Glenn Dickey's 49ers: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of the NFL's Greatest Dynasty

Rating:
Summary: Behind the Scenes
Review: Dickey uncovered the nasty, behind the scenes goings on in 49ers: The Rise, Fall and Rebirth the NFL's Greatest Dynasty. DeBartalo's love/hate relationship with his "genius" coach was certainly not well known nor was Walsh's with Montana. No one would have dreamed that Walsh's job security was in a constant state of flux. George Siefert's handling of the Montana/Young controversy was also very interesting. These are but a few of the many, many stories related in the book that obviously came from many hours of close up and personal contact with those people involved. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

Rating:
Summary: Dickey makes mistakes
Review: For someone who knows so much about the 49ers,Glenn Dickey makes silly mistakes in this otherwise insightful book. It's pretty ridiculous he thought Roger Craig was the superbowl 19 mvp when it was in fact Joe Montana. What fan doesn't know this?! He also confuses Anthony Carter with Cris Carter of Vikings fame while commenting on a '87 playoff game and among other things,he names ex-center "BRAD" Oates rather than his real name of Bart Oates. I suppose the last one could be a typo but overall,Dickey should have the facts straight and acurate before writing a book about the great 49ers. Despite the mistakes, (and there are others) the book is very compelling and hard to put down.

Rating:
Summary: Intriguing look at the 49ers Dynasty
Review: Glenn Dickey has written for the San Francisco Chronicle about San Francisco sports for the better part of at least three decades (if not longer), and is probably more qualified than most in writing a book about this prominent team. He takes us on a behind the scenes look at what went on inside the 49ers' organization while Montana, Craig, Lott, Rice, and company were on the field leading the team to victory every fall Sunday afternoon throughout the 80's and most of the 90s.

He starts off with Eddie DeBartolo buying the team in the mid 1970s, through the terrible times of the late 70s, the hiring of Walsh and the rebuilding of the team, Walsh's early innovations, "The Catch" in 1981 that sent the 49ers to their first Super Bowl, the struggle to stay on top through the 1980's, the turmoil that eventually motivated Walsh to quit coaching in 1989, the Seifert era of the 1990's to the disaster that was the 1999 season.

What I found especially interesting was the portrayal of Edward DeBartolo, the 49ers former owner. I had always thought he seemed like a true gentlemen, always gracious to the media and generous to a fault with 49er employees and players. Dickey paints a much different and truer picture of him behind the "facade." Here was a man who raged after every defeat, and whose vices eventually landed him in trouble.

Dickey has written several books about the 49ers and at least one I know of with Bill Walsh. If they're as good as this one, they're all well worth reading.

Rating:
Summary: Super View
Review: Glenn Dickey is one of the senior sports writers in the San Francisco Bay Area and the nation. He has covered the San Francisco 49ers as long as anyone in the team's history and his book "Glenn Dickey's 49ers" covers the Eddie DeBartolo era that included winning five Super Bowl championships and the events that shaped the organization.

The book gives an entertaining and accurate view of events that took place out of the public's view. It gives readers the opportunity to learn information about the organization that they would have never learned if they had not read this book. It also provides super information that can help people understand how the 49ers became one of the most powerful names in the sports world.

I highly recommend reading "Glenn Dickey's 49ers" because it provides an entire ride on the 49ers roller coaster that went from a 2-14 season through five Super Bowl championship seasons into a rebuilding era.

This book deserves FIVE stars.

Gary Peralta

Rating:
Summary: Inciteful, Behind the Scenes
Review: Glenn Dickey's "49ers: The Rise, Fall and Rebirth of the NFL's Greatest Dynasty" is just the kind of book that a diehard NFL fan should enjoy. As with many of his other books, Dickey goes behind the scenes for inside information that the average fan would never know about. His description of the 49er owner's love/hate relationship With Walsh and Walsh's with Montana certainly never showed up with all the glad handing at the championship games. No one would have dreamed that Walsh's status was constantly in a state of flux. I thought that Siefert's handling of the Montana/Young controversy was interesting too. 49ers is packed with privileged info. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and highly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: A must-read for San Francisco 49er fans
Review: Glenn Dickey, sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, is the writer that many fans "love to hate." Mostly, this because he is never afraid to present perspectives that are highly critical of hometown teams and personalities. In taking this iconoclastic perspective, occasionally he has committed memorable gaffes--for example, his suggestion years ago that Joe Montana and his wife should have foreseen that Jennifer's January due date for giving birth would be a distraction for Joe during the playoffs. Such displays of poor judgment aside, however, Dickey remains a highly insightful and skillful writer whose column is practically always a good read.

