Based on personal experience, Joe Montana has signed on as a spokesman for a program designed to identify and treat high blood pressure?
Odd, Joe never seemed to have any blood during his days as a one-of-a-kind quarterback. Wasn’t that ice water coursing through his veins while he was becoming the acknowledged master of the miracle comeback over three varsity seasons at Notre Dame and a Hall of Fame NFL career with the 49ers and Chiefs? It sure seemed that way.
The grimly efficient PR woman coordinating Montana’s Chicago visit offers a tight, humorless smile in response to this observation. It’s understandable: Based on her age, she might have been playing with Cabbage Patch kids and eating PB&J out of a Princess Leia lunch box when Joe was lighting it up in four Super Bowls with Jerry Rice, Dwight Clark and the other 49ers.
She seems to have a vague idea who Montana is, or was, as she escorts me into an interview with him at a downtown hotel, but his topic today is blood pressure, not football, she reminds me.
OK, but don’t hold it against me if I veer off point and ask a few football questions of the best quarterback I ever saw.
During a routine physical in 2002, Montana’s blood pressure turned up abnormally high. He subsequently learned he was one of 72 million Americans with the condition, and that his family history put him at risk for heart disease or a stroke.
“It was a wake-up call,” Montana said. “I’d slacked off a little in terms of daily workouts, but I thought I could afford to — I’d been working out almost every day of my life. My weight wasn’t too far above my playing weight. And I didn’t have any symptoms.”
In that respect he was fairly typical.
“Hypertension is called the silent killer because in many cases there are no discernible symptoms,” said Dr. James Rippe, a Harvard-trained cardiologist whose research forms the basis of the “BP Success Zone” program Montana is representing.
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“There are certain conditions that certainly increase the risk factor: obesity, diet, a sedentary lifestyle, genetics. But an otherwise ‘normal’ guy like Joe — physically active, reasonably healthy, in his late 40s, early 50s — can be susceptible as well.”
For to those who remember, say, the ’79 Cotton Bowl as if it were yesterday, it seems hard to believe Montana is now 51. And though he and Rippe are partners and pals, he might have smirked at the doctor’s “reasonably healthy” characterization.
Montana still has a rod in his back from a 1986 operation. He’s pretty much bone-on-bone in his left knee after six surgical procedures. The zipper-like scar along the inside of his right elbow would open and close your average windbreaker. Two vertebrae in his neck have been fused, and he might have to undergo the procedure again. On certain days he has trouble lifting his right arm, that golden throwing arm, above shoulder level.
It’s the price he’s paying for being the signature quarterback of his generation, maybe of all time. That was Bill Walsh’s take, but Walsh was a little biased. He chose Montana in the third round of the 1979 NFL draft, after 81 other players had been taken, and in him he found the perfect operator of an offensive system that revolutionized the game.
Their relationship was as mutually beneficial as football and television, which Montana acknowledged in delivering a moving eulogy at Walsh’s funeral last month.
“A great man, next to my father the most influential person in my life,” Montana said. “Brilliant guy, great teacher, great motivator, terrific sense of humor. He could have been successful at anything, not just coaching.”
When he’s not traveling on behalf of “The BP Success Zone,” Montana prefers to stay close to his San Francisco Bay Area home to watch sons Nathaniel and Nicholas play for prep powerhouse De La Salle of Concord, Calif. Nathaniel is a senior and Nicholas is a sophomore. Both, coincidentally, are quarterbacks.
His two daughters are students at Notre Dame, where Charlie Weis, a Montana classmate, has fallen on hard times as coach of their alma mater. Montana grimaced when asked for his take on the Irish’s worst start in school history.
“I know they’ve had a lot of trouble with the offensive line, which I understand is young and inexperienced, but it looks to me like they don’t have any receivers, nobody getting open,” he said.
His grimace grew more painful when the topic turned to Michael Vick, a fellow quarterback and former poster child for NFL excitement now under indefinite league suspension for his involvement with a dogfighting ring.
“I just don’t know how you could kill a dog,” Montana said, shaking his head.
The 49ers were young thrill seekers and the Bay Area was an enticing place in the early days of their dynasty.
“We had some fun, we did some things, but nothing like what Vick’s accused of,” Montana said. “I’ve heard people say it goes on in the South, that he grew up with it. But with the scrutiny pro athletes are under today, you’ve got to know better.”
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