Bain’s Bane : He Can’t Stand the Heat, Gets Out of Missouri; His Career May Be Over, but He’s Cool

Bill Bain asked for his liberty and got it: Liberty, Mo.

If he had it to do over, he would still be a Ram.

“It was a bad mistake on my part,” he said of his 10-day stint with the Kansas City Chiefs. “Football was no problem. The humidity was. That’s what broke me.”

Bain is back home in Dana Point, where he can sit by his pool and feel the ocean breeze, far removed in climate, geography and life style from the Chiefs’ training camp at William Jewell College in Liberty, Mo.

Bain started at offensive left tackle for the Rams in 1983 and ‘84, but asked for his release after the ’85 season, when he was replaced by Irv Pankey.

The Chiefs then signed him to a one-year contract and now consider him retired since he left camp last week. Bain says he would still like to play, but not anywhere east of California. He said he would ask the Chiefs to relinquish their rights.

“I went in there in my exuberance to play, with every good intention, and I was playing left tackle for them and I was doing well,” he said. “I was knocking the hell out of people. But after playing all these years in California, my body isn’t acclimated to it.”

On the day his father arrived, delivering his car from California, Bain loaded his belongings and headed back home.

“It wasn’t that I was out of shape,” he said. “You just have to be youthful or you have to be living in it during the off-season, or born and raised, or come to camp a month ahead of time and get used to it. Plus, they’re having a heat wave back there.”

A Chief spokesman, Bob Sprenger, said from Liberty: “It was very humid. We went through some very tough days in the high 90s, with the humidity in the high 80s. What hurt him as much as anything was that at one point we had only six offensive linemen, so those guys were having to do a lot.”

Bain said: “Somebody read a story to me that they had stopped practice for me and dumped a bucket of water over my head. My God, it never got that bad, but it was too much. It was a mistake to go and try to beat it.”

Bain signed with the Chiefs and started workouts three days before most of the other veterans arrived. He was working with the first unit, although his position had been earmarked for rookie Brian Jozwiak, the Chiefs’ first-round draft choice.

Jozwiak, a 309-pound player from West Virginia, ended a 19-day holdout Tuesday, but Bain said he wasn’t concerned about Jozwiak.

“Can he play?” he asked. “I was an All-American at SC and I couldn’t block a damn egg when I went to the pros. It was halfway through the season before I learned how to play.”

Bain’s only problem, he said, was that he is a California football player. “My body’s definitely acclimated to California. I played my best football here in high school (St. Paul), at SC and with the Rams. When you get older, it’s rough (to adjust).”

Bain will turn 34 Saturday. When the Rams granted him his freedom after last season, Coach John Robinson told him he would be welcomed back to compete for a position if nothing else worked out.

“I wish I would have sat here and waited for things to get back to normal for a California team--as bad as it sounds, wait for somebody to get hurt,” Bain said.

Sprenger indicated that Bain could return to the Chiefs if he changed his mind.

“We all tried to talk him into staying,” Sprenger said. “The door is still open.”

And if Bain asks for his release?

Sprenger said: “I would think we would do whatever he wanted us to do.”

Bain said: “If nothing happens, it’s been my decision and I’ll live with it. If I’m out of pro ball . . . the word around the league probably is that I can’t take humidity past the California line. They’re not going to say, ‘Let’s see, it’s October, maybe Bain will play now.’ ”

Actually, the weather in Liberty has taken a turn for the better. “It’s not too bad,” Sprenger said. “It started getting better about the time Bill left.”