Kezar Stadium

Kezar Stadium invokes a Norse Gods-like black-and-white nostalgia in Dave and me, players bigger than life, puffing white smoke from their helmets on gray December afternoons. "Remember the 1970 NFC Championship Game?" I asked. "Niners and Cowboys. Last game they played at Kezar."

"No. Was it really?" Dave wasn't convinced and I looked it up on my phone while he snapped shots of the much scaled-back stadium, more a high school track setting now than the glorious, 60,000 seat stadium of the past where the 49ers played in my head while Lon Simmons described the action. "Back then, the bowl walls were high. It's not what it used to be," said Dave.

It was momentus, that 1970 game. The Niners lost 17-10, missing a chance at one of the first Super Bowls, and breaking my 8-year old heart. We looked at the grounds and sighed, seeing what was no longer there, and then we walked on.

A view into the scaled-back Kezar Stadium.