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Remembering the NFL strike of 1987(Sacramento Bee, The (CA) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) SACRAMENTO, Calif. _ They were strange days indeed, the 1987 NFL players' strike, when you could just as easily find your favorite player sporting a sandwich board, picketing his team's headquarters and harassing bus loads of "replacement players" as you could stumble upon him crossing those same pickets to play alongside said "scabs" for three games that counted in the standings. The "Phony-Niners" took over Candlestick Park. The "Masque-Raiders" did their thing in Los Angeles. The "Dol-Finks" broke in a new stadium in South Florida. The "Spare Bears" tried to replicate the Monsters of the Midway. And the "Scab-Skins" served as a catapult to a Super Bowl title. "It was an ugly situation," said former Jackson High School star Vance Mueller, who was in his second NFL season with the Raiders when the strike hit. "A mind-blowing experience." How long ago was the strike, which eventually led to free agency? There are but two active players who were around back then Atlanta kicker Morten Andersen and Carolina quarterback Vinny Testaverde. But how deep is the scar tissue? Innate enough to still get Hall of Fame quarterback Dan Marino riled up. "All they did was take game checks away from guys that were the real NFL players that had families and had situations in their life that they had to take care of," Marino said of the replacements on HBO's "Inside the NFL." "I wasn't happy about it. And I know over time ... you tend to forget about it, but you always remember what they did and who they were." Twenty years and a week after the second NFL work stoppage in five years came to a merciful close, The Bee looks at how the surreal strike of 1987 is seen from three perspectives. The Replacements Tracy Franz (Rio Americano High) and Gary Hoffman (Christian Brothers High) were beneficiaries of the owners' desire to not lose revenue through lost games, as they experienced in the 57-day 1982 strike. That season was reduced to nine games. This time, the owners invited non-union players to suit up, and only one game was lost. Franz, who played at San Jose State and in the USFL with the Oakland Invaders, and Hoffman, who played collegiately at Santa Clara and spent a season with Green Bay, suddenly were offensive linemates on the 49ers' replacement team after both were cut by San Francisco during training camp. "Bill Walsh did a good job of holding the team together," said Hoffman, who was running a Santa Clara watering hole called The Hut when the 49ers called. "In our first game, we were playing the New York Giants and about halfway through the third quarter, we ran some option on them. I remember Bill Parcells looking across the field at Bill Walsh and throwing his hands up in the air. "Hey, you've got to deal with what you're dealt." Walsh also looked to baseball for some motivation, as the Giants had just fallen to the St.Louis Cardinals in the National League Championship Series and the 49ers were about to host the then-St.Louis Cardinals in the final replacement game. "He said we had a responsibility to get the city's honor back," Hoffman said. The 49ers' compound, then in Redwood City, was a sanctuary, of sorts, for the replacements. There was no physical picket to speak of and with such stars as Joe Montana, Roger Craig and Dwight Clark breaking ranks to play with the likes of Hoffman and Franz, "it made it all the more special," Franz said. "When they called us back, it was like they had already put their ducks in a line," said Franz, who was working in construction when the invite came. He now runs his own trucking business in Carmichael, and his daughter Michelle plays volleyball at Sac State. "After six weeks of double-days in training camp and the 49ers ask you to come back, you don't look at it like you're crossing some line. It was more like a tryout. "A couple of guys stuck and won Super Bowl rings the next year." Neither regrets breaking the strike. And neither played football again after the strike ended. "If Marino wasn't on anyone's roster, he would have crossed that line, too," said Hoffman, who now manages a motor home dealership in Eugene, Ore. "It was just a bunch of guys that wanted to play football." The Wide-Eyed Youngster As a second-year pro, Mueller was more concerned about his own job security than in harboring resentment toward "scabs." Plus, the Raiders still were full of old-school, roughneck veterans who ruled the locker room with a Silver and Black fist and a fearsome picket was in full effect at the L.A.Raiders' El Segundo headquarters. "Whatever the older guys are doing, I'm doing," the former running back recalled thinking. "The last thing I want to do is (tick) off Matt Millen. Al LoCosale and Al Davis, I could take some barbs from them. But I didn't want Matt Millen throwing right hooks at me on the field." Twenty years later, Mueller still laughs uneasily about the tension. "Standing out in front, I was trying to figure out if it was a good thing or a bad thing to picket, wondering if Al Davis was looking out his window and sees me marching around out here with a sign. "We were supporting our brothers but then you're like, They're writing down our names right now. We're going to get cut." The Coach Tom Flores was in his ninth season as Raiders coach when L.A. had to cobble together a replacement team. "It wasn't as awkward," he said, "as it was tiring and exhausting." So much so that the stress of the strike-marred 1987 season, which included the search for a quarterback in the wake of Jim Plunkett's retirement, the arrival of Bo Jackson and figuring out how to play him and Marcus Allen, contributed to Flores' early retirement. "Coming out of training camp we had a decent team because we knew how to win," said Flores, now a Raiders radio broadcaster. "We weren't prepared, though we knew what was looming. We had to go back to training camp, cold turkey." Flores, who later became Seattle's coach and general manager before returning to the Raiders, said the strike's hard feelings doomed that season. "Some guys crossed; we weren't the same after that," he said. "There was this feeling that something just wasn't right. It disrupted the flow. It was hard to get back." The Raiders were 2-0 when the strike hit, went 1-2 in replacement games and finished 5-10. "There was a point in time where you didn't ask where (the replacements) were from," Flores said. "We had to hide them out. That was different. It was kind of like Gestapo times, or something. Looking back, the whole thing was foolish, grown men acting like that." ___ (c) 2007, The Sacramento Bee (Sacramento, Calif.). Visit The Sacramento Bee online at http://www.sacbee.com/ Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. Copyright 2007 McClatchy Newspapers |