The Last Time I Saw Bill Walsh Alive

Bill Walsh wanted the mortadella sandwich. Ira Miller and I had driven to Walsh’s home in Woodside, California in 2007 after Walsh acknowledged to the world he had leukemia. Ira and I wanted to see how he was doing. We knew him better than any other sports personality, and now that we no longer covered him, now that the battles were over, we cared for him deeply.

Of course, Walsh, notoriously forgetful, forgot the lunch date. Ira phoned him at his Stanford office and Walsh, effusively apologetic, said he’d be home in a few minutes. When he arrived, we sat in his backward, near his small chardonnay vineyard and drank chardonnay from Jack Cakebread which Jack had given to me to give to Bill.

Bill’s wife Geri was of Italian descent, and she cooked Italian, and he loved mortadella. While we were eating – I had the turkey sandwich – he looked at me and pointed to his mouth. I didn’t know what he meant. He did it again, pointed to his mouth then pointed at me.

“You have mayonnaise on your lip,” he said.

Was he doing me a favor because anyone would look like a doofus with a glob of mayo on the lip? Was he doing it for himself, because who wants to stare at a person with a white dollop on the corner of his mouth? Or did Walsh merely want things right? He had a rage for order.

Years before when he was 49ers coach, he once walked through 49ers headquarters and noticed framed photos and artwork were at willy-nilly angles on the wall. He was appalled. He went around the building straightening the picture frames and then had them bolted in place. Players and coaches couldn’t help noticing the head custodian was gone a few days later.

In the locker room, Walsh always lined up his shoes perfectly in front of his cubicle, his socks neatly folded into each shoe. He demanded absolute precision from his players. His offensive game plans were works of art, requiring precision timing. He endlessly worked on timing. Coaches do not write Xs and Os. They write Os and triangles. Walsh’s Os and triangles were works of art. Someone could frame them for a gallery. A man with that sensibility would find misplaced mayo irredeemably inelegant. So, I remember the mayonnaise and it makes me smile and it makes me sad.

It was amazing that Walsh and I were having lunch. Several years earlier I had come out with a book about his return to coaching at Stanford. He was generous and gave me full access to practices and coaches meetings, anything I wanted. But when the book came out, he didn’t like it, went on television and, I thought, put me down. Maybe he was right. Maybe he wasn’t.

We didn’t speak for years. I was angrier at him than he was at me. It hurts me to write this. In 1999, the 49ers had brought back Walsh as vice president and general manager and that created a problem for me. A columnist has to do business with the general manager, and Walsh and I were barely grunting at each other. My wife told me to make it right. I phoned Walsh’s office at 49ers headquarters, spoke to his administrative assistant Jane Walsh (no relation) and asked for an appointment. She gave me a time slot at lunchtime the next day. I made the drive to Santa Clara feeling uneasy. What would this be like?

I entered the lobby. Reporters milled about. Someone said Walsh was going to talk to the group. I had been relegated to one of the mob. Walsh appeared at the top of the stairs. Big grin. Handsome. He allowed reporters to shout questions up the stairs to him and he shouted back. Reporters competed for his attention. I got ready to walk out the door.

“I have an appointment,” I heard Walsh announce. “Lowell, can you come up here?”

Everyone else hated my guts. I would have hated my guts if I were them. I walked up the tall staircase enjoying a petty victory. Sometimes petty victories are the best. Walsh led me into his office. We sat across from each other at a small table -- not at his desk. I interviewed him about something or other, but the subject didn’t matter. The real subject was the act of talking, of looking each other in the eye. Finally, Walsh said, “Are you done?” I said I was done. I stood up to leave.

“Don’t go,” he said.

Jane Walsh wheeled a cart into the room. On the cart were sandwiches and soft drinks.

“Have lunch with me,” Walsh said.

This was a peace offering. He was a bigger man than I was. We ate lunch. We talked. We reestablished our connection, returned to where we had been. After that, the circle closed, and we talked constantly until the time of his death. He loved talking about the Raiders a team he secretly didn’t like. He would bring up Raiders defensive coordinator Rob Ryan, whom he called a fat fuck. Ryan’s gray hair was long and uncombed, and he looked like he had crawled out of the hamper. Walsh had disdain for coaches who looked like Ryan, insisted his coaches keep fit, cut an athletic image. Walsh would phone Al Davis about Ryan and say, “You’ve got to fire that fat motherfucker.”

And now, years later, Bill, Ira and I were sitting in Bill’s backyard, and he was eating the mortadella.

After a while, Walsh began to fade. Ira and I saw him tiring and we started to leave. He asked us to gather the plates and glasses and carry them to the kitchen. He asked us to place the scraps in the garbage under the sink. He asked us to rinse the dishes and put them in the dishwasher.

“Geri likes a neat house,” he said. So did he.

He wearily walked us to the door.

“So long, men,” he said.

Not so long, Lowell and Ira. So long, men. He would call his players men during practice, but we weren’t his players. He was pulling back from us, making things formal.

“We will never see Bill again,” I told Ira as we drove away.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because he just said goodbye forever.”

Six weeks later, on July 30, 2007, Bill Walsh died.

Excerpted from my memoir Gloves Off: 40 Years of Unfiltered Sports Writing.