Part One: As the San Francisco 49ers return to the Super Bowl to face the Baltimore Ravens Sunday, Greenwich author Christopher W. Hunt revisits the path Steve Young took to collecting three Super Bowl rings two decades ago. Hunt interviewed Young, his childhood teammates, coaches and family members to tell the story of how Young's singular NFL career was shaped by his boyhood in Greenwich.

On the eve of Super Bowl XLVII, the first appearance by the San Francisco 49ers since Steve Young led them to victory in 1995, I cannot help but to think about when I first came to know Steve.

When I was playing Junior Babe Ruth baseball for Clam Box in 1975, I saw him stride in from the outfield for our first practice. He bounced up and down off the balls of his feet, so we called him "Springy." Steve told me recently he disliked the name.

"Why couldn't they call me "Rocky" or "Brick" or something tougher?" he lamented.

But I always saw something different. Steve strode with confidence, like a matador boldly heading into the bull ring. He also marched forward in his career and in life. Brigham Young University, the United States Football League and Joe Montana could have sunk a lesser man. He was a brick in my book. No one tougher. He accomplished greatness against all odds.

When I reached out to my old friend in September to inquire if I could write about his days in Greenwich, he eagerly accepted my offer. He wanted to re-connect with his past. And over the past four months I have gotten to know Steve a lot better. Before "Monday Night Football" games in Philadelphia and Foxborough I sat with Steve, now an ESPN analyst, for several hours and communicated with him by phone and email dozens of more times. We talked about everything: the victories, the defeats and about the family and friends who were so important to him. They are here too; I interviewed more than 30 of them.

In the end, this is a story about Greenwich, a town that helped make and mold a great NFL quarterback.

In February 1970, labor counsel attorney LeGrande Young was informed by his company, Anaconda, that he was being promoted to head counsel for wire and cable, a job that would require him to transfer east to Greenwich, Conn., where the company was headquartered and from where he would travel the world for his company. Having located a home in the middle-class neighborhood of North Mianus, Young, known as "Grit," his wife Sherry, and their four young children, hopped a plane east.

"I remember playing cards with my dad on the plane ride and thinking how exciting this was," said Melissa Young, who was 4 at the time. "It was a great adventure for all of us."

A moving van was in the driveway when the Youngs arrived at their new home at 27 Split Timber Place. "We all ran from room to room picking which ones we liked," Melissa recalled. Her three brothers, Steve, 8; Mike, 6, and Tom, 8 months, (a fifth child, Jim, would come along in 1978) immediately settled into their new surroundings and prepared for school, which would start the following month.

The oldest, Steve, headed to North Mianus Elementary School just 500 yards from the family's home. Eager to learn, he was a happy, outgoing 8-year-old. "I loved getting good grades," Steve recalled. "And I had this huge little crush on my third-grade teacher, Miss Wheless. To this day she is one of the most memorable teachers I had in Greenwich and I enjoyed being her teacher's pet." Steve's years in elementary school were among his most formative and he breezed through to sixth grade, always maintaining straight As as well as his popularity.

"Steve had this infectious personality," said Eddie Sheehan, Steve's closest boyhood friend, "and everyone seemed to be drawn to him. He was just fun to be with."

Steve and his siblings thrived in their new surroundings. They joined the neighborhood pack of kids of all ages who played a wide range of games and activities throughout the tangle of streets that included Old Orchard Road to the north to Havemeyer Park to the east and to Sound Beach Avenue, just beyond to the west. The area then, as it is now, was second- or third-generation Italian or Irish or from other western European descent; and largely Catholic. "Eddie's grandmother lived next door and his aunt lived around the corner," Steve said. "I loved those associations of family and I think we fit in well because we shared those same values."

It was also the very center of middle class: blue- and white-collar families lived together and mixed with one another with no discussion of income level. "We were very middle class," Steve said. "We did not have everything in the world but we were also not wanting."

Steve's first real friendship was with Sheehan, whose family lived close by on Sunshine Avenue. Though Sheehan attended nearby Dundee School, they were part of the same neighborhood and became best buddies. The friendship strengthened after they both entered Eastern Junior High School in seventh grade. Steve was drawn to the quiet and affable Sheehan, who had much in common with Steve, and they spent almost all of their free time alternating between each other's homes playing table tennis, eating meals prepared by their mothers and watching favorite television shows such as "Hogan's Heroes," "Gilligan's Island" or "The Partridge Family."

