with peanut butter. His grandkids had discovered it from room service at his San Francisco retreat. Wonderful grandkids — Sam, Jack, Jesse, Aidan and Makena, the latter of whom was a soccer dynamo I had the pleasure of coaching one season.
(He and Virginia restored a historic home in Pleasanton’s foothills and have lived there for some 20 years. When they were building it, I asked him why he had eight or so garages. He wisely noted that we tend to pile stuff in garages and, boom, they fill up. He also had a retreat in Carmel where he would escape on Pleasanton’s hot days. He also had almond orchards in the Central Valley, grapevines throughout the state.)
Once, I asked him to help me with a book I wrote about “The Best Bay Area Sports Arguments,” and he ended up writing the foreword for it. Actually, he dictated it to me over the phone, fittingly.
Once, when I showed up at his office before his 2006 Pro Football Hall of Fame induction, he asked if I had heard from Al Davis, arguably his best friend. I had not, until the next day, when I ended up meeting with Al in his office for an unforgettable, 2 ½-hour interview.
Once, I asked if he ever regretted coaching only 10 years. His answer then, and forever, was that 10 years is the perfect, sane span for a NFL coach. Heck, Vince Lombardi put in only a decade (and his .738 winning percentage ranked behind Madden’s .759 clip atop modern-era coaches).
Once, Madden told me his coaching days lived in his dreams, like the one in which he imagined himself back at Raiders training camp in Napa, yelling at Jim Otto and his brother for throwing a couch out of a second-story window.
Once – actually many times – I stopped by his and Steve Mariucci’s celebrity bocce tournament to give my regards. Often I found myself refereeing the middle of their football chats, including one about improvising quarterbacks.
Thanksgiving Day always compelled me to reach out after his retirement from broadcasting.
The first time, I was in Baltimore in 2011, and it just felt weird to think John was retired and not showcasing his Turducken dish at an NFL game. It turned out he was trying something new: he had stuffed chicken breasts with crawfish and was putting them into the oven.
The second time, he called me while I was in the 49ers’ locker room, asking if Jim Harbaugh had heard about a play in the Detroit Lions’ game, to which John’s timing was impeccable. Laughter erupted. I asked if he was cooking chicken and crawfish again. “Uh, no, I’m watching the Redskins game now,” John replied, as if there was any other option.
Once, while visiting my football-crazed nephews in St. Helena, I tried playing Madden Football for the first time. I failed miserably. I told John that the next day, when, of all days, a breaking-news interview about his retirement from broadcasting morphed into every-day conversation. As usual.
Once, while at a charity golf tournament in Livermore, I somehow won the longest-drive competition. As I went up to accept the award, I passed John’s table, to which he bellowed: “Sandbagger!”
You know what? He was the greatest sandbagger of all time. John could relate to anyone, and yet he built up so much prestige and credibility that he should go down as the most renowned sports figure in Bay Area history. Boom!