Hey! Here’s a great Dad idea! John’s birthday is in October! Let’s go to a Niners game as a family! It’s a tradition!

Gail had two numbers as a Niners, 54 and later 88. John, a tight end at St. Joe’s, chose the latter.

And when the boys were little, we went to TWO Niners games. One was an Old Timers’ Day, and when they paraded down to the field, EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM WAS LIMPING. Check that. One wasn’t. It was this guy. You know, the one who threw the pass to the late, great Dwight Clark.

The Glory Days were long gone in 2004, when we saw soon-to-be-forgotten QB Tim Rattay take on the Arizona Cardinals. The Niners that year won only two games. *Gloom.* They were down 28-12 at the half, but Rattay, playing in Candlestick, started completing passes, among 400 yards of them, that would begin to shift the tide.

(By the way, here were the approximate directions for leaving Candlestick: “If you’re traveling south, take the US 101 North to the Oregon border, take the first exit and enter the US 101 South.) I loved this stadium, the one with the conveniently placed signs that read “VOMITORIUM.”

Anyway, Rattay led the Niners back and they won on a last-second field goal, 31-28. It was glorious. Two extremely made-up young ladies hugged Thomas. Mom hugged John, then Thomas. I hugged a jubilant Black lady next to me and we hopped up and down together for several seconds. Oh, then I hugged my family, by then all of us burnt beet red because we were in the end zone seats, directly in the sun.

P.S. The only other game the 49ers won that year? Also against the Cardinals.

We’ve also done a college football game. John’s late Uncle, Kevin Bruce, was a runty longhair linebacker who played for three Rose Bowl teams in the 1970s, for John McKay. He hit opposing players so hard that his helmet left a permanent dent in the bridge of his nose. This, and I suppose his frequent bleeding, impressed the hell out of his teammates, and he became a defensive team captain.

So for another birthday, we decided on a USC game–Stanford vs. the Trojans in the Coliseum. I don’t know that it still is, but O.J.’s number was still displayed in the stands. We found a nice place to park the car—I think it was in Marina del Rey—in exchange for large sums of money. We got to the Coliseum and rooted for the Trojans until about midway through the second quarter, when the Trojan fans, drunken louts, became so obnoxious that we secretly rooted for The Cardinal, to no avail. They lost. But USC does NOT have the Hoover Institution, where I got to hold the X-Ray of Hitler’s skull taken after the July 1944 Bomb Plot. (COOL!)

But we came away impressed with athletes who were NOT football players. The Stanford Dancing Redwood Tree was manic but kind of endearing. He/she never stopped moving.Neither did the USC Songleaders. They were INCREDIBLE!

So I thought it would be a grand idea to get those tickets for John’s birthday. The Niners? The lousier the team, the cheaper the tickets, so I picked the Jacksonville Jaguars game. (John admired Jaguars QB Mark Brunell, who played for St. Joe’s, and he was our next-door neighbor when I was a college student in SLO. Brunell was about two and a little blondie, like his Mom, then.)

Four tickets just below the landing gear of the jets coming into the San Jose airport (DUCK!), and on the visitors’ side, where the Niners look like little red Mexican jumping beans? $500.

Not to be dismayed, I tried the Rams whatever their stadium is called. It should be called the Roman Gabriel Coliseum, in my opinion. The Rammies tickets were a little higher.

Well, maybe a Los Angeles/Still Should be San Diego Chargers game? Still 500-dollarish.

Doesn’t have to be pro football. How about those Trojans? Closer to $600.

I know this sound self-pitying, but that’s not exactly my point. Football tickets have always been expensive, and rightfully so, because football seasons are so much shorter than baseball or basketball seasons and football teams, with equipment, weight rooms, uniforms, medical staffs and team doctors and those enormous servings of Ribeye steak and grilled shrimp drive those team owners’ costs up. They’re just living on the edge, anyway,*

*Sarcasm intended.

All of this online ticket-hunting took about two hours, but that’s not my point, either.

There actually was a time when a family of four, every few years, could splurge on football tickets. “Splurge,” in these times, is a word this family doesn’t use much anymore.

True, baseball remains my favorite sport. But I’d like to see a pro football game again, if only to remind me of a player—neither a 49er nor a Trojan—who remains one of my favorite athletes of all time. (Never mind what the NFL says below. Click on the link.)