John Madden was different because he was ordinary

So here was this sports columnist sitting in a lineup of cars trying to get to the Bay Bridge toll plaza. And three lanes to his right, there’s a guy repeatedly honking his horn for apparently no reason.

The columnist finally looks over, and it’s John Madden, waving and laughing. He had seen me as we drove west from Oakland to San Francisco. No pretension, just joy.

Madden, who died Tuesday at 85, was special because he was ordinary, at least away from the field, a size extra-large blend of curiosity and commentary.

He knew the game of football, winning Super Bowl XI as coach of the Oakland Raiders. He also understood the game of life: Be friendly as much as possible.

He was born in Minnesota but virtually was a Northern Californian, growing up in Daly City, graduating from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and eventually ending up in the East Bay community of Pleasanton — where, in the manner of the pioneers, he grabbed vacant fields that quickly enough became valuable property.

John could be demanding. There are stories about his impatience with others in broadcasting. Yet most of all, in person or behind a microphone, he made you feel good.

I was the Raiders beat man for the San Francisco Chronicle for a while in the early 1970s, and he didn’t always like what I wrote — which didn’t make him unusual in the profession.

What did make him unusual was the way he responded. Some coaches claim they never read the papers. Madden would come at me after practice, waving the Chron sports page.

Then he would sit me down and explain what was wrong, so I wouldn’t make the same mistake again. An education. 

In those days, the Raiders took the writers on their charters for road trips, the better for the papers to save travel expenses. As soon as the flight was in the air and the seat belt sign was off, Madden would stand up and march to the front or rear of the aircraft.

As we learned, Madden disliked flying. After he left Cal Poly, a football team charter crashed in 1960. Numerous players, friends of Madden, died. The accident haunted him.

He also was claustrophobic, feeling trapped in a silver capsule, and as soon as he left the Raiders for broadcasting, Madden switched first to a train and then a bus — the Madden Cruiser.

He was adept at describing the quarterback draw — his signature remark after a big gain was empathic and brief: “Boom.”

He fit in everywhere and with everyone, working TV with Pat Summerall and then Al Michaels; getting off the bus at stops in various places and dining and chatting with the locals.

His daily show on the San Francisco radio station KCBS offered Madden at his eclectic best, moving from sports to food to weather to geography.

Once, relating to rivers, Madden said he was uncertain about the word “confluence,” as to the linking of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers to form the Ohio River in Pittsburgh. “So, that’s a confluence,” he repeated, having as much fun as the listeners.

John Robinson was Madden’s pal from their days as kids and teenagers in Daly City. They were both football people — Robinson became head coach at USC and later the Rams.

“We’d go to an ice cream store,” Madden remembered of their boyhood. “I’d buy a cone, and he’d always take a bite; to stop him I’d lick the whole thing, but John Robinson would eat it anyway. He was different.”

So was John Madden. John, that will be me honking in salute the next time I cross the Bay Bridge.