AN ALMOST PERFECT LIFE
THE 49ERS' QUARTERBACK JUST WANTS TO SETTLE DOWN AND BE LIKE WARD CLEAVER. CAN FANS STAND FOR THAT?

Published: Sunday, August 31, 1997

THE EYES may be the windows of the soul in poetic circles, but in the Bay Area, the house one purchases can provide significant insight. Grecian columns or cozy front porch? California bungalow or contemporary ranch? Picket fence or iron security gate? Here is a man who could afford to build or buy any style of house, in any neighborhood. He buys a two-story Colonial Revival, with shutters on the windows, a balcony off the second floor, beds of agapanthus along the sidewalk and a large olive tree in the front yard. A narrow driveway leads to a modest garage in back. The house sits on a corner in a quiet, tree-lined Palo Alto neighborhood, not far from a busy thoroughfare. It is protected from the outside world by only a rail fence. If his house speaks for him, Steve Young views himself as Ward Cleaver. ''It's symbolic of who he is,'' says one of Young's closest friends, Greg Madsen. ''He doesn't want to be different from you or me or the guy across the street. Just watch, he'll be out in the street playing ball with the neighborhood kids.'' The 49ers open their season today, and Young should have moved into his new house. He had hoped to be in by June but had to run the Palo Alto Planning Department gauntlet because of changes he had made to his 1934 house, deemed historic by the city. One of the projects was to knock down a few interior walls to unite the kitchen and dining room as a ''great room.'' It's a remodeling trend this year--creating a large open space where the family can gather to review the day, where kids can do their homework while dinner is prepared. It's what regular people want in a home. Not personal movie theaters or Italian marble hallways. They want big, warm rooms to live in with other people, and that's what Young wants, too. He is searching for normalcy in a world that begs him to be different, separate. For playing a game, he is rewarded with boundless riches and incredible fame. Society is willing to isolate him, erect walls for him. Young would remove the walls, but that too causes problems. A salesperson sees his name on a bridal registry and calls a newspaper. But Young continues on, rolling down his window on the way out of the parking lot to talk to fans. ''That's always been the central paradox of Steve's life,'' says his agent, Leigh Steinberg, whose efforts have assured Young of being financially abnormal for the rest of his life. At 35, Young hopes to be settled in Palo Alto in time for what he has told friends could be one of his happiest seasons. He feels loose and in control. He is healthy. He thinks the veterans on the team are being treated well. The 49ers have committed to him for the long term. The Elvis Grbac issue has been resolved with Young's former heir-apparent departed to Kansas City, and Young is energized by new coach Steve Mariucci. In fact, the only thing Young seems to be lacking in his life is June, Wally and the Beav. He was supposed to make progress on the family front last spring. But his engagement to Aimee Baglietto--headline news when it was announced in November--was broken off shortly before the planned March wedding. Though friends say he didn't buy the new house specifically to live in with Aimee, he was in the midst of purchasing it during the breakup. He closed on the house on April 1. ''Life would be almost perfect,'' Young says with a wry smile. ''If I have one regret, I wish I could've gotten married in college. Because all the stuff that's come since makes it more complicated to me. It makes it a little bit more crazy.''

