I don’t specifically recall the first time I walked into a pro football locker room. But I’m fairly certain I made a beeline to the quarterback’s stall. It’s highly likely I dropped in on a running back or two, possibly a receiver and/or tight end.
Obvious, right? Talk to the touchdown-makers. Most of what I knew about football at that point was what I had seen on NFL Films — heroic ball handlers moving in dreamy slow motion, soaring music in the background.
I don’t specifically recall the first time I happened upon Keith Fahnhorst, an offensive tackle with the 49ers, but I can tell you it was the day I began understanding football for what it was — a rough, sweaty, painful enterprise in which you tried to knock the other guy silly before he knocked you silly.
Fahnhorst died Tuesday. He was 66. He was intelligent (a stock broker in his post-football life), stoic and Minnesota-friendly. He played on some of the worst 49ers teams ever, then played on some of the best NFL teams ever, winning two Super Bowls under coach Bill Walsh. It was through my postgame conversations with Fahnhorst that I learned the most important tip about covering football:
If you’re trying to locate the pulse of a team, talk to the offensive linemen. They’re down to earth; they’re usually available because people (like me) with a flair for the obvious are crowded around the quarterback; and they know everything that’s going on. They’re real.
I availed myself of Fahnhorst’s voice of reason many times. Once I asked him about a locker room speech that preceded a 48-0 49ers win. I imagined it being a cross between an NFL Films segment and the opening scene in “Patton.”
“As far as being inspiring, that’s BS,” he said. “The speech makes that walk through the tunnel a little faster, but that’s about all.”
Another mistaken impression disabused.
The 1987 season was a great time for the 49ers if you throw out the players strike (busted after three games with the help of replacement “players”) and the shocking defeat in the first round of the playoffs. But it was a trying time for Fahnhorst, whose 14 years in the trenches were catching up with him. He was on injured reserve with numbness that had crept up his left arm and into his chest. His successor at right tackle, Harris Barton, was already on the roster.
He knew his tenure with the 49ers was drawing to a close — Walsh was brutally upfront with his veteran players when he believed them to be at the end of the line. Frankly, Fahnhorst sounded like a guy who had come to terms with his athletic retirement when I sat down with him a few days before the playoff loss. It wasn’t just his injury. Fahnhorst was the 49ers’ union rep. The ugly strike and the replacement games left their mark on him.
“The first week (of replacement games) not many fans showed up,” he said. “By the third week, they were cheering for plumbers out there who had very little football skill. You realized that a lot of times it’s just the uniform. It’s not the person they’re crazy about. You realize you’re not as special as you might have thought you were.”
But he was. In more ways than one.
