Rams that time forgot

Throughout the NFL today, former players will roam their old stadium homes, shaking hands, hearing cheers, spreading history.

In Southern California, former Los Angeles Rams guard Dennis Harrah won’t even turn on the television.

“I don’t love Sundays,” he said. “It’s like I never even played.”

Throughout the NFL today, former players will provide living links to current ones, on sidelines, in broadcast booths, a weekly melding of past and present.

In Southern California, former Los Angeles Rams running back Eric Dickerson doesn’t really care.

“I’m not a big NFL fan,” he said. “The history that I had here is gone.”

They were once the cornerstones of Los Angeles’ most popular franchise, the builders of one of the nation’s most solid sporting skylines.

Today they don’t even have a working address.

They are legends without legacy, history without memory, stars of a team that no longer exists in a town that no longer cares.

Almost 14 years after the late Georgia Rosenbloom packed up the Rams and dragged them to St. Louis, they are the strange collection of boxes that remain.

Alive, alert, but alone, former Rams who lost not only a team, but an identity.

“There’s no place for our memories to go, there’s nothing in our past that we can touch,” Harrah said. “We’re lost.”

By most estimates, there are about two dozen former Rams still living in Southern California.

Many are successful businessmen who have parlayed their football skills into marketable careers. They do not wish for special treatment, nor have any interest in pity.

But sometimes they think, wouldn’t it be nice if they could show their children who they were?

“I would love to take my sons to the place I played, to see the team that I played for, but that’s not possible,” Harrah said. “This has been like a bad divorce, where you just can’t go back.”

Then sometimes they think, wouldn’t it be nice to occasionally feel the embrace of a sports community that they worked so hard to create?

“I go back to New York and see Lawrence Taylor go to Giants Stadium and hear everyone shouting nice things to him, like he’s come home, and I kind of wonder what that would feel like,” Dickerson said.

While the former Raiders can just grab a flight to Oakland for the weekend, and often do, there is nowhere these former Rams can be Rams.

St. Louis? Those Rams -- those Rams -- have tried to welcome them, inducting 10 former Los Angeles Rams into their Ring of Fame, inviting them back for various ceremonies.

But it’s not the same.

Listen to Harrah, who spent his entire 13-year career as a Los Angeles Ram, from 1975 to 1987, helping them to six division titles and one appearance in the NFC championship game.

“I’m back there for a ceremony for some former players, and they introduce Lawrence McCutcheon, and there is a very quiet clap-clap-clap,” Harrah recalled. “Then they introduce Dan Dierdorf, and there is a standing ovation.”

McCutcheon played for the L.A. Rams. Dierdorf played for the St. Louis Cardinals.

“At that point, I said to myself, ‘This divorce is really final,’ ” Harrah said.

Listen to Dickerson, who spent the first five years of his Hall of Fame career here, from 1983 to 1987, before an ugly contract-related trade.

“I went back to St. Louis to be honored, and it was very nice, but it was also odd,” he said. “It’s like Iraq and the United States talking nicely to each other.”

For several years, the former Rams were recognized in an Orange County Hall of Fame at Angel Stadium. But the Angels eventually needed the room, and the memorabilia was stored away in boxes, where it remains today.

An attempt to fill that void occurred two summers ago at the Coliseum, at a reunion that included the unveiling of a Rams plaque. It was nice and classy and the Coliseum folks should be commended. But that’s one day out of 14 years of empty Sundays.

“I go back to my old college [Southern Methodist] at least once a year, and it’s great,” Dickerson said. “I go back because, while we’re not a great team, at least we still have a team.”

In these difficult economic times, of course, the Rams aren’t the only ones whose companies have disappeared. But nowhere is history sustained on a daily basis like in sports.

As long as there is a Dodgers team, folks will be reminded of the greatness of former Dodgers, whether they are introduced from the announcer’s booth like Fernando Valenzuela, or throwing out a first pitch like Duke Snider.

As long as there are Lakers, there will be Lakers sitting behind the bench like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, sitting under the basket like Magic Johnson, or walking onto the court for a pregame ceremony like Rick Fox.

The Rams were once as big as both of those teams here. Yet their former players will never be visible as Rams again, no old-timers’ games, or ceremonial coin tosses or sideline presence.

Think of this the next time you hear about the NFL moving an existing team here. Think not of the void it would fill. Think of the void it would create.

“We have a lot of stories to tell,” Harrah said, sighing. “But no place to tell them, and nobody to listen.”

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bill.plaschke@latimes.com

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