CANTON, Ohio -- This was 49ers Day at the Pro Football Hall
of Fame. Starring, as ever, Joe Montana.
Before a crowd bedecked in red 49er jerseys, the peerless
quarterback led the list of inductees, with three of the five
having played for San Francisco.
"This is not an ending point," said Montana, clearly moved by
the unparalleled gathering of football talent. "This is a
beginning point. This is the beginning of the rest of my life with
a new team. Take a look at these guys. What a team it is."
|  | | Joe Montana poses after his enshrinement into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. |
Joining Montana on Saturday were Ronnie Lott, the great safety
on four Super Bowl champions, and Dave Wilcox, a linebacker in the
'60s and '70s.
Howie Long, the Raider-turned-actor and television host, and
Pittsburgh Steelers president Dan Rooney were also honored.
But Montana's star eclipsed that of everyone else on a day when
more than 100 of the 136 living Hall of Famers returned for the
biggest reunion in the Hall's history.
Such was the regard with which Montana is held that each of the
inductees paid tribute to one of the dominant quarterbacks of the
last three decades and a player whose grace in the heat of pressure
was unsurpassed.
"I had four or five clean shots at Joe that I didn't take
them," Long quipped. "His kids are too cute."
Said Wilcox, who played a decade before the Niners began
dominating the NFL: "When I tell people I played for the 49ers,
they ask me if I played with Joe Montana. I say I played before Joe
and before money."
Lott, like Montana a first-ballot selection, earlier in the day
thought he had lost his bearings. Suddenly, it seemed, he was back
in the Bay area.
"It's like a Niners' home game," he said. "I never saw so
much red."
During his speech he recalled how he didn't think he'd get the
chance to be inducted at the same time because he signed with
Kansas City in 1995. He then broke his leg during preseason and
retired.
A player must be retired for five years to be eligible for the
Hall. Lott thought that season counted and he wouldn't be up for
election until next year.
"Joe," said Lott, who is the godfather of Montana's youngest
son, "I'm so honored to be here with you today."
This was the biggest Hall of Fame turnout, an estimated crowd of
18,000. Montana alone requested 352 passes for friends and family
from his boyhood home in western Pennsylvania, breaking the record
of 310 set by Ohio native Don Shula when he was inducted in 1997.
One woman had it both ways -- she wore a red Kansas City jersey
with the No. 19 that Montana wore during there in the final two
years of his career. She also wore a red 49ers hat.
The crowd began exiting after Montana's induction, fourth of the
five, leaving Rooney's induction to start over the murmur of a
milling crowd. The murmur was stilled however, by Rooney's
introducer, Joe Greene, one of 10 Hall of Fame members from the
Steelers that won four Super Bowls in the 1970s.
Montana was introduced by former 49ers owner Edward DeBartolo
Jr. He recounted his ups and downs in football, including a short
stint as the seventh-string quarterback at Notre Dame. He recalled
his travails on poor San Francisco teams his first two seasons
after being chosen in the third round of the 1979 draft.
"I had a very difficult time with it at the beginning," he
said of his election to the Hall last January. "I don't think I
was looking at it in the proper perspective. I saw the Hall of Fame
as an ending point.
"I felt like, well, I'm only 44 years old. I feel like I'm
being in my grave, in my coffin alive and they're throwing dirt on
me. And I can feel it and I'm trying to get out."
But he said things changed this weekend, when he was surrounded
by players he idolized while growing up. And, he noted, he was
again treated like a rookie.
"These past three days, spending time with these gentlemen
behind me, I think I really got the true meaning of what this is
all about," he said.
Montana said he originally had another speech written. But he
awakened Saturday in the middle of the night and told his wife,
Jennifer, that he was going to change it.
And that was perfect. It was just like Montana on the field: a
great improviser.
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VIDEO
  NFL Hall of Fame inductee Joe Montana goes Up Close with Gary Miller. RealVideo: 28.8  Joe Montana calls Saturday a begining point. wav: 118 kRealAudio: 14.4 | 28.8 | 56.6 Joe Montana puts his Hall of Fame induction in the proper perspective. wav: 392 kRealAudio: 14.4 | 28.8 | 56.6 |