"I think Steve was drawn to me because I liked both sports and studying," Sheehan said. "In those days it was not cool to be smart or to study but since we valued both sports and hitting the books we were a natural fit," he said. The two would sit up in each other's bedrooms dreaming of playing professional sports or even going into business together. "Steve's dad was an attorney so we daydreamed about starting a law firm together one day," he added.

Through Sheehan, Steve was introduced to Steve Gebhardt, who lived two doors from Sheehan, and Jim Schneider, an outgoing and polite boy who resided in Havemeyer Park. Mike Gasparino, who would later co-captain Greenwich High School's football teams with Steve, was another friend who lived on nearby Perna Lane. The four would remain tight with Steve until their first years in college.

The sport of the streets was baseball and boys of all ages would play it from dawn to dusk, favoring the games within the game. "On many evenings we would play `Catch of the Night' at Dundee School," said Paul Perry, who lived across from Sheehan on Sunshine Avenue and two blocks from the school. "Mr. Santora, who ran Dundee's gym in the summer, would hit flies to us and we would rank our catches: the fanciest, the most athletic, the best diving catch, and so on."

Another favorite of the boys was "Home Run Derby."

"We would take turns pitching and hitting and you would try to be the one who hit the most home runs," said Chris Davidson, another of Steve's older friends who lived on nearby Tory Road. "The problem with Dundee is that the school is where the home runs went, so we ended up breaking a lot of windows!"

When the boys were not playing baseball, they quickly organized pickup games of basketball at whatever home had a net and backboard. Informal games of touch football were organized in 30 minutes; whichever kids were home and wanted to play headed to North Mianus School; games of four-on-four or five-on-five seemed to last for hours into the cool fall evenings. "Even if it was winter and there was snow on the ground, we'd shovel it away and play whatever sport we were in the mood for that day," Steve recalled.

The duties of organizer fell to Dan Gasparino, who was Mike's older brother, Perry's closest friend and two years ahead of Steve in school. Well-built and athletic, Gasparino could work quickly. "I memorized the phone number of every kid in that neighborhood," he recalled. "Within minutes I had reached eight to 10 friends" who rarely turned down the opportunity to play. "It was almost as if they were waiting for my call and we were all out the door and off to the field or a game on the street."

Steve Young says these early game experiences shaped his athletic career and credits Perry and Gasparino with preparing him for success in organized sports. "They were two tough characters in my life," Steve said. "But they drove me to succeed. They would say to me, `You think you are good; well, you are not as good as you think and do it right next time or you won't get to play.'"

Steve recalls numerous instances of being pushed so hard by the duo that he could be reduced to tears. "There were no excuses with them," he said. "In their eyes you were either good or not good; there was no in between. It was tough love but I responded to it." Steve recalls the games as serious contests that were not structured haphazardly. "Everything in that neighborhood had a score and a winner," he said, recalling that there were leagues for every sport or game, which included teams and drafts. "We also would have champions for this or that sport, which was great because you were actually working for something -- there was a goal."

Perry said the early neighborhood games really helped Steve. "He would play basketball with us and we would fight to the end to win. Clearly this not only sharpened Steve's skills but we showed him how to succeed competitively."

Faith of 6 generations

Despite fitting in easily to their new neighborhood, the Youngs were Mormon and their friends took notice. "They knew we were different because they would attend Mass every Friday and knew we weren't there," Steve said. Steve recalled that, as the oldest of the Young siblings, he was the first in the family who had to explain Mormonism to his friends, which proved beneficial.

"I explained to them that we don't drink, we don't smoke and we don't swear," he recalled. "How many 10-year-olds get to say, `This is who I am,' so as I got older I already had this defined for myself because I spoke about it to others so early in my life."

Still, the issue did not affect their friendships. "We were of course aware of it," Steve Gebhardt said. "But we did not talk about it. We were all different at some level and Steve and his family were so great; that's all that mattered to us."

