For Hatcher, One <i> Isn’t</i> Loneliest Number : All-Pro Happily Faces Second Training Camp as Rams’ Lone Punter

Dale Hatcher, from Cheraw, S.C. (pop. 9,000), arrived at the Rams’ training camp a year ago with fear in his heart and a lump in his throat.

“Last year, when they used to call ‘punt team,’ I was always real nervous because I was afraid I’d mess up and get hollered at in the drill, because Coach (Gil) Haskell likes the ball to go perfect,” Hatcher recalled.

That’s when a veteran will take a rookie under his wing, but the veteran punters were John Misko and Russell Erxleben--the former being the incumbent, the latter an old pro trying to latch on with a new team. They were fighting for their own jobs against long odds. Considering that the Rams had spent a third-round draft choice on the husky country boy from Clemson, they weren’t about to give him a break. Mind games were in order.

“They tried to mess me up,” Hatcher said.

Kickers live in a little world of their own, isolated from the physical types, but placekicker Mike Lansford knew what was going on.

“They (Misko and Erxleben) would tell him to step right when he was supposed to step left,” Lansford said.

Hatcher said: “If we hit one out to the wrong side, it screws up the guys running down the field.”

Lansford said: “John and Russell would sit back and laugh that a three-step punter wouldn’t make it.”

But a year later, Hatcher has made it bigger than he dreamed. He has been to the Pro Bowl. He has had his hometown homage. And he’s the only punter in camp this season.

“So this year, when I get in there, I’m ready for ‘em,” he said. “I love it. I feel good. I don’t have that fear.”

Hatcher averaged 43.2 yards gross and, more important, an NFL best of 38.0 yards net (gross minus return), on 87 punts, the fourth highest total in Ram history.

Haskell, the special teams coach, said: “I’ve seen quite a few punters, but I’ve never seen one like him.”

Haskell returned from a scouting trip in the spring of ’85 raving about Hatcher’s ability to send footballs soaring into the stratosphere, but even after the Rams drafted him there were skeptics.

“People would invent negatives about him,” Haskell said, “(that) he couldn’t two-step, he couldn’t put it down inside the 20. He did it 32 times (second in the league to the Raiders’ Ray Guy with 33).”

Hatcher not only could kick the Ram offense out of a jam but, with his towering boots that floated to earth on predetermined spots as if by remote control, also cowed opponents back to their goal lines to make fair catches of his unfair kicks.

Sometimes Hatcher kicks too far. Haskell said in one recent practice session, three of his punts measured 60 yards from the line of scrimmage, one 54 and another 47.

“That’s too far,” Haskell said. “We can’t cover. The punt returner has 10 yards to work with before our guys can get there.”

So Hatcher learned finesse. His earlier lessons were by imitation.

“I just kind of taught myself, picking up stuff from the pros on TV, watching Monday night football and the games on Sunday,” Hatcher said. “I’d just always watch the punters to see what they did. I’d get books and read ‘em and go out and try to put it all together.

“Then I got to thinking, well, if I’m gonna be a punter, I’ve got to learn to get the ball off quick. I’ve got to learn not to worry about people coming in to block it. All of that kind of came together.”

He has unabashed admiration for Guy.

“He’s always been like The Man to me,” Hatcher said. “He’s like perfect, a model to me.”

Yet, both are known more as boomers--and Hatcher admits he gets a bigger thrill kicking one out of sight than dropping one inside the 20.

“I don’t really know how to explain it,” Hatcher said. “It’s just a smooth feeling. You just look up and the ball’s going. It’s a great feeling. I love to watch it go.

“My freshman year at Clemson, we were playing at the University of South Carolina. They had artificial turf and there was a little bit of wind blowing that day and a lot of people there from Cheraw. One guy sitting in the stands said I was kicking ‘em 85 yards in the air warming up.

“I have kicked ‘em--and this ain’t no lie--when I was in high school I’d go out to a field and kick ‘em from one end to the other with a roll. I could kick 65 yards in the ninth grade, but I didn’t get nearly the hang time I get now.”

Haskell has measured Hatcher’s hang time as long as 5.4 seconds in practice, “which is unreal,” Haskell said. “He’s been 5.1 in games.”

