Candlestick Park has a special place in Mike Nolan’s heart.
Nolan’s life spans the ballpark where he served as a ball boy and was later head coach of the Bay Area’s beloved 49ers.
His father Dick was the 49ers head coach when the team began playing there in 1971, a season he watched from the sideline as a ball boy.
For the final regular-season game in the place, Nolan will be serving as Atlanta’s defensive coordinator, the Falcons (4-10) facing the 49ers (10-4) at 8:40 p.m. Monday. The Falcons are 13-point underdogs, according to Las Vegas website pregame.com, their largest underdog margin since 2002.
Candlestick has been the home field for five Super Bowl champions, 77 Pro Bowl players and 22 Hall of Famers. The 49ers have won 19 division titles and hosted eight NFC championship games at the ‘Stick.
To most, the most memorable moment was San Francisco wide receiver Dwight Clark leaping out of the back of the end zone to snag a Joe Montana pass for what go down in football lore as “The Catch” in the NFC Championship game on Jan. 10, 1982.
“I have a lot of history in the stadium as a child because the first game ever there, my father coached it,” Nolan said. “I do remember my coaching days there as well.”
Nolan was the 49ers coach from 2005-08, when he was charged with rebuilding the team after the glory days of the 1980s and 90s. He had a tough time and was eventually fired.
Most remember him for wearing a suit, like old-school traditional coaches, on the sidelines.
“There are mixed emotions,” Nolan said. “Some of it is good memories, some of it is not as much. Not just my own coaching memories there, but also the memories of my father.
“Obviously, every coach’s career in certain places is unique because you don’t leave so much on your terms all of the time. I remember when my father was fired back in 1975, those were tough times. The last year or two that he was the head coach, I remember all of that pretty vividly.”
There were some perks that went along with being the head coach’s son.
Monday Night Football was just turning into big event that it is now. (This will be the 36th MNF visit to Candlestick.) Nolan got to drop by the booth one night to visit Howard Cosell and “Dandy” Don Meredith, who had played for his father in Dallas.
“I was sitting in the booth and there was all kinds of talking going on because the cameras weren’t rolling,” Nolan said. “They were just kind of chatting and doing the things they do before they go on air. But that stood out in my mind a lot.”
The wine-sipping fans were into the scene that night, too.
“I can remember people hanging banners from above where they were shooting the game,” Nolan said. “So, I was sitting there and they were dropping down big signs that would say something to Don Meredith or Cosell. I can remember those days. They were lovely and a lot of fun. No worries at that time.”
The 49ers are set to move into a new stadium that is under construction in Santa Clara, Calif., 45 miles south of San Francisco.
“It’s going to be a state of the art thing and it’s also being built for football,” Nolan said. “Candlestick was built for baseball and they converted it to be a football stadium as best they could. I think going to the new place will be exciting for a lot of different reasons.”
Some of the Falcons are nostalgic about the game.
“I was a little young for Joe Montana, to be honest with you. But my memory is of watching Steve Young (in 1998) and they are playing the Packers,” Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan said. “He threw to Terrell Owens at the end of the game (for the win). That is the memory that I have of Candlestick, just being young, watching that game on TV. I was a big Steve Young fan.”
Falcons wide receiver Roddy White had what might have been the best game of his career at Candlestick. He caught eight passes for a career-high 210 yards in a 45-10 rout of the 49ers on Oct. 11, 2009.
“It’s a loud place and I have a lot of great memories,” White said. “There has been a lot of great games on that field. A lot of great players, a lot of Hall of Famers ran onto that grass and made a lot of plays out there.”
Falcons safety Thomas DeCoud, who played at Cal-Berkeley and is from Oakland, is looking forward to returning to the Bay Area. His grandfather, John L. Thomas, played for the 49ers from 1958 to 1967.
“Growing up, I would go to the games,” DeCoud said. “My uncles would fight over those tickets that he would get. So, it’s going to really be nostalgic for me.”
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