The Zong

Like most of you, I’ve loved and lost many things in my life. Years ago, I left the most comfortable hooded sweatshirt in the Western Hemisphere on a plane after taking a redeye flight to Massachusetts in the dead of winter, and I would have wept like a baby in front of God and everybody except I was about 24 and was standing next to a cute girl at the baggage claim when I realized what I had done. I bit my lip and tried to think of the happy times, but it probably didn’t matter because I had gotten a bunch of that blue airplane toilet water on my right pant leg during the flight somehow and so I looked like a degenerate anyway. The worst part about the whole thing is that I had nobody to blame but myself, and so my misery was compounded by a sense of spectacular shame and failure.

I imagine that, standing there at the baggage claim smelling of half-assed sleep and chlorinated urine and trying desperately not to cry, I felt a lot like Eddie DeBartolo did on the day he signed away his ownership of the greatest professional football franchise in the world to his sister and her husband because he couldn’t keep his dick out of the dirt. Granted, my sweatshirt was probably worth a little less money than a football team with five Lombardi Trophies, but I think the feeling was about the same; Both of us realized the enormity of our loss, and had only to look as far as our bathroom mirrors to find the perpetrators responsible for the tragedy.

Now, almost a decade later, Niner Fan is witnessing the real reckoning wrought by Eddie D’s Scorcese-esque fall from grace. I can’t really count how many times I heard the term “Salary Cap Hell” being used to excuse the ineptitude of ownership and the discount miscreants that they hired to run the team, or how many times I’ve heard that the Niners drafted Gio Fucking Carmazzi before Tom Brady, but it’s all in the past and I realize we’ve had it pretty good here and I’ve said more than once that I really wouldn’t care if evangelical fascists owned the team as long as they beat the goddamned Arizona Cardinals once in awhile and maybe go to the playoffs again before I have to sign up to watch their games on the big T.V. in the rec room during puzzle time.

Now I realize something that’s worse than losing something I love because of something I did: Losing something I love because of something some other asshole did. Since I can’t blame myself for it, I have to direct my rage outward, because it’s just not healthy to keep things all bottled up inside when you’re angry. At this point, I’m not going to single anyone out, because I hold each one of you parsimonious aristocrat fucks responsible for all of this, but there are a couple of things in the media that recently caught my attention:

A typically slapdash report in the Chronicle cited an unnamed source who believes one reason the talks broke down was because John York felt like Mayor Gavin Newsom wasn’t as involved with the negotiations as he should have been:

The relationships — or lack thereof — may have further damaged an already troubled deal.

“He should have made sure it was rolling along properly, schmoozing with John some,” said another source who knows both men.

Newsom, however, said he did have “plenty of dinners and dozens of phone calls” over the years with York. But there were no dinners as the deal progressed this year, others countered.

I really hope that isn’t true. I hope that the Yorks aren’t leaving for Santa Clara because John York – a fully grown man, with a family and a car and everything – didn’t get to do the rich-man dance with the Mayor enough. If it is true, then I’ll start saving up to buy a platinum highchair for Dr. Johnny McPoutsberry to sit in when he wants to eat at the big kid’s table in his luxury box. Also, I’ll call the Mayor of Santa Clara to make sure he knows to schedule any dinners he plans to have around little Johnny’s nap time, because we wouldn’t want him to get all grouchy and threaten to move the team to Reseda.

I have trouble taking the report all that seriously, though, because of little qualifying nuggets like this:

Instead of being engaged in the larger issues in the deal, York busied himself with fabric samples for seats and carpet swatches for luxury boxes, the source said.

“He was a pathologist. He studied how people died,” the source said. “The trouble is, this was a live stadium development, and John’s too deathly afraid to make a mistake.”

It’s right here that I get the sneaking feeling that “the source” for this information is about as close to the Yorks as Ahmad Chalabi or my mother. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone told me that John York paid a tailor to fashion him some pajamas and a smoking jacket from the seat and carpet samples, but trying to qualify it with the statement that he was “deathly afraid to make a mistake” is like telling me Michael Richards dropped the N-bomb on some hecklers because he was “deathly afraid that they might not enjoy the rest of his jokes.” If John York – a fully grown man – ignored the big picture while rolling around naked on alpaca carpet samples for his luxury box, it was only because he’s rich, and rich people like expensive fabrics and carpeting better than they like thinking about where the money they just spent on seats stuffed with dodo bird feathers came from.

I was there when Jerry Rice retired and the entire stadium booed. That’s right, Nise; the greatest football player of all time stood up in front of a stadium full of fans wearing his jersey, at a retirement ceremony that you paid for, and we all booed like Hitler had just walked onto the field because Jerry simply said you and your husband’s name. (I could see Eddie smiling all the way from my seat, by the way.)

I’m pretty sure you believe that John and Jed and you all know what you’re doing, but here’s a tip: Threaten to withhold whatever sexual activity the two of you still partake in next time he gets up in front of the press and tells the fans that plans to keep the team in their area code just changed because “It doesn’t pencil out.” When he says things like that, it makes me want to take a pencil and that crappy Christmas card you sent me and figure out exactly how much money my family has spent in the last thirty years on season tickets and eight-dollar stadium dogs and busted struts from driving through your parking “lots,” not to mention the arrhythmia I developed after you hired Dennis Erickson. In short, I know you hate your brother and that rough crowd he rolls with, but Niner Fan doesn’t deserve this.

- M.G.