Breakfast club

Two patrons are sitting near the entrance of a small restaurant in Rocklin, a mile from the 49ers training camp.''Excuse me, are you waiting?'' Young asks. They assure him that, no, they are not. So Young allows the hostess to take him to the next available booth. He orders breakfast, even though it's 11 a.m. and he was on the practice field at 8:30. During his early years in the NFL, he didn't eat before practice because he was afraid he would throw up on the field, from nerves, from fear that he couldn't meet expectations. Though he doesn't have the same feeling anymore, he still doesn't eat much before practice. But now he eats, three pancakes (a little butter and lots of syrup) and two fried eggs, washed down with ice water. He talks, extensively, philosophically, occasionally reeling himself in or losing his train of thought. ''It's an absolute challenge to take what little fame you have, because fame is relative, and to be as real as you can be. Because the nature of it is to give them whatever they want, make them happy and then step away. Everyone gets in a bad mood, right? So every time you step out you can't be in a good mood. But if you truly want that image, you truly have to be that person. So I find myself saying, if you're truly going to be a nice guy, then are you really a nice guy when you walk out. Uh-oh, now I'm really getting out there.'' Every few minutes, he patiently signs whatever newspaper or program is slipped in front of him or acknowledges a fan who stops by the table to wish Young and the 49ers luck in the upcoming season. ''Success, to me, is the foundation. In other words, success starts with the fact that you have to live with integrity. If you don't have integrity, you get lost. Other parts of the foundation are honesty in relationships, publicly and privately. Once you know the foundation of how you live, success then becomes fulfilling your potential. And that's where you have to define it, otherwise everyone else will screw you up. They'll hold up a hoop and you dive through it, and they say, 'OK, now do this.' If you let other people define it you end up being a circus clown just doing things for kicks. You'll hear a voice--whether it's in the media or literally--if you don't control yourself, you'll hear some guy behind the fence yell, 'Hey, you can't throw it deep!' and you'll say, 'Come over here!' Really, you can get that way.'' In his mind, Steve Young is a normal guy having pancakes. In the mind of everyone else in the restaurant he is a star whose presence has changed a Sunday morning from ordinary to remarkable. ''He's somewhat naive about his fame,'' says Madsen. ''His own perception of himself is that it's not that big a deal. He's like, 'Oh come on, no one's clamoring to see me.'' It's a naivete that has his friends and family a little concerned about the new house that sits smack in the middle of the real world. Others with Young's fame have found that the only place they can relax is inside a bunker, secluded from the curious or the strange, protected by walls and security gates. Young refuses to live that way. ''He wants a simple life,'' Steinberg says. ''But his career aspirations are not average.'' Young views his life as a series of challenges to overcome, from his fear of going to second grade (his mother had to take him to school every day for a couple of weeks) right through his fear of not being able to fill Joe Montana's cleats. He is driven largely by a fear of failure. And if he can't live a normal life, then he has failed. Fame is just another obstacle. ''Otherwise you become schizophrenic,'' he says. ''I don't want to be schizophrenic and have a public me and a private me. I like to just be the same.'' His approach to fame is not to buy into it. ''What I see a lot of famous people do is create the thing they don't want,'' he says. ''They come in with an entourage and announce themselves, so then they have a scene. I find if I go into a restaurant and the wait is 45 minutes and I say, 'OK,' and sit down to wait, it bursts their balloon.'' He takes a bite of pancake and looks around the diner. ''See, we can do this,'' he says.

Fame and marriage

But finding a partner for life is a different challenge from finding a place to eat your eggs. And Young's fame has put a damper on his romantic life. He is one of the most eligible bachelors imaginable--smart, wealthy, handsome and more than willing to stop being single. The state of Utah has been ready to marry Young off for the past decade. Steinberg likens Young to a member of a royal family for the Mormon community. The Bay Area has been interested in Young's personal life since Stephanie Weston rode in the Super Bowl parade with him in January 1995. They broke up later that year. Earlier this month, Sports Illustrated featured Young on its cover. The story came across as an extensive personal ad: Poor Steve Young, he can't find a nice Mormon girl to marry. All of the attention puts more pressure on any relationships that do develop.''Definitely, the media and the fame is a factor,'' says his mother, Sherry Young, in Connecticut. ''His relationships have not been as private as they could have been. As soon as something starts, they're in a photo.'' Steinberg says, ''The type of privacy needed to nurture a relationship doesn't occur in a fishbowl. It can push away more sensitive women.'' It's one of the few areas where Young will concede he hasn't achieved normalcy. ''It's a hard thing to do,'' he says with a sigh. ''I read about Brad Pitt and Gwyneth Paltrow. That's a hard thing without having to do it in public.''

Think about it.

