Mild-Mannered Mike Laces Up His Skates and Turns Into a Terrible T-Bird : Roller Derby Makes Cable Comeback

Mike Flaningam. Surfer-blond skating star of the World Champion Los Angeles T-Birds, man in the middle of this week’s controversy in the International Roller Derby League. No. 5 on your roster, No. 1 in your heart. He screams and sweats nose-to-nose with the television camera: “They’re dead!”

He shakes a fist at the dreaded Golden State Bombers and especially at their bad guy, Bernard Jackson, who glides around the track sneering at the crowd, cracking his knuckles.

“I’ll get him!” Flaningam snarls.

Off camera, the 24-year-old will slump down in a chair and sort of grin and tell you he’s really a pretty quiet guy. Sits around the house a lot. Likes to walk through the woods and doodle with pastels. Drives like a grandmother. But don’t point a television camera at him, he says. If you do, watch out.

And this night, with the T-Birds skating against the arch-rival Bombers, you’d better watch out because, not only are the cameras rolling, Mike Flaningam is fighting mad.

Devilish Plan

It seems that Georgia Hase, the infamous Lady in Red and owner of the Northern Devils roller derby team, harbors a grudge against the champion Birds and is bent on breaking them up. The first step in her plan is to demand that the league send Flaningam to the Bombers to play elbow-to-elbow with big bad Bernard Jackson and take orders from the Bombers’ even more dastardly coach, Pretty Boy E. G. Miller.

“You’re gonna be on my team!” Miller screams at Flaningam. “First of all, we’re gonna make you take a bath. Then we’ll cut that crap on your head that you call hair. We’re gonna to make you a respectable skater.”

Now, E. G. Miller, besides being the Bombers’ coach, is a rather suspect figure. Slightly overweight and effeminate, Miller hops around the rink in blue deck shoes and matching sweat suit that reads, “THE BOMBER BOSS.” He has been known to charge onto the track during play to sucker-punch rival skaters. Mike Flaningam isn’t about to take anything from the Pretty Boy, especially on this night.

“You got no class,” Flaningam screams back. “I’m a T-Bird--long hair and all.”

This brings cheers from T-Bird fans at trackside, and the shouting match turns into a shoving match that comes to blows as the scene fades to a deodorant-soap commercial.

Welcome to roller derby. The sport, er, whatever it is, that everyone thought died 10 years ago is back and growing stronger every day.

Roller derby’s year-round traveling show once again plays to big-city crowds of 10,000 or more, and even games in smaller towns are bringing in half that, said William Griffiths, co-owner of the Burbank-based T-Birds and a major promoter in the league.

The rock ‘em, sock ‘em skaters are back on television, too. There is a new contract with ESPN, a nationwide sports cable network. Every Tuesday at 6:30 p.m., just after big-time wrestling, ESPN shows the roller derby game of the week. Slam ‘n’ Jam, ESPN calls it. The ratings have been good: ESPN considers a 2.0 rating excellent and roller derby has brought in a 1.7 for the first 14 weeks. That means 630,000 households each and every Tuesday night.

Not since roller derby’s halcyon days in the early 1970s, when Raquel Welch skated into the picture with her film, “Kansas City Bomber,” has the sport enjoyed so much attention. Of course, life on the International Roller Derby League circuit isn’t quite as sweet now as it was in the early ‘70s, or the early ‘50s, for that matter. But, talk to just about anyone in the league and they’ll tell you that it’s only a matter of time.

New Breed

At the center of it all is a new breed of roller derby skater. No longer are the oval tracks dominated by jaded, 30-year-old skaters, Griffiths said. The skaters of today are, well, a lot like Mike Flaningam.

“Mike’s a free-spirit. He’s almost a Rambo type of person. He’s a wild card in the deck. A lot of them are,” said Griffiths, whose father, Bill, was a pioneer father of roller derby. “They are young and vital 20-year-olds who want to go out there and mix it up and have fun. There’s a new enthusiasm there and the crowds feel it.”

By the time Flaningam and his male T-Bird teammates hit the track for the start of the second period, the Bombers have already taken a 12-10 lead.

You see, roller derby is a game of four periods played by two teams of two squads of five men and five women each. The men’s and women’s squads are never on the track at the same time; they alternate quarters. The women start the game. The teams skate around the track together in a “pack” of “blockers.” One skater from each team, the “jammers,” are sling-shot ahead and come up behind the pack. The jammers earn a point every time they lap the other team’s blockers, who in turn try to stop the jammer from skating past.

Got it?