Aside from writing columns, Dickey has written fifteen books, including works on the Raiders and the 49ers. *Glenn Dickey's 49ers* is an all-too-short but still highly valuable recent history of the Bay Area's most successful franchise, and I recommend it to all fans of the red and gold.

Over the years, Dickey has spent time one-on-one with many of the principal personalities involved with the "rise, fall, and rebirth of the NFL's greatest dynasty," and consequently has had access to insights and information that make for fascinating reading in this book. Although Dickey has a reputation for being harsh in his judgments and appraisal of people, he actually is careful here to present both the strengths and weaknesses of the "heavies" in 49ers history, including Walsh, DeBartolo, Policy, Seifert, etc. Only that jerk of legendary proportions, Joe Thomas, is portrayed in an unrelentingly negative light.

On the basis of reading this book, fans will come to realize that Eddie Debartolo's ultimate self-destruction as an owner and as a person was almost inevitable from the start and, in fact, reflected the flip side of the very human qualities that made him such an endearing and generous team owner. Dickey is also careful to point out that the recent downfall of the team was really inevitable, and should not be blamed on any particular decisions by anyone, including former team President Carmen Policy.

Overall, then, Dickey presents a balanced and realistic view of the team's recent history, one that all fans of the franchise should enjoy. The book is flawed, however, in being a bit on the brief side--by expanding somewhat on the book's 262 pages, Dickey could easily have presented more highlights and information about the team's past twenty years. Perhaps more important, however, is his inexplicable inclusion of numerous silly factual errors, errors that careful editing or even proofreading should have caught and eliminated. A previous reviewer has presented some of these mistakes. Others include identifying Roger Craig as the Most Valuable Player of the Superbowl played in January 1985 (it was actually Joe Montana), and the misspelling of the name of 49er defensive lineman Kevin Fagan as "Fagen." He also misquotes Eddie DeBartolo's memorable exclamation at the news conference anouncing George Seifert's resignation and Steve Mariucci's hiring as head coach. When asked about the fate of then offensive coordinator Marc Trestman, DeBartolo blurted out, "He's gone!" Dickey writes that DeBartolo said, "He's toast!"

These are small errors, to be sure, but cumulatively they leave the reader with an impression of carelessness that detracts from the overall impact of what otherwise is a fine book about the San Francisco 49ers.

Rating:
Summary: Some Good Stuff... But Factual Errors Worry Me
Review: I've always had an attraction to tell-all tomes about celebrities and such, so when I found out about Glenn Dickey's 'inside look' at the San Francisco 49ers during their championship years through to the horrific 1999 and 2000 seasons, I just hadda give it a read. And what an inside look it is! I was treated to owner Edward DeBartolo, Jr's boozing, gambling, and womanizing troubles, combined with his post-loss rages, and his removal from the team due to his involvement in a Louisiana gambling scandal in the late 90s. There's the disastrous and mercifully brief reign of GM Joe Thomas that marked the ignoble start of DeBartolo's ownership. There's head coach Bill Walsh under constant pressure from the front office to maintain a competitive team throughout the 80s, which eventually led to burnout and his retirement from coaching.

Also touched upon-though not in as great a deal of detail as I expected-is the battle between Joe Montana and Steve Young for control of the starting QB spot that kept the team in turmoil throughout the late 80s/ early 90s. And who could forget Walsh and George Seifert's respective invasions in the affairs of other Niners coaches where (according to the author) they shouldn't have gone? Also covered is the hiring of Steve Mariucci as coach following Seifert being forced out, the injuries that made Rice a less-effective receiver and forced QB Steve Young into retirement, and the 1999 season that marked the end of the team's winning ways. Triumphs, tragedies, ego clashes, bad blood, scandals- it's like a real-life soap opera for guys!

But before you dive in on the 'inside poop', be warned- there are more than a few factual errors throughout this hardcover's 276 pages that may sow seeds of doubt within your mind as to just how true some of the tales that Mr. Dickey recounts really are. On page 82, it is stated that the 49ers led 28-13 over the Miami Dolphins at halftime in Super Bowl XIX, and that RB Roger Craig was named the game MVP. In fact, the halftime score was 28-16, and QB Joe Montana grabbed the MVP honors. Page 85 claims the Niners failed to win the NFC West in 1986, and lost their second-straight wild-card game to the eventual Super Bowl champion New York Giants. Actually, SanFran DID win the West in '86, and the horrific season-ending loss to the Giants was a divisional playoff, not a wild-card playoff. On page 108, Dickey claims that the Chicago Bears' amazing 46 defense was named after the jersey number worn by Bears middle LB Mike Singletary. The only problem with this so-called 'factoid' is that Singletary wore number 50 throughout his career with the Bears! On page 115, it is stated that George Seifert was "certainly the first to be rewarded with a Super Bowl championship in his first season" as a head coach, when in actuality it was Baltimore Colts coach Don McCafferty who was the first to make such an accomplishment in Super Bowl V against Dallas. The 49ers beat the Vikings by the score of 41 to 13 in the 1989 divisional playoff, not 41 to 3 as is stated on page 119. On page 121, it is written that both the 49ers and the New York Giants were 10-0 when they faced off at Candlestick Park for a big Monday Night game during the 1990 season, when in actuality both clubs sported a 10-1 record going into the game. Finally, on page 151 former center Bart Oates is referred to as "Brad" Oates.