Picture a Monday in autumn. The games have been played, recorded in the win-loss column and the newspapers. The players are in team meetings, going over film. And the sportswriters are sitting around, waiting for someone to come out and shed light on the latest twisted knee or lineup change. Waiting. Waiting. Someone might suggest a hypothetical: two minutes left in the Super Bowl, trailing by four, what quarterback do you want? Well, that one's pretty easy. Joe Montana. The pocket's closing, the quarterback has to get rid of the ball in an instant, who do you want? Dan Marino. You want a bottle knocked over from 50 yards away? John Elway is your man. What if you need a keg tapped? Maybe Jim Kelly. A quarterback you'd trust investing your money? Steve Bono. And Steve Young? Not to diminish his athletic talents, but Young is the consensus quarterback most sportswriters would invite to a dinner party, an athlete who could actually make a gathering more interesting. In a world of numbing ''I'm giving it 110 percent'' soundbites, Young can be counted on to be thoughtful and real. ''He's a very smart guy,'' says Madsen. ''Almost too smart for what he's doing.'' Young has an avid interest in politics, education and business. He was fascinated by the dynamics of the 49ers stadium election. Some have projected a political career for him after football. He has a law degree, earned during the off-seasons as a distraction while he was struggling with his position as perennial backup to Montana. In the off-season, he read a lot of American history, triggered by his involvement in the 150th anniversary of Brigham Young leading his followers to Salt Lake City. He dressed up as Brigham Young at one point during the re-enactment of the creation of the Mormon Trail. He has studied how his great-great-great-great-grandfather was involved in opening up the West for development. ''I want to be educated,'' he says. ''In conversation, someone will mention something and I'll say, 'I don't know that.' I find myself wanting to know. In politics and history, in religion, I need to be more educated.'' Young is devout and tithes to the church, though he never went on a two-year Mormon mission. His siblings have, and he plans to go on one after he's retired from football, when he's married. In June, he took his mother on a 10-day tour of Israel that Young describes as ''bringing the Scriptures to life.'' The journey was indicative of his desires--he could accept the Bible on faith, but he wants to intellectualize it, understand it in a deeper sense. It's the same process he goes through with football.''I find football one of the greatest laboratories for interpersonal experience,'' he says. ''I enjoy the psychology of it. And the most amazing thing is every 30 seconds you huddle. Here I am with J.R. [Rice] who grew up on a dirt road in Mississippi and me in New York and Jesse [Sapolu] who at one time was in the Islands. All the differences in race and religion. And we get together and say, 'OK what do we do now?'''

Tears for fears

Young grew up in the house in Riverside where his parents still live. Outside of Greenwich, it's a two-story, five-bedroom house his mother calls ''average.'' The basement was the 1960s version of the ''great room,'' where the kids hung out, playing hockey and basketball and pingpong. His father, LeGrande (''Grit'') Young, was a corporate attorney. His mother stayed home with the five children--four boys and one girl. Steve, the oldest, was serious, responsible, worried. He's written a book for children, called ''Forever Young,'' that details some of his fears and hopes growing up. His goal is for children who feel different to read it and think, Boy, I'm not as weird as Steve Young. ''When I was little I was scared to sleep at other people's houses,'' he says, adding that he didn't spend a night away from home until he went to college. ''I grew up with some fears. If it wasn't for football I probably would not have dealt with a lot of them. I probably would've been a pretty good lawyer in a little town. If you would have told me 'When you grow up you're going to play in front of 80,000 people' I would have said, 'No way.' My greatest accomplishment is that I lived it, I didn't run from it. In time your weaknesses become your strengths.'' Young finds when he gets too deep about football he ends up being alone, that others in the sport don't want to complicate the game with analysis. So he turns to friends like Madsen, whom he met in college. Madsen works for a management consulting firm in Santa Cruz and spends his days analyzing how groups function. ''Steve is introspective almost to a fault,'' Madsen says. ''Once he starts thinking about things, he can't shut his mind off. He just spins on it. It can be detrimental if you don't have an outlet or someone to work it out with.'' Conventional wisdom has it that Young's religion restricts his ability to find a long-term relationship. But the biggest challenge may not be his religion, but his mind. Most Mormon women are married by the age of 21; it's hard to imagine Young finding an intellectual soulmate just out of her teens. ''That certainly presents a problem,'' his mother says. ''But Steve's got to be able to find that person. And I honestly feel it's going to happen and it's going to happen soon.''