Between spending time with friends, playing sports and studying, the Young children attended Mormon seminary weekdays in Scarsdale, N.Y., adding to their frenetic schedule. Up at 5:15 a.m., the kids would alternate car-pooling between Sherry Young and the handful of other Mormon parents whose families lived in the area. Seminary class ran from 6:10 a.m. to 7 a.m., at which point the group of kids would head back to start school by 7:30 a.m. in Greenwich. When Steve earned his driver's license at 16, his brother and sister would join him for the ride. "We had it timed out to the second and knew every bump in the road," Steve said of the drive to Scarsdale. "We were so tired that Mike would lie down in the front seat and Melissa in the back and they slept all the way," Steve recalled. "God must have been with me back then because I drove half asleep."

As the eldest of five, Steve did feel some responsibility to lead the way for his siblings and was conscience of his behavior, but was equally concerned that his early success in school and in sports would overshadow them. "I was worried that this might swamp them," Steve said, "especially my brother Mike."

Two years younger than Steve to the day, Mike Young, although more reserved, was very competitive with his older brother but used it to his benefit. "I was always the little brother trying to keep up with Steve," Mike said. "But deep down I tried to emulate him and I would not have been as successful had Steve not been there to lead the way."

Many consider Mike, who followed Steve as quarterback at GHS and who was a top baseball player, as the more athletically talented brother, including Steve. "If you look at the data, Mike did much better than me at GHS and I admired his mental toughness to accomplish what he did following me. He turned a real negative into a real positive," Steve added.

His three younger siblings; Melissa (swimming); Tom (who played the same three sports as Steve and Mike at GHS) and Jim (football, wrestling and lacrosse) were accomplished athletes in their own right and credit Steve with setting an example for them. "He was always our family leader and we learned so many things from Steve," Tom said. "He was a wonderful brother to all of us."

In many ways, Grit and Sherry Young, Steve's parents, differed from each other. Affable, warm and outgoing, Sherry Young doted on her five children and was the ideal homemaker, balancing a myriad of school and activities among her five children and their wide net of friends. "Our basement always seemed to be full of kids," Sherry recalled fondly. Oftentimes, Sherry would be running the household as Grit was traveling. "Grit laid down the law," Sherry said. "But I carried it out."

Good-natured, the kids could also be rambunctious. Steve recalls that his mom cried only four or five times in front of them when things got out of control. "We'd then think, `Oh, boy, we've gone too far," and we'd then feel terrible about it," Steve said. "So I think today, the boys especially, love her because of her incredible patience with us."

The siblings also maintained a Greenwich Time paper route which started with Steve and passed from one sibling to the next. "We always joked that it was mom's paper route because she would so often end up delivering the papers and collecting the subscription fees from our customers," Steve recalled.

Grit Young, a former college football standout at Brigham Young University, was demanding of his kids but was also very fair-minded. "I pushed them hard especially academically; sports were extra-curricular to me but school is what you relied on," he said. "But I made sure I balanced their hard work with praise and I think they respected me for that."

The great-great-grandson of Mormon pioneer Brigham Young, Grit worked hard with his children, helping them in all aspects, especially sports. "I would throw a baseball or football with them so often that, today, one of my arms is longer than another," Grit said jokingly. But Steve would occasionally feel the wrath of his dad, particularly when chores were to be done. "My job was to cut our lawn on Saturdays," Steve said. "But I would sometimes oversleep and be woken by the sound of the mower. I would think, `Oh no, he's frustrated and this is his way of telling me it's time to go to work.' I'd take over but he'd give me that look like, `OK, let's get going.' But my dad was always fair and, as long as you did what you said you were going to do, he was actually a teddy bear."

Big Red

Though Steve's first organized sport was Little League Baseball with the Lakewoods team, it was football where he first excelled. The future Hall of Fame quarterback would not start as a passer but as a receiver on the North Mianus Cowboys, comprising 11- and 12-year-olds from the area. It was here that Steve met Dave Grimsich, who would impact his journey in football. Grimsich was a scrappy and confident 12-year-old who lived just two blocks north on Florence Road. Grimsich had been coached well. His dad, Dan, had been a wide receiver and defensive end for the University of Illinois and the elder Grimsich poured his knowledge of football into his middle son, who obsessed over the game. Dan Grimsich would stay close to Dave, joining the Cowboys as an assistant to head coach Jack Schlegel.

