James Rainey: My encounter with a football miracle — in search of the stories behind 'The Play'

LOS ANGELES — I looked up into the Big Man's eyes and screamed and screamed. I screamed at close to the top of my lungs. Then I shouted some more.

I wanted to make sure the stranger heard me. So I hammered downward with both hands on the Big Man's shoulders. They loomed like twin mountains, strapped into a set of massive shoulder pads, wrapped in a uniform of deep blue.

So I pounded and bellowed. Pounded and bellowed. And the Big Man seemed to get it. Thank goodness, he seemed to get it. Because, at 6 feet 3 and 290 pounds, it was important that he understood that — although I appeared frantic — I came in peace.

I have cherished that moment for the intervening four decades. I love to tell the story of how I committed verbal assault (and near-battery) on George Niualiku, an offensive guard on the University of California football team. And I lived to tell about it.

My small flight of insanity was not unique that late fall afternoon in Berkeley. All around us on the field at California Memorial Stadium, others came unhinged. They howled like toddlers, "Wooooo-hooooooooooooo!" They Bear-hugged strangers. They raised their arms aloft as if they had won the heavyweight championship.

That's the way it goes when you have witnessed what Cal radio play-by-play announcer Joe Starkey called "the most amazing, sensational, dramatic, heart-rending, exciting, thrilling finish in the history of college football." The details would slowly come into focus over many years, as the escapade dubbed "The Play" grew into both a sports phenomenon and