A very bad day

Nov. 11, 1996, was a momentous day for Young. He was in the midst of a career crisis--he had suffered his second concussion in three weeks the day before and had to be evaluated by a doctor. His team had just lost to Dallas for the first time in three seasons and was reeling. Then a personal crisis intervened. On his way home from the 49ers training facility in Santa Clara, the car phone rang. It was Aimee. She and Steve had become quietly engaged in October, but reporters were already phoning Steve's parents. Now she was upset because reporters and TV cameras had staked out Young's house. Someone at Williams-Sonoma, where the couple had registered--naively using their real names--had tipped off reporters. Young called the 49ers offices and had the public relations staff gather the reporters who cover the team by a speakerphone so that he could try to maintain some personal control over the news. ''I didn't even know those reporters out there at the house,'' he says. He had started dating Baglietto, a student at BYU, in the off-season and was absolutely smitten by the time the season was to begin. She visited him in Rocklin and the two made little attempt to hide their affection. The wedding was set for March 4. But once the football season ended, the wedding plans were scaled back and then were canceled altogether. It was the second time Steve had been engaged and the second time the wedding had been called off. He and Aimee are no longer seeing each other. Young doesn't want to plow the field of his relationship in public, nor to assign blame. He prefers to address the subject in general terms. ''Aimee and I moved very fast. In the end, too fast,'' Young says. ''We had to pull it back and just work through relationship stuff. If you want to have real relationships you have to really fight for it. We didn't win that battle.'' Young admits his intense desire to be married was part of the problem. ''I wanted it to be over,'' he says of his prolonged bachelorhood. ''I just wanted to have it. We pushed. Part of the problem is that we'd known each other about three months. And I said, 'I want this.'' Friends say the Mormon faith, with its restrictions on living together before marriage, is one reason things were so rushed. The couple became engaged and then the pressures of football season mounted, with Young's health and future with the 49ers ongoing and stressful subplots to the 1996 season. ''We didn't have a lot of time,'' Young says. ''There's not a lot of continuity during the season.'' Young is so engrossed in his career, he may not be as attentive as some women want. Madsen says his friend's mood can change depending on what day of the week it is-- Tuesdays are better than Fridays, nearing game day. When he is brooding, he has a furrowed brow, becomes less accessible. In 1991, the year he started in place of the injured Montana, he seemed to brood the entire season. He was moody again last season, when he was injured. ''I hold back my emotions,'' he concedes. ''Like the little kid that wouldn't go to school. I've got to let it go more, be more emotional.'' ''He shoves things inside himself,'' says his mother. He's been pensive and silent about not being able to throw a spiral in high school, of signing with the wrong league, of what message his new mega-contract sends. And about an incident in college: Young was going to fly home for the holidays, but the sister of a girl he was dating wanted to drive home. He drove from Utah to Nebraska and then collapsed in sleep, while his friend took over in the morning. At 9:30, outside Kearney, Neb., he woke up as the car flipped four times. His 20-year-old friend was killed. ''As far as life experiences go, that was a big one,'' he says. His mother says that little by little, Young is working out all the things he buried inside. His friends say he has matured. But he could still be a challenge for some women. ''He's no bargain,'' says Sherry Young. ''He is quick-paced and focused. He's very much like his dad. If I were a person that couldn't find my own way, if I needed someone who would stop all the time to make me feel good, I would struggle [with Steve's father]. Steve's a lot like that. It's not an insensitivity, it's just being matter of fact.'' Young claims he isn't obsessing over why marriage has continued to elude him. ''I've tried to force it, I've tried to try, I've tried not to try,'' he says. ''Pretty soon you find yourself just being positive about it. It's a faith-promoting experience. Somewhere, some way, I'll start a family. Once you do it and you're happy, then life is perfect. ''There is nothing in this conversation should be construed as some lonely-hearts club. Some things just take time.''