The Ram season record for gross punting average is 45.5 yards by Danny Villanueva in 1962.

“The game wasn’t as sophisticated then,” Haskell said. “They’d let the ball roll and roll. Nowadays, if a receiver won’t catch it, they’ll put somebody else back there.”

Also, Hatcher isn’t always going for distance. The Rams have two basic types of punts--”regular” and “down it”--and even on regular, Hatcher has to hold back a bit.

“We don’t want him to outkick the coverage,” Haskell said.

So Villanueva’s record may be safe, even if Hatcher’s power is unsurpassed.

He is 6-feet-2, 212 pounds, and not only has thunderous thighs but a powerful upper body. He led the Rams’ softball team with “eight or nine” home runs--he isn’t sure which--in as many games, including three in one night.

“And I played with a church league on Monday night and hit three or four with them,” Hatcher added.

As a high school pitcher, he was 21-1 his last two years and led the team in homers.

“A guy from the Pittsburgh Pirates talked to me in my senior year about pitching,” Hatcher said. “When I wasn’t pitching, they’d put me in center field or left field because I could throw the ball pretty good and catch. They said they thought I had a major league arm.

“My batting average my senior year was about .500. I’ve never been a real fast runner, but that scout says, ‘The way you hit the ball, you don’t have to be.’

“But football was always No. 1. I always enjoyed punting a lot more. I liked pitching, too, but in baseball you’ve gotta go through the minor leagues.”

The folks in Cheraw recalled all of that when Hatcher returned home after the Pro Bowl this year.

“They had a big old banquet for me,” he said. “Had the mayor there and everybody else. My uncle works for ARA Services--they cater food--and he cooked a barbecue on a big old thing. There were I think like 160 people there, all the most important people.

“They had a TV and I took our VCR and put the tape in of the Pro Bowl and let ‘em watch it, and they had a table for me to sit and sign autographs. Mr. Hewitt (Ram equipment manager Don Hewitt) sent my jersey down to home and they auctioned it off and got like $305, and I gave it to the American Cancer Society. They gave me a plaque.”

Hatcher and his wife, Lindley, also became parents of a daughter, Morgan Wynn, on July 8. What else could a man want?

For a while, he thought there was more.

“I think I’ve gotten all that out of my system now, wanting all those cars and stuff,” Hatcher said.

He has traded in his four-wheel-drive truck for a van and is trying to unload the Porsche he leases.

“I’ve learned that a car, just as long as it’ll get you where you want to go, that’s all that matters. I’m gonna start saving some money, investing it. I just want to be me. I don’t want to change.

“The only reason I wanted those cars was not to show off. It just made me feel successful, because I never had that when I was growing up. My momma and daddy never could afford to buy me a car. I felt like the one reason I was working toward becoming a professional punter was to have what I wanted. And after I got it, I see that it’s not everything, and it doesn’t mean as much to me now.”

Hatcher may have been somewhat naive when he came to the Rams, but Haskell initially recognized that “he was very mature in that he could handle very difficult situations without coming apart.”

Hatcher said: “I was surprised by my first year. I didn’t expect to do that well and go to the Pro Bowl. It was weird. I was there and I was with the best in the league. I’d been watching these guys on TV for years, and there I was playing with ‘em.

“Being my first year, I kind of felt out of place, but I didn’t worry about that. I just tried to do my job.”

Ram Notes Most of the 22 players who took it easy in Friday’s practice because of sore muscles and joints returned to full duty Saturday, although cornerback LeRoy Irvin was out with a mild ankle sprain. The hard first week of practice was “a plan,” Coach John Robinson said. “We’re trying to wear them down as much as we can. Football’s a game that demands almost total commitment.” The players will have a light session at 7 tonight and lighten up next week, with a full day off after Tuesday night’s opening exercise with the Houston Oilers. . . . Running back Mike Guman went to Pennsylvania Saturday to attend his mother-in-law’s funeral. . . . Tight end Tony Hunter’s wife Joan gave birth Friday to their first child, a daughter. She weighed 8 pounds, 11 1/2 ounces, and they named her India Jamila. The middle name means “beautiful woman” in Arabic. . . . Russ Bolinger, who retired after last season, has a role in the play “Goodbye, Charlie” currently running in Costa Mesa.