Vic Bottari

Vic Bottari was 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.

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.

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."

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.

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.