The ball, the actual one that turned the tide for 49er football 11 years and seven days ago when Dwight Clark went up and pulled it out of the sky, lies in a glass case just inside the restaurant entrance. Clark himself donated the ball, a magnanimous gesture rendered slightly less so since Clark owns the restaurant. But, still, a shrine is a shrine.

This is as close as it gets for Forty Niner football. On Friday, less than 48 hours before the Dallas Cowboys finally get another chance against the 49ers in an NFC Championship game, fans were flocking to "Clark's By The Bay" in Redwood City.It's true that some were there to eat, to sample the mahi mahi with hollandaise sauce or the house specialty, prime rib of Dallas. It's also true that some were there to pay tribute to The Catch.

Lou Vandersnook and Perry Mann, for instance, were bar-side at mid-afternoon for that express purpose. "We were at work and we decided what the heck, let's go down and look at the ball and have a beer," said Lou.

"I was there," he continued, sensing that anyone in this place on this weekend would know where "there" was.

"I saw him catch it," he said. "In fact, I threw it to him."

He had digressed faceciously. Directly above Lou was a picture of the person who did throw the ball, Joe Montana. It was Montana who, with slightly less than a minute to play on Jan. 10, 1982, threw off the wrong foot on a desperate third down play and found Clark in the end zone for The Catch - far and away the biggest catch in 49er history outside Sutter's Mill.

The pass was high, seemingly too high for Clark to pull in, but the fates that had sneered at 49er championship hopes for decades and decades brought it down to the level of Clark's outstretched fingertips. He hauled it in and came down a milimeter short of the end of the endzone.

With that, San Francisco beat the Dallas Cowboys 28-27 and won both the NFC Championship and the right to move on to the Super Bowl, where the 49ers summarily dispatched the Cincinnati Bengals. It was the beginning of the beginning for the 49ers, the team of the '80s, who would win four Super Bowls in the next 10 years. It was the beginning of the exit for the Cowboys, the team of the '70s, who haven't won an NFC title or been to a Super Bowl since.

On Sunday, when the Cowboys and 49ers meet for the NFC title for the first time since 1982, only Montana will still be a uniformed remnant of that game - and, at that, as a kind of designated icon. It's safe to assume that if Joe Montana gets in the rematch, the 49ers will either not be in the best of shape, or they'll be so far ahead it won't matter who catches the ball.

Time moves on and legends move with it. Clark's By The Bay is proof enough of that.

Dwight Clark built his restaurant the year he retired, in 1987. At first he served cajun food, but after discovering that the tastes of Bay-raised 49er fans have their limits, and they don't reach to Louisiana, he switched to prime rib and seafood. Business has been great ever since.

"Dwight comes in all the time," said Joey, a waiter working the bayside view tables Friday afternoon. "He just doesn't tell us when he's coming."

Dwight's resaurant is decorated mainly by pictures of either A) Joe or B) Himself. Many photos or drawings include both Joe and Dwight. In all, there are 47 pictures of Montana - including a collection of his magazine covers (Time, Sports Illustrated, Pro Football Weekly, etc.) upstairs in the Joe Montana Room. There are 41 of Clark.

Rounding out the decor are assorted sports decorations, including autographed jerseys from Wayne Gretsky and Jose Canseco and autographed pictures from Wilt Chamberlain, Muhammed Ali and Johnny Unitas.

All complement the famous color picture of The Catch, which is located directly above the cash register.

There is also an oil painting of The Catch near the cash register and a poster-sized blowup upstairs in the Montana Room that is signed by Everson Walls, the Dallas defensive back who forgot to jump.

"You were out of bounds," says Walls' inscription next to his autograph.

In a trophy case, there are dozens of copies of the Sports Illustrated cover from Jan. 18, 1982, featuring The Catch and this headline: "The Super Catch - Dwight Clark's Touchdown Beats Dallas."

The restaurant's logo is a silhouette of The Catch.

Curiously, there is no "The Catch of the day" included in the menu.

That doesn't matter to True Followers, who break to Clark's whenever they can.

"It's especially wild here on game weekends," said Tammy, a bartender who had worked for Clark's the past four and a half years. "A lot of the 49ers come in. We space them around the restaurant."

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Tammy said she doesn't think a lot of the players have to pay for their meals. She also said the ball in the case wasn't actually rescued until the summer after The Catch. She said Clark got it from an equipment manager who had it in his garage.

There is actually a possibility, then, that the ball in the case isn't necessarily THE ball?

"Oh, I don't know about that," said Tammy.

"No, it's the ball," said Lou. "I saw it. I was there."

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