This column originally appeared in the Contra Costa Times on April 19, 1995
SAN FRANCISCO — He’s gone now. For 16 years he was ours. But now he’s gone.
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Joe Montana called it a career. “It’s time to pull out the golf clubs,” he told an estimated 30,000-plus chanting, adoring fans at Justin Herman Plaza.
With that he broke free of our provincial grasp as skillfully as he once broke free from ill-intentioned pass rushers. He came here a small-scale legend from a Midwestern college town. We watched him flourish, achieving ESPN-generation athletic fame, evolving into SEGA-megastar.