Peter Richmond - Game for Life: John Madden

ITS NOT EVERY KID who has a playing field named after him. Then again, its not every kid who loves sports so much that hed jump onto a moving freight train to get up to San Francisco to see his beloved San Francisco 49ers play. Or hitchhike to their training camp. Or hop a moving streetcar to catch a San Francisco Seals baseball game.

Its not everyone who loves sports so much that his whole world revolved around them when he was a kid.

And a teenager. And even now, as an adult.

Its not every guy whos been lucky enough to keep playing his whole life.

But John Madden has.

He was born in 1936 in Austin, Minnesota. When Madden was a young boy, his family moved to Daly City, California, where his father, an auto mechanic, got work at a Chevrolet dealership. Daly City was an industrial townand a great place for a sports-loving kid to grow up in. It lay just south of San Francisco, home to the National Football Leagues 49ers and the Pacific Coast Leagues Seals.

Better yet, it was a town with a large municipal park full of ball fields, although the truth was that Madden and his friends spent most of their time in the humble patch of ground next to his familys home on Knowles Street.

The kids called it Maddens Lotas in, Well meet after school at Maddens Lot.

I thought it was my lot, Madden said. I really did. You didnt know who owned things in those days. I thought I owned it. Its there, you play.

It wasnt much of a field: packed dirt, maybe sixty feet wide, a hundred feet long, not a lot of grass.

It was a terrible lot, his lifelong friend John Robinson said. It was all weeds. Every time I go to a restaurant now and I see Field Greens as an expensive salad on the menu, I think of being tackled facedown with a mouthful of field greens as a kid.

Maddens Lot sloped a little downward. If you and your friends were playing football, and your side had the ball, and you were pretending to be, say, 49ers star running back Hugh McElhenny, the best play would be going downhill on a power sweep to the right.

For baseball, home plate was on the low side, and if you were Seals outfielder Neill Sheridan, your hit could clear Knowles Street. But if you pulled it too far left, youd hit the Madden house.

Wed break windows all the time, the dining room and kitchen, Madden said. But my mom didnt say a word. My dad never said a word, either. That was a gift. I was lucky. It was never, You cant play anymore; dont break the window anymore. Hed just fix it.

Then he finally put chicken wire on the windows. I mean, he knew I couldnt tell my buddies, Lets play in Maddens Lot, but you cant break a window.

Daly City had one cool thing going for it that a lot of cities dont: it was right on the ocean. You could smell the sea, especially when the fog rolled in.

Daly City was the fog capital of the world, Madden said. At least thats what it felt like to the young boy. I grew up in fog. I love fog. You know why? You never get tired in fog. You can play all day. Wed play early in the morning before school, then itd burn off, then after school, it came back, and you could play in the fog again.The fog was great for endurance.

The science behind Maddens fog theory might be a little suspect, but whatever the reason, it seemed as if he could play his sports forever. This meant, of course, that being a kid was not about grammar school at Our Lady of Perpetual Help, where Madden was never a top student. I always made fun of the people who sat in front, the people who, when the nuns would ask a question, theyd be waving their hands.

I never waved my hand. I just sat in back and talked about other stuff until I got in trouble, yeah. Youd go to the principals office and whack!

Grade school was about waiting: for recess, so he could play; for lunch, so he could play; and for the final bell, so he could play.

If it was football season, we were Forty-Niners, Robinson said. If it was baseball, we were Yankees. Basically, when we were little kids, youd start playing at nine in the morning and go home either when the sun went down or you got so hungry you couldnt stand it anymore.

Daly City kids never had any money, and if you hustled enough to get a nickel or a dime, picking up balls at the end of a long day at Marchbank Park in Daly City, itd usually go to a candy bar or ice cream. When you finally put together enough pennies to get that cone, it was a prize so special that you had to remember to say No bites when you got it, because if another kid said Bites, youd have to give him one.