Steve Young: A new chapter

He suffered from anxieties as a kid, and those were later exacerbated by football and playing in front of crowds. "In school, I was always the kid in the back row, twirling his hair with his fingers and scared to death," he says. "You take that kid and make him quarterback, and he would have thrown up before every game."

At BYU, he threw up before games and wished the stadium would blow up before Saturday arrived. Seeing him throw up before and during 49er games, new teammates wondered if he had the flu until they noticed it lasted all season. Driving back to the team hotel after his Super Bowl victory in 1995, Young threw up on the side of the road. He was so frazzled before that Super Bowl that 18 hours before kickoff he called the front desk of the team hotel and requested that the bed of tight end Brent Jones be moved into his room so they could go over the game plan together.

"Before games we'd find him in the bat cave — that's what we called it," says Sherry. "The day before a game he would hole up in the dark in his hotel room watching movies, trying to relax and get his mind off the game."

Young once made a telling remark when an old acquaintance asked him, at the height of his days with the 49ers, if he was enjoying his life. "You know me," he said. "Do I ever enjoy anything?"

While vacillating over the decision to retire, he told his father, "Maybe I'll just go out and play relaxed and enjoy it this time." But Grit told him he could never do that, and his son knew he was right.

Herrmann, a former NFL and BYU player himself, lived with Young for two years in San Francisco and saw firsthand how anxiety ate at his buddy.

"He had so much anxiety and wanted to succeed so badly, he let it almost ruin his life," says Herrmann. "It overtook him. He became an unhappy guy. I'd say, 'Let's go see a movie or walk around the mall,' and he'd say, 'Are you crazy? I have a game in two days.' I'd say, 'Yeah, so what's the problem?' It was so consuming that it really sucked the life out of him. It was overwhelming.

"He's really grown and matured," Herrmann says. "He's looked back with — well, not quite with regret — but he's said, 'What was I thinking? Why didn't I smell the roses along the way?' But — and I hate to say this — it's kind of what made him successful, too."