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By Demian Bulwa In the time before 300-pound defensive ends roamed the earth, before the 40-yard dash became the One True Measure, and before the mandating of dances after sacks and full renditions of HMS Pinafore after touchdowns, a football player could make something of himself simply by following his blockers. Vic Bottari '39 was no prize recruit, big for his family but small for football, 5-foot-9 and 180 pounds, with flat feet. He possessed "very, very average speed,'' in the words of one former teammate. Early in his career, one sportswriter referred to Bottari as "the dumpy Italian from Vallejo." But he followed his blockers. And he went on to become one of the greatest heroes in the history of Cal football, a legend loved by teammates and fans, in large part because he was humble and human. On New Year's Day 1938, Bottari ran for 137 yards and two touchdowns, acrobatically intercepted a pass from his safety position, and never left the field as his "Thunder Team" beat Alabama, 13-0, in front of 90,000 people at the Rose Bowl--the last Cal victory in that sweet game. No longer dumpy, the game's most valuable player was now "an acre of thorns, all dipped in cobra venom." (These were also the days before creativity-stifling newspaper editors roamed the earth.) Almost 65 years later, much has changed. Leather helmets were ditched, and the vertical passing game has replaced three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-white-boys. Cal was becoming known for its Blunder Teams. Bottari, meanwhile, has been slowed by a triple bypass, a heart arrhythmia that demanded a pacemaker, and a rare lymphoma. (In other words, he's 85 years old.) But Vallejo Vic remains humble, easygoing, and in awe--not of himself, but of his teammates. Reminded of his legend, Bottari says, "I don't relish it one way or another. It's always pleasant, rather than the contrary." His Orinda home's small den is filled with trophies--Bottari is in the Rose Bowl Hall of Fame and is on the Pac-10's "All-Century'' team, among other honors--but he also displays a cartoon with a doctor telling a patient: "Let me put it this way: If you were a building, you'd be condemned." Bottari's teammates are more than happy to provide the honeyed phrases: "Vic had all of the great abilities that make his recognition now so meaningful," says Ray Rosso '39, a backup guard on the Rose Bowl team who now lives in Newport Beach. "He was a very quiet guy, but he had such strength, and he put everything he had into finishing his runs. He hit the hole and hit it hard. If he hit enough holes, he was going to break one. And God, he was tough." Bottari's values, though, weren't shaped on the gridiron. How could he be flashy or selfish when he was the youngest of four kids raised in Vallejo by Italian immigrants with little education? His father, Arthur "Vic" Bottari, started as a laborer, then learned to finish cement, and twenty years later opened his own company. "He taught me to be truthful, to treat people right, to work hard and provide," Vic says. "I had great admiration for him." Bottari had two older brothers, Tony '33 and Ray '36, "who were athletes and were always after me." The brothers were too small for college ball, but Vic followed them to Cal with hopes of one day making an impact on the football field. There were no scholarships in those days--players worked two and three jobs--and Bottari found in his new teammates the same qualities he had learned at home. "Those were Depression days," recalls Ralph Sauer '40, a lineman who now lives in Alameda. "No one had any money, and you made your own entertainment. Lifetime friendships were made. There was individual talent there, but there was also 100 percent teamwork. You're talking about a very average group of guys, really." But these average guys could really play. Bottari came in among a wave of skilled athletes, including right end Perry Schwartz '38 (whose punishing blocks freed Bottari on both Rose Bowl touchdowns), Sam Chapman '38 (who went on to star in the Major Leagues), and center Bob Herwig '38 (like Bottari and Chapman, a collegiate Hall of Famer). Standing out in this group was difficult, and a job no one really sought. But in the eighth game of the 1936 season, with Cal struggling at 3-4 and trailing favored USC, 7-6, a sophomore named Bottari was summoned "with orders from the bench to pitch high and hard," the San Francisco Chronicle reported. "He pitched twice for a touchdown, 45 yards in two plays." The Bears won, 13-7, then finished with two more victories in their last three games. In 1937, it was clear that the Bears were a special team, and after a few blowouts they began to draw comparisons to the Wonder Teams of the early 1920s, which were unbeaten for five straight years and earned Cal's first Rose Bowl win, in 1921. The only blemish on Cal's 1937 record was a scoreless tie against Washington that cost the team a shot at a national championship; and it happened after Bottari suffered a knee injury that forced him to hobble around with a brace. The Thunder Team of 1937 outscored its opponents 214-33, including the Rose Bowl. Not long after his All-American season in 1938, Bottari began veering away from football, a sport which has brightened his life but has never defined him. He met his wife of 62 years, Tommie '41, on a blind date set up by a fraternity brother just before school ended. He was drafted by football's Brooklyn Dodgers in 1939, but turned down an offer that he remembers being worth $4,000 or $5,000 a year and returned to Cal for a teaching credential. After coaching at the College of Marin for two years and becoming a father, Bottari joined the Navy and earned a Bronze Star using radar to track enemy planes on the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, which engaged in just about every major battle of the war. After his military service, he dabbled in coaching again as an assistant at Cal in 1946, but was shocked to see head coach Frank Wickhorst--the line coach for the Thunder Team--booted after a 2-7 season. "I decided then and there that coaching is a ruthless game and not worth it," he says. Bottari soon had a second child and became focused on providing for his young family. He took a job from a Bear Backer who was executive officer of an insurance company in San Francisco, starting as an assistant. He moved up for a decade, then, like his father, ventured out on his own, becoming a partner in a brokerage firm. Along the way, he listened to the urging of fellow parents and served on Berkeley's school board from 1953 to 1959. He retired in 1985. Bottari admits he's always been fond of "stability." He's been in the same house for 40 years, has loved the same woman all his life, and is still close friends with football teammates like Perry Conner '40, who lives in Walnut Creek (and who shuttled his friend around the Bay Area for months to doctors' appointments after the arrhythmia). But Vallejo Vic has never been comfortable with one constant in his life: people saying he put the thunder in the Thunder Team. "No, no, no. There is no one guy who is going to make a team. It takes 11. It takes more than 11. In our day it took a total of 33," he says. There goes Bottari, slipping behind his blockers again. |
 Vic Bottari in 1939
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