Ken Williams would have preferred being in Indianapolis this weekend, but he lost his reason for being there. “Unfortunately I’m not there,” Williams said Friday. “I would like to have been, but I’m in Greenwich, Conn., with my girlfriend.”

Williams, general manager of the Chicago White Sox, wanted to be in Indianapolis Sunday watching his son Kyle play in the Super Bowl for the San Francisco 49ers against the New England Patriots. But Kyle spoiled those plans, committing a fumble that led to a field goal in overtime that gave the New York Giants a 20-17 victory in the National Conference championship game two weeks ago.

“It gives you aches and pains to see your children go through that,” Williams said in a telephone conversation Friday. “But as a father I couldn’t be more proud than to see how he handled it. I would expect nothing else from the Williams boys.”

The elder Williams referred to his son’s standup post-game response to masses of reporters, repeatedly answering the same questions about his fatal miscue, which actually was his second error of the game as a kick returner. Kyle Williams was also the target of death threats from disappointed 49ers’ fans.

Several days after the game, Ken Williams talked to reporters about the game for the first time at an annual White Sox off-season fan function.

“Through it all, the young man has shown me exactly who I thought he was, which is a man of character, a strong-minded, tough son of a gun,” Williams had told reporters a week earlier. “He’s hurting right now … Believe me, I’m not happy with some of the death threats and some of the things that are unfortunately part of our culture. I wish it weren’t that way, but I have first-hand knowledge of it being that way.

“He grew up in a household where he knew exactly what to expect. He stood up in front of more media than I’ve ever stood in front of and told them exactly what he felt, and took responsibility. How can a father be anything but proud?”

I repeat what Williams said a week earlier because when he learned that I was calling to talk about what his son endured in and as a result of the 49ers-Giants game, he politely said he would have nothing more to say about it.

“We’re just letting things go,” the elder Williams said. “I’ve commented enough on Kyle. He’s distancing himself from it. We talked about it for three or four days, both of us. That’s enough. We’ve cut it off. We don’t need to see Kyle’s name in the papers any more. When he gets to training camp next summer, we can talk about it again.”

Yet I feel it’s necessary to commend Kyle for his post-game class act in answering all of the questions and his father for raising him to be the man he showed he was. Kyle was obviously hurting, but he knew he was obliged to talk about his fumble that might have cost his team the Super Bowl.

I say “might have” because there’s no guarantee the 49ers would have scored and won the game if Williams hadn’t fumbled. But his play will long be remembered as the reason the Giants and not the 49ers went to Indianapolis.

Father and son have undergone similar athletic experiences, playing baseball and football until they wound up opting for different sports.

Kenny Williams played football in his one year at Stanford, just long enough to be a teammate of John Elway and an eyewitness to what may be college football’s zaniest play ever. Actually, Williams was supposed to be on the field for the play, or The Play, as it is called in some college circles, but was pulled off at the last second.

He maintains to this day that had he been on the field the University of California would not have scored the winning touchdown on five post-kickoff laterals with Cal ball carriers darting between members of the Stanford marching band, which had gone onto the field prematurely, thinking the game was over with its team the winner.

Williams, however, was drafted by the White Sox in the third round of the 1982 draft, and his football career was over. A six-year major league outfielder, he became the White Sox general manager in 2000 and was the architect of the winner of the 2005 World Series.

Like his father, Kyle Williams was a two-sport star in high school, and he planned to play both sports at Arizona State University. But injuries and Dennis Erickson, the football coach, scuttled the plan. Erickson told Williams that he couldn’t play both baseball and football, and defying the family practice, he chose football. Later, when he thought about trying baseball, injuries kept him from doing it.

Williams was a wide receiver at Arizona State for four years, then was selected by the 49ers in the sixth round of the 2010 draft. A speedy switch-hitting second baseman, Williams had been drafted by his father’s White Sox in the 47^th round in 2006 when he was coming out of high school. Could he have made it in baseball? “He was on a baseball track,” his father said. “He would have been there.”

And if he had been there, he wouldn’t have been at Candlestick Park losing a punt and the N.F.C. title game.

MULTI-SPORT GUYS

Imagine this happening today. When Gene Conley retired from his career as a professional athlete, he went to work for a duct tape company. Considering his athletic career, if he played today, Conley would not have to work another day in his life.

Who is Gene Conley? He is an 81-year-old retiree who is the only person who played for championship teams in two major professional sports. He pitched for the World Series champion Milwaukee Braves in 1957 and played forward for the Boston Celtics in their championship seasons of 1959, ’60 and ’61.

Why do I bring up Conley today? Because his kind appears to be extinct and is discouraged. As I related above, when Kyle Williams went to Arizona State University in 2006, he wanted to play football and baseball, but the football coach told him he had to choose one or the other; he couldn’t do both.