The younger Grimsich looked as a quarterback should: He possessed a strong arm and was a fast runner and, by the time he reached high school, developed into a well-muscled 6-footer at almost 200 pounds, leading Greenwich High School to a 7-1-1 record in 1977 and a Western Division Fairfield County Interscholastic Athletic Conference title. Grimsich would later star in the QB role at University of Rhode Island after transferring from Boston College. Two years ahead of Steve in school, he was the right age to tutor Steve.

"I was a huge Dallas Cowboys fan when I was a kid," Steve said. "In my book, my two heroes were Roger Staubach, professionally, and Dave Grimsich, personally."

Steve watched Grimsich skillfully handle snaps and run the offense. It was then that Steve decided he wanted to be at the center of the action. What Steve also saw in Grimsich were leadership abilities. "Every player on North Mianus, at Eastern Junior High and at GHS, respected Dave," Steve said. "He possessed a quiet strength that I admired and I tried to replicate that."

He also partnered with Grimsich at North Mianus on a unique play all of them still talk about today: "Big Red."

"It was a right sweep," said Grimsich, who took the snap and ran in that direction." He would then pitch the ball to running back Bill Valle. Looking as if he would run down the right side, Valle stopped. "I counted a few seconds and then threw the ball down the field to a set spot," he said. Running a pre-determined post pattern was Steve, who had easily outrun his defenders. Catching the ball, Steve would turn and run the final 25 to 30 yards for the touchdown.

"I think we ran that play 30 times," Dan Grimsich recalled. "And it worked on 29 of them."

One degree of separation

While much of Steve Young's early life was idyllic, he secretly suffered with an anxiety that, for years, significantly steered parts of his life, especially during his days in Greenwich. The first instance of what would later be diagnosed as childhood separation anxiety occurred when Steve was in second grade and still living in Utah. Steve's parents had to go out of town for a few days, which required him to stay with relatives.

"I remember it vividly," he recalls. "My dad picked me up at school to take me to my aunt and uncle's house and I started wailing and crying; begging him not to take me."

Steve remembers the irony of the moment; the car radio was playing "Big Girls Don't Cry."

"But this little boy did and I was petrified," he said.

The family's move to Greenwich in 1970 did not minimize the problem. While the move itself to a new place could have been traumatic for a young boy with this level of anxiety, Steve believes that moving as a close family unit kept him safe in his own mind, as did his new surroundings.

"It was like a little Pleasantville," he said, "North Mianus School was in walking distance and the hill behind it made it feel very safe."

But while many kids enjoyed spending nights away at other friends' homes or going on overnight trips, Steve skillfully avoided those invitations. "As long as I could go home at night, I was tough and strong and aggressive, but I had to go home," he recalls. "I loved what I knew."

Getting his driver's license at 16 meant Steve could venture farther out but he still liked to remain within the confines of the town. "I was OK from one end of Greenwich to another, but if you sent me to a place like Poughkeepsie for the day, I would be very fearful."

Steve's biggest hurdle with the anxiety came in 1980 when he left Greenwich to attend his freshman year at BYU. "I remember my parents telling me, `It's time to go to college,' and I am like, deep down, saying, `No way.' I have my safety net here and this is where I am going to stay." He did make the trek west to Utah, but with great trepidation. "I was not like Christopher Columbus who could just sail away," Steve said. "So going off to college was one of the hardest things I ever had to do."

With time he was able to gain a sense of safety in Provo, but just as he seemed to be settling in he faced a new hurdle: A potential mission to another country, which the Mormon Church encourages of all of its young members. "I barely made it to college," recalls Steve, reflecting on the anxiety issue that first year. "And now I have to consider going to a place like Guatemala. Even though I was battling with this I was still determined to go."

Ultimately other factors came into play, which kept Steve at BYU, so he did not have to make a choice. Most medical experts agree that childhood separation anxiety affects about 5 percent of children in the United States between ages 7 and 11, but some suffer well beyond their childhood years.

"It was not until 35 when I was playing in the NFL that I really understood what I had," Steve said. "But I was able to deal with it head on and am now OK."

Steve's decision to speak out about this has to do with his love for children, a hallmark of his life of giving back. "If I can help a young boy or girl facing what I had to face when I was young, it is well worth the discussion."

Christopher W. Hunt is an award-winning author and business writer. Scott A. Scanlon contributed to this article.

Tomorrow: Young's slump at the plate, resolve to become starting quarterback and first kiss.