In time

Though Young has played for San Francisco for a decade, he had never bought a house in the Bay Area. When he won his first Most Valuable Player award, in 1992, he was living in a rented apartment in Mountain View. For three years, he shared a place with 49er tackle Harris Barton. For the past few years he rented a barn-like structure on an oak-covered slope in Los Altos Hills, confining himself primarily to a one-room loft and living without a kitchen. Two years ago, he started looking for a house to buy and chose to come down from the hills. ''I decided to stop being a recluse,'' he says. In the early years, he stayed out of the real estate market because he wasn't sure he had a long-term relationship with the 49ers. In recent years, his reluctance was driven by a feeling shared by you and me and the guy across the street. The man who started his career with a $40 million USFL contract that in 1984 was the symbol of greed and avarice in professional sports, and who just signed a new $45 million deal with the 49ers that was the largest to date in the NFL, couldn't justify the price of real estate. ''My frugal self couldn't deal with the other houses I looked at,'' he says. ''They were just so little for so much.'' Of course, by choosing to live in Palo Alto, Young was guaranteed to spend a considerable sum on real estate. His house cost $1.5 million. But that's in a town where a two-bedroom bungalow goes for $400,000. And in contrast to the gated Atherton estates of his favorite target, Jerry Rice, or of his predecessor, Montana, Young's is a humble abode. Steve Young is happy. He has a circle of close friends in the Bay Area, most of whom he's known since college at BYU, that he can ''get deep'' with. Most are married and have families. Madsen has three children--ages 5, 3 and 1--and Young has babysat on occasion. The group does things together, such as renting a houseboat on Lake Powell this summer. They go out together. They wrap Young in a cloak of normalcy. In the off-season Young also spends a lot of time with his family--his three brothers, sister and several nieces and nephews. The family gathers at his other home--a nice but, you guessed it, modest structure--in Park City. Last spring he organized a trip for everyone to go to an amusement park in Utah, riding the roller coaster with abandon. Young feels he made a personal breakthrough last season, when he faced the end of his career for the first time, due to his injuries and the emergence of Grbac as a potential successor. He finally learned what it was like to be Joe Montana, an epiphany of sorts. He found the same competitive fire that he was credited with providing Montana in the late 1980s. ''Last year was a real maturing year,'' Young says. ''It forced me to realize what I like about playing football. In many ways I've played in the past to everyone's expectations and that's a nerve-racking, anxiety-ridden way to play.'' His mother believes he learned the same lesson through his broken relationship. ''I think he's learned that you are responsible for your own happiness,'' Sherry says. ''Someone else can't give it to you.'' Young loves children. Watch him interact with a 6-year-old and you would think it's the star quarterback, not the child, who gets the biggest thrill. And though he has no children of his own, he knows that a sticky hug at the end of a hard workday is better than cheers from 80,000. ''All this perspective I've gotten would have been a lot easier if I had four kids,'' he says. Young hopes to end his career with the 49ers. He may use his law degree in some fashion in the future. He has the skills and perspective to be a broadcaster. He has a long-term relationship with the Bay Area, and friends say he views his new home as a place he expects to be awhile. It's the home he bought to start his family in, which is one of the reasons for its modest size. ''In bigger homes, people don't communicate,'' he says. ''Family members disappear into their own space. It's a dangerous thing. Wealth can isolate you.'' But all Young has is a rail fence, and an open kitchen where a family can gather. He had to get a planning permit, but the walls have been knocked down. Some think he's too vulnerable, but Young doesn't want to shut out the real, normal world.

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