I saw that football speed from a few feet away at the San Francisco 49ers' training camp in 1987. Here's how I described it years later.

"I was watching defensive backs drilling against wide receivers. No linemen were involved. Joe Montana was the quarterback, Jerry Rice the receiver. The players were in shorts and light pads. The defensive back, Darryl Pollard, lined up about four yards off the line of scrimmage from Rice. I was standing just behind Montana. A ringside seat at Mt. Olympus.

"At the snap of the ball, Rice took off upfield. On television, I had always noticed his odd running style, at once fluid, powerful and almost mechanically repetitive, with his upper body kept very straight. Standing a few yards away as he accelerated like a drag racer at the backpedaling Pollard, I realized, with a sympathetic shudder for the defensive back, not only that Rice was much faster than he appeared to be on TV, but worse, that his almost exaggeratedly efficient stride was absolutely unreadable: No shift in body weight, no slight tilt, betrayed either a fake or a move.

"It was like watching a very fast robot. After 20 yards, the robot's feet executed a double fake, rightleft. The two stutter steps took about a tenth of a second. Incredibly, Pollard didn't bite on the left move, but he was forced to react to it, turning his hips just slightly to his right. At exactly that instant, Montana released the ball and Rice pushed off his left foot and cut upfield to the right on a post pattern, not breaking stride, his body still as straight-up and robotic as ever. He suddenly appeared under Montana's pass -- which had been thrown before the cut to an empty space on the field -- snatching the ball out of the air with his big hands just as Pollard, who had spun back from his right and closed ground with extraordinary rapidity, jumped high into the air, missing the ball by inches. Rice jogged back to the line of scrimmage, expressionless."

Some critics try to play down Rice's greatness by pointing out that he played for Bill Walsh, whose West Coast offense befuddled defenses that had not yet figured out how to respond to its complicated short-pass system, with multiple fast reads for the quarterback and option routes. They also point out that the guys throwing balls at Rice for most of his career were named Montana and Young. That's all true. But after watching Rice run that post pattern that hot summer day 18 years ago, I don't buy it. Jerry Rice would have been great with Ryan Leaf throwing to him.

There are so many Rice memories, it's hard to pick one. But one play has always stood out for me. It was from perhaps Rice's greatest game -- Super Bowl XXIII against the Cincinnati Bengals, the thriller won in the last seconds when Montana hit John Taylor in the end zone after Taylor had lined up on the wrong side. Rice caught 11 passes for 215 yards and a touchdown and was named the MVP of a Super Bowl that some still say was the best ever. But the most important pass was not his TD but one he caught on the final drive, with the clock running out.

A penalty had put the 49ers in a deep hole -- second-and-20 from the Bengals' 45. Everybody knew the 49ers had to throw and pick up at least 10 yards. Everybody knew they were going to Rice. The Bengals knew it and double-covered him. Rice lined up on the right and ran a deep square-in. This was not a pattern he ran very much -- his signature patterns were the quick slant, or the post. It's a dangerous pattern. It takes the receiver horizontally across the field, where he can be creamed by a safety or a linebacker in a deep drop. It's also hard to throw -- it's tricky to lead receivers running sideways. Rice beat the double coverage. Montana led him perfectly and Rice snatched the ball out of the air, beat the safety, and ran for 27 yards. Taylor later scored the winning touchdown, but that was the play that won the championship for the 49ers. Afterward, one of the Bengals defenders said they had the play covered: "It took a perfect throw and catch."

Those who watched Rice grew accustomed to perfection. It's going to be a hard adjustment to reality.

My final memory of Jerry Rice has nothing to do with football. My aunt Wendy was a huge Jerry fan. She had his No. 80 jersey and screamed louder than anyone else at 49er games. She adored the guy. Wendy had hepatitis that she had incurred from a bad blood transfusion decades earlier. After defying all prognoses and living years longer than she was supposed to, her liver finally began to fail. No donor livers came in. Her other organs began to fail. She was dying. A nurse at the Stanford Medical Center who knew her happened to know Jerry Rice and mentioned to him that she might appreciate a call.

Jerry Rice called my aunt, who could no longer speak -- she could only grunt. A friend who was present told me that he talked to her for a few minutes, told her to stay strong. The man who embodied strength, who had faced down The Hill, was trying to raise the spirits of a dying woman who could no longer raise her head. No press was there and no one knew about it. Afterward, the friend reported that Wendy's eyes were shining. She passed away a few days later.

207 touchdowns. 1,549 receptions. 22,895 receiving yards. An infinite number of memories. And one phone call.

Thanks, Jerry. You were the greatest.

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