Closer to home, I know an outstanding high school athlete – all right, he’s my grandson – who wanted to pitch and play football but was told one or the other.

Now coaches might tell that to kids for their own good. Better to concentrate on one sport and perfect it rather than divide your time. I always felt that Bo Jackson could have developed into a terrific, not just good, baseball player had he focused on and worked at one sport. He might have avoided injury and enjoyed a longer career, too, if he had given up football and played baseball exclusively. The same for Deion Sanders and Brian Jordan.

Dave Winfield was drafted in three sports, but he eschewed football and basketball and became a Hall of Famer, not to mention wealthy, baseball player.

Some players have tried two sports professionally but given up one. Danny Ainge, who couldn’t hit major league pitching, gave up baseball and stuck with basketball. Conley didn’t have to hit because he was a pitcher; he batted a meager .192 in 11 seasons. Ainge hit .220 in three seasons with Toronto (1979-81) and quickly sought refuge in the National Basketball Association.

John Elway, on the other hand, signed a lucrative contract (what else?) with the New York Yankees and hit a respectable .318 in 42 games for Class A Oneonta in 1982. But football was his sport, Elway decided, and gave up baseball for a football career, in which he became a two-time Super Bowl champion and a Hall of Famer.

Two years before the Yankees drafted Elway, the Kansas City Royals drafted him in 1979, but he didn’t sign with them. In that same draft the Royals also selected Dan Marino, but the Royals didn’t sign him either.

They picked Marino in the fourth round, Elway in the 18^th, obviously gambling that one of them might decide to sign. They didn’t, of course, and all the Royals could do was watch from a distance as Elway and Marino became two of the greatest quarterbacks in N.F.L. history.

TALES OF TWISTED CAREERS

Not all players who were two-sport stars gave up baseball for football. Mike Teevan of the commissioner’s office has kept track of such developments and cites these players as among those who could have played either sport, after playing both in high school and/or college, and opted for baseball: Joe Mauer, Carl Crawford, CC Sabathia, Zack Greinke, Todd Helton, Matt Holliday, Darin Erstad, Frank Thomas, Grady Sizemore.

Another name on that list is Jeff Samardzija, who is a Chicago Cubs’ pitcher after abandoning his promising football career.

Samardzija, a wide receiver at Notre Dame, had a terrific junior season in 2005, catching 77 passes and setting single-season records in receiving yardage (1,215) and touchdown catches (15). A year later, he finished his college career as Notre Dame’s all-time leader in pass-catching yardage (2,593).

But football would not be his career. Instead he has been a reliever with the Cubs, last year appearing in 75 games and emerging with a 2.97 earned run average. He walked too many, 50 in 88 innings, but also struck out a lot, 87.

Two college quarterbacks are playing baseball and were teammates with Colorado before the Rockies traded Seth Smith last month. As quarterbacks, Smith, at Mississippi, and Todd Helton, at Tennessee, had somewhat similar relationships with the same family.

Helton began the 1994 season as Tennessee’s second-string quarterback, but he became No. 1 when the starter was injured in the season opener. A few games later Helton suffered a knee injury and was replaced by a freshman named Peyton Manning.

Smith was also a backup quarterback, holding that role for three seasons at Mississippi. Who was the starter? Peyton Manning’s younger brother, Eli.

Peyton’s and Eli’s father, Archie, also a quarterback, was selected in the third round of the 1971 baseball draft but passed up the opportunity to play for the Chicago White Sox, choosing football instead.

Then there is the tale of Pat White, a quarterback, who also pitched and played the outfield in high school and led his team to two state titles. Despite torrid baseball interest in him, White went to West Virginia University to play football.

White was drafted four times by three different baseball teams, the first time in 2004, the last time in 2009, but football it was for him, and he wound up signing with the Miami Dolphins. The Dolphins, however, released him last September, and he decided he might as well try baseball, no matter how belatedly.

White signed a minor league contract with the Kansas City Royals in September, but he will not be in spring training. He has retired before he could begin his delayed baseball career.

Adam Dunn had a peculiar start to his baseball career. A second-round draft choice in 1998, he signed with Cincinnati and played his first minor league season that year. However, on Aug. 1 he left Billings to play football at the University of Texas, where he had a scholarship. In high school Dunn had been a productive quarterback

Dunn, though, stayed with the Longhorns for only one season, in which he was redshirted, meaning he didn’t play in any games. In the spring of 1999 he announced he was leaving school and would play baseball full time.

After enduring his putrid production offensively last season – he batted .159 – the Chicago White Sox might entertain the thought of having Dunn announce he was leaving baseball and returning to football full time.