Dwight was a wide receiver for the San Francisco 49ers when, in the 1981 NFC Championship Game, he made "The Catch," the football play that defeated the Dallas Cowboys and put the 49ers into their first Super Bowl. You can watch the final Niner drive starting at 2:00:00 here.
It is pure football ballet: undersized, but agile guards John Ayers and Randy Cross (typical products of O-line coach Bobb McKittrick) lead the journeyman running back Lenvil Elliott (the antithesis of the Cowboys' star Tony Dorsett) through traps up the middle and on devastating sweeps to the left and right; Joe Montana hits receivers Freddie Solomon and Earl Cooper with passes downfield and threads the needle to Dwight on the sideline, who toe-taps to stay in bounds; Freddie dashes around the end on the reverse; Bill Walsh calmly orchestrates the whole drive on one side of the field as Tom Landry in his trademark fedora, his team totally discombobulated by the variety, flow, rhythm, and force of the 49er offensive attack, stalks back and forth on the other, not realizing that the Cowboy dynasty (the first one, at any rate) is over; the lyrical Vin Scully (along with the meathead Hank Stram) calls the whole drive.
And then, finally, Montana rolls to his right, back-pedals and double clutches to avoid the unimaginably tall Ed "Too-Tall" Jones leaping right in front of him, and releases a dying quail into the twilight; for what seems like an eternity, the football flutters through the air, looking like it is going to fall, futilely, as so often before, out of the back of the end-zone; but suddenly, as if out of nowhere, Dwight Clark launches himself to a height never achieved before or since in 49er football lore and, with the very tips of his fingers, plucks the ball from the air. The Catch!
Listen to the roar that goes up from the old school, blue-collar, Candlestick Park fans (who drove Chevies to the game instead of Teslas) when Clark comes down with the ball. It is the sound of decades of futility against the Cowboys being washed away from the Bay Area in a single play. It was the football equivalent of the Giants and Warriors finally breaking through after decades of baseball and basketball mediocrity.
(Be sure to watch Dallas' last drive afterward; if not for Eric Wright's horse collar of Drew Pearson and Lawrence Pillar's sack and Jim Stuckey's fumble recovery, San Francisco football history might have been very different.)
Dwight, you lifted us all up that day. The memory of you is undying. RIP.
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