Rotating Soap Opera

Don’t bother. Roller derby is hardly a game of points. It is more like rotating soap opera, blending the wrestling theatrics of fake bolo punches, kicking and screaming with the very real bruises of skaters being pounded to the Masonite track and flipped over the rail at 30 miles an hour. Somehow, the score always remains close and the game is usually decided in the final seconds of the fourth period.

“A lot of people think roller derby is fake,” Flaningam will tell you. “Roller derby’s 100% a sport.”

Flaningam and Jackson face off as the first jammers of the second period. Jackson outweighs “Rambo Mike” by at least a hundred pounds, and on the first play he uses that girth to flip the T-Birds’ star over the rail, punch him flat when he crawls back onto the track and kick him after the whistle has sounded. Flaningam is left sprawling on the floor. And that’s all in the first 30 seconds.

“I don’t like the cheap shots. I don’t like getting scarred up,” Flaningam says, pointing to various cuts, bruises and burns on his arms and shoulders.

Coaches Clash

E. G. Miller and T-Bird Coach John Hall suddenly burst onto the track to duke it out. Hall goes down in a heap. The women T-Birds storm after the Pretty Boy and knock him down, then squeal over his fallen body, swinging their satin shorts back and forth and raising fists in the air. The crowd cheers.

Back to the action. Jackson and the Bombers are on a hot streak and they ride it to a 20-12 lead. Then, in the final seconds of the half, Flaningam flies out as a jammer, led by none other than gray-haired roller derby legend Ralphy Valaderez. With time winding down, Flaningam careens around the track and scores a grand slam, passing all five of the Bomber players. The T-Birds go into half time trailing by only three points.

Flaningam, who lives in a Van Nuys apartment with his girlfriend, grew up in a devoutly Christian, Burbank home. He attended Little White Chapel church every Sunday. His mother, Lee, who has a degree in music, insisted that her son study music. Mike played violin. He sang in the youth chorale. He also suffered from asthma.

“Sports? No, I never played sports,” he said, laughing. “Mom said, ‘Uh-huh. No broken bones.’ ”

His only vice, if you could call it that, was the long hair. Flaningam will proudly tell you that today’s shoulder-length cut is nothing. When he was in junior high school, golden wavy hair fell to his waist.

There was also roller skating and skateboarding. It was Flaningam’s only transportation. He skated everywhere. He spent weekends at the skateboard park, whizzing through banked turns and flipping off tubes.

‘Skating Was My Life’

“Skating was my life. That’s what I did. There wasn’t much I couldn’t do out there except fly.”

He had seen roller derby on television, but only for the few seconds it took to flip the channel.

Lee Flaningam finally relaxed the restrictions on her son when he turned 16. No longer was Mike required to attend church or play the violin. No longer was he restricted from sports. The church stayed, the violin went, and Mike joined the cross-country team at Burroughs High School.

In 1979, two years and 50 added pounds of muscle later, Mike graduated from Burroughs and went to work as a carpenter. That summer, a girlfriend’s mother took him to a T-Birds game and introduced him to her friend, William Griffiths.

The next week, Flaningam donned jersey No. 5 in a game against, well, he doesn’t really remember. He’s been a T-Bird ever since.

“I finally feel like I’m getting out of my shell,” Flaningam said. “I want to be in at least 30 more years,” he said of the roller derby. “I should be extraordinary when I’m 35.”

Griffiths said he pays his skaters anywhere from $25,000 to $135,000 a year. Flaningam will not talk salary. Griffiths said it would not be unusual for a skater of Flaningam’s stature to fall into the $35,000 to $40,000 range.

In the third period, the T-Bird women pull to within one point, 27-28, and win, six knockdowns to four, in a brawl-filled quarter.

“The girls are having a social out there,” chuckles television announcer Ted Marolf.

The T-Bird men have less success. Jackson again launches Flaningam over the rail. The blimpish Bomber racks up four points and, with less than four minutes to go in the game, Golden State leads 37-27.

The T-Birds fight their way back to a tie and, with 30 seconds left in the game, Flaningam and Jackson shoot ahead of the pack for a final, last-second showdown. The two skate warily, jockeying for position. Then pandemonium breaks out.

“I can’t believe it!” Marolf shouts. “E. G. Miller is out on the track!”

Miller sneaks behind Flaningam and his teammates and throws a crucial block. Jackson scoots past and the Bombers are 41-37 winners.

Epithets and fists fly. Flaningam throws his helmet to the track in disgust. The bad guys have won.

“I can’t believe it!” Marolf shouts.

That, as they say, is professional roller derby.