Bill Walsh Has Died

[Dinger]

http://www.kcra.com/sports/13782572/detail.html

:-(

[soleft]

1. So is that now 2 or 3 celebs.

Snyder - Walsh - was there a third?

[librechik]

4. Bergman

3

[fishwax]

5. wow, I didn't know Tom Snyder died

until seeing your post and doing a news search to find out which Snyder. Too bad :(

Oddly enough, just yesterday Tom Snyder popped into my head, because I saw some advertisement for that Gene Simmons TV show and it made me think of this classic interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvFNs3_uaUg

[TomInTib]

14. I think of Tom every day.

And I plan on doing same for the rest of my life.

Around here, we were known as "The Tom and Tom Show".

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=210&topic_id=19751&mesg_id=19751

[fishwax]

19. a nice memoriam.

i'm sorry for your loss, but thanks for posting that. it was a nice memoriam.

[MrMickeysMom]

18. As we say in the medial field, "these things usually come in 3's" n/t

[babylonsister]

2. Bummer. He was a great coach. RIP, Coach. nt

[Virginia Dare]

3. Very sad, he was one of the greats..

lots of bad news in sports these days.

[BuyingThyme]

6. He did some good work for leukemia sufferers before he went.

I think Ray Taliaferro interviewed him a short time ago.

:(

[rudy23]

7. Wow. As a lifelong Saints fan I have the ultimate respect for Coach Walsh

He truly was a genius. It didn't even matter who they got to run his schemes (although the personnel didn't hurt). Football will miss this man.

[EFerrari]

8. Is it just me or are many more people dying of cancer lately?

:(

[ComerPerro]

9. he changed the way offense is played

[bluestateguy]

10. Great coach who ran class programs at Stanford and for the 49ers

I grew up in the SF Bay Area and am a lifelong Niner fan.

I remember when the Niners were the most feared team in football.

Walsh was a gentleman of the highest order in a sport that these days seems to have a lot of thugs. He expected the same kind of behavior from his players. Once at training camp, after one of his players started a fistfight with another player, Walsh quietly walked up to one of his assistants and told him to go to the locker room and pack up the bully's belongings and get him off of the campsite immediately.

Bill Walsh is responsible for some of my fondest childhood memories.

[Bumblebee]

11. Ditto.

With all due respect to other teams and their fans, in terms of cleverness, creativity, and sheer artistry, there will never be another team like the Niners of the 1980s. Bill Walsh was one of a kind.

[Bumblebee]

16. Just saw this quote on how he viewed it as art. There is too little of it nowadays.

Walsh regarded football as something of an art.

“If I have any talent, it’s in the artistic end of football,” he once told Lowell Cohn of The San Francisco Chronicle. “The variation of movement of 11 players and the orchestration of that facet of football is beautiful to me.”

[TahitiNut]

20. That was, indeed, the key to his coaching ... TUNING the plays to the team.

What amazed me was how carefully the plays were designed to match the talents and abilities of the individuals on the team. They were NOT designed to find someone to blame ... and the finger of blame was never pointed on a Walsh team. I never once saw any player berate another on his teams. Montana was the PERFECT quarterback under such a philosophy. He only looked at the 49ers' score ... 'cause that was HIS job. He ENJOYED every moment and saw every team mate ... checking off on every pass play and, very rarely, tucking it in and making yardage behind his excellent line.

Walsh never seemed to design any play that was beyond the abilities of any person to do their part. He was amazing.

[Hawaii Hiker]

15. I've been diehard Niners fan since 1982

I was 12 when SF beat Dallas in the NFC "The catch" championship in 1982...From there, I've always followed the Niners....

I think the 1987 team, the one that got beat by Minnesota in the Divisional game, they were ranked #1 on offense & defense that year...I think that's the only time that's happened?...

Alot of great coaches came out of SF from the 1980's & Walsh's system...

[Pastiche423]

12. Oh no!

:cry: :cry: :cry:

He was my favorite coach of all times. The 1st year I had season tickets for the Niners, he took us to the Super Bowl!

What a brilliant and classy guy.

[lebkuchen]

13. I lived some great times off Walsh's genius

When I first moved to San Francisco, I was an LA Rams fan. I went to the last game of the season at Candlestick Park, against the great rival Rams. John Brodie was quarterback, perhaps called in as backup. SF lost, as they had most of their games that year, and the year before. The Peanut Gallery yelled that the team may as well take the loss, so that they could get a first round draft pick next season.

On the bus back to the city I overheard a son asking his father whether they should renew their season tickets. The father sighed and said, "We may has well, like we have every year before this one."

The next season I wasn't paying much attention to football until I passed a coin-operated newspaper stand in North Beach on a Monday. The headlines said that the 49ers had beaten, I believe the top notched Miami Dolphins, by a landslide. Who the hell was the quarterback? Some guy named Joe Montana.

The City woke up to football.

San Francisco ended the season in the playoffs, and the game leading up to the Super Bowl was against the arch-rival Dallas Cowboys. Bill Walsh micromanaged the whole shebang right up until the game, having entertained the players on the bus on the way to the stadium...anything to loosen them up against their Dallas nemesis. Walsh had always been very much involved with the team, and was always the gentleman on the field. Class act all the way.

I was in Gino and Carlo on Green Street with strangers, watching the game. Montana was brilliant under Walsh's direction, but the '9ers were behind and time was running out. Some defeatist fans were leaving the bar in disgust, not able to tolerate yet another loss once having come this far.

Then came The Catch a la Dwight Clark. I'd been drinking wine when it happened, jumped up and slammed the glass down so hard on the bar, the stem broke. Pandamonium everywhere in the city, everyone was everybody's instant friend.

And that's the way life was in San Francisco during football season for the next several years, thanks to Bill Walsh.

The loyal father and son 49er fans with the renewed season tickets probably ended up with the best seats in the house.

[FredScuttle]

17. Great story

and wonderful detail about Gino and Carlo's. I never in my life drank wine watching football until I lived in the City. Now, it's a goddamn ritual.

[Dinger]

21. Here's A Pic Of Walsh On The Sidelines Of Lambeau Field 11-23-03

Not the best quality, but here it is:

[ljm2002]

22. RIP Bill...

...seems to me you went too early.

Godspeed.