SANTA CLARA — William Navarrete’s show-stopping stunt during Monday night’s nationally televised 49ers-Rams football game earned him a radio play-by-play worthy of “The Play” that lives forever in Cal-Stanford lore:
“He’s running down the middle by the 50. He’s at the 30 — he’s bare-chested and banging his chest,” yelled Westwood One radio host Kevin Harlan, as if the younger Navarrete was 49er running back Carlos Hyde breaking free for a big run. “Now he runs the opposite way. He runs at the 50; he runs at the 40. The guy is drunk, but there he goes. They’re chasing; they’re not going to get him. Waving his arms, bare-chested, somebody stop that man … . Oh, and they tackle him at the 40-yard line!
“That was the most exciting thing to happen tonight,” Harlan said, adding later that police “surrounded this man like he has just robbed a bank.”
The man 49er radio host Harlan described as drunk in his quirky play-by-play that recalled for some the chaotic, band-on-the-field ending to the 1982 Cal-Stanford Big Game, was actually a Brentwood teenager who ran on the field in the fourth quarter of Monday Night Football on a dare from his friends, the 16-year-old confirmed Tuesday.
Turns out the former Heritage High student wasn’t drunk, only high on the “you only live once” mantra like many others his age.
“It was super fun, the funnest thing ever,” William Navarrete told Bay Area News Group in a phone interview Tuesday, adding that his friends are “like hella impressed.”
So were a couple of 49er players with Harlan’s call, apparently.
“Greatest call in the history of sports,” wide receiver Torrey Smith wrote on Twitter. Offensive lineman Joe Staley tweeted, “Hahahah this is awesome!!”
It all started at the beginning of the fourth quarter, with the 49ers up 21-0 against the LA Rams. The teen said he told his father he was going to the restroom. Instead, he climbed onto the turf at Levi’s Stadium and gave security a run for their money.
“I couldn’t believe my eyes,” his father, Herman Navarrete said later.
https://twitter.com/dkurtenbach/status/775562761543688193
The teenager was arrested on a misdemeanor charge and released to his father, Santa Clara police said. Navarrete said he will be banned from Levi’s Stadium for one year, has to write an apology letter and take an online course and will appear in front of a judge to determine other punishments.
On the way home to Brentwood, the elder Navarrete said he had a talk with his son, who is now enrolled in online school, about considering the consequences of his actions. But the father was also awestruck by the spectacle his son made on national TV. He said he was proud his son didn’t back down from the dare.
“It takes guts to do something like that in front of that many people,” he said. “It was a boring game until my kid ran on the field.” And, “he had more yards than the Rams did.”
As part of the dare, William Navarrete had a friend write his phone number on his chest. On Tuesday, he got calls from reporters and “some weirdos.”
“You only live once,” the teenager said. “Have fun.”
Staff writer Daniel Mano contributed to this report.