Thanks to this bevy of factual errors-- and the fact that a significant portion of the stories in this hardcover are partly based on conversations the author had with the "principals of this drama" whose own personal agendas and egos likely got in the way of them actually telling the entire truth about what they remembered-- I've taken most of what I'd read here with a pretty hefty grain of salt. The former concern is kinda strange, considering Mr. Dickey's reputation as one of the bay area's most celebrated sports columnists. Ironically, a blurb on the back cover by 49ers postgame show co-host Mark Ibanez states that Glenn Dickey's 49ers is "well-researched". Heh,I 'd sure hate to see what Mr. Ibanez considers "poorly-researched"! Another thing that annoys me is the book's format. Approximately half the pages have an inset that contains a sentence taken from the one of the page's paragraphs, but is written in a larger font to give it emphasis. There really isn't any need for these insets, as they are distracting and a waste of space. Besides, Glenn Dickey's 49ers is a pretty fast read, anyway-- it's not like it needs to have a page-by-page quick-reference synopsis...

Fortunately, I found the final chapter-- which discusses what the author feels must be done to bring the Niners back into contention as a premier NFL team-- to be on the mark for the most part. Dickey's thoughts on how to proceed (e.g. the York family selling the team to someone who has a local presence in the bay area and has the drive to make the team competitive again) are refreshingly rational. He also argues that the franchise should build and play in a new stadium somewhere in the southern peninsula or Silicon Valley. Although this idea may not sit well with purists who feel that teams should actually play within the boundaries of the cities they represent, the author cites more than a couple logical reasons (the hazards & expense of constructing a stadium on SF's unstable ground, the geographic concentration of ticket-holding fans, fewer traffic problems come game time) why a south peninsula / silicon valley home venue would be a great idea. I know I'd consider it pretty cool: if it were to happen, I'd be hangin' out in the parkin' lot during every home game, and do some serious tailgate partying!

'Late

Rating:
Summary: A must-read!
Review: Since leaving San Francisco 10 years ago, I've had to follow my beloved 49ers from a continent away. Now, with Glenn Dickey's book, I can catch up with what I missed. Finally, I know why Joe Montana left and what they were thinking - or not - when they drafted Jim Druckenmiller. I even learned about things I thought I already knew from the years I watched as a season ticket holder. I would never have guessed about the friction between Bill Walsh and Montana, for instance. This is a must-read for 49er fans.

Rating:
Summary: good book, to many mistakes
Review: this is a good book for all 49er fans, but if Dickey, who lives in the Bay Area is a 49er fan like he says, he wouldn't have made so many mistakes.
he talks more about what took place off the field than on.
he goes very briefly through the 49er games and rarely talks about some of the players and their achivements.
for the 1998 season, he never mentions Terrell Owens catching 14 tds and never mentions Garrison Hearst's 96 yard TD run vs. the Jets.
Dickey also makes very carless mistakes.

Roger Craig didn't win MVP of Super Bowl 19 like Dickey says and at times his writing is to repetive.

this book is mostly concerened about what the team did off the field, behind close doors. Dickey mentions Joe Montana's and Bill Walsh's fued, and how Debartalo was going to fire Walsh about 4 times but Carmen Policy stopped him. he also talks about the disaster behind Jim Druckenmiller and how the 49ers came to chossing him.

Dickey says that the 49ers were going to take a QB, and Walsh studdied 4 of them and said that Jake Plummer reminded him of Joe Montana, but he wasn't worth a 1st round pick. So the 49ers took Druck and it turned out to be a horrible pick.

Dickey also says that Bill Walsh was behind the pick of Reggie McGrew despite his knee injury.

what i don't like about this book is that i want to know more about what is going on on the field. the trades, the moves, some of the games, that stuff, this is mostly off the field.

good book though.

Rating:
Summary: Great fun
Review: This is a gossipy, entertaining book about what really happens with a pro football team. I'm a 49er fan, but I think even those who are fans of other teams would love the inside stuff in this book. The chapter about Eddie DeBartolo's rollicking ride through Las Vegas is a classic, and I got a totally different view of Eddie D after reading about all his conflicts with Bill Walsh, Carmen Policy and his sister. Great fun.