THE CARDINALS’ GENE STALLINGS IS A MAN OF SENSITIVITY . . . : Even Coaches Can Cry

It’s 5:11 a.m. and the streets around Busch Stadium would make an ideal set for one of those post-nuclear-war movies. The only thing moving is a trash truck, a metallic monster foraging for refuse in the pre-dawn shadows.

There is but one sign of life, a light emanating from a single window of the stadium offices.

The second Gene Stallings, the rookie coach of the St. Louis Cardinals football team, opens the door to that office, you get the feeling you’ve slipped into another film genre.

His handshake is extra firm, his deep resonant Texas drawl makes Johnny Cash sound like a sissy and he carries himself like a marshal who tamed Tombstone without having to tote a side-iron.

Stallings, 51, is not the first National Football League coach to show up at work early. A few even bunk in their offices. Still, no one ever questioned this man’s work ethic or his knowledge of the game, for that matter.

After all, he learned his football from the best, spending 12 years as a player and coach under the legendary Paul (Bear) Bryant and another 14 as an assistant to Dallas’ Tom Landry.

Don’t get the idea Stallings is some kind of half-and-half clone, though. Heck, he doesn’t even wear a hat.

“They’re entirely different type of people, both immensely successful, of course,” Stallings said. “Coach Bryant was more of a people-oriented person. His players thought that whatever he said was the best thing, regardless of whether it was or not. If he said it, it didn’t have to go any further than that.

“Coach Landry’s players know that whatever he says is absolutely right because he’s researched it to the point that he speaks with authority.

“I can’t coach like Coach Bryant and I can’t coach like Coach Landry ‘cause everybody’s got to coach their own personality. I work the players hard, but I try to be fair. I’m not a buddy-buddy type guy, even though I like the players . . . always have.

“I try to be very well-organized. That I got from both Coach Bryant and Coach Landry.”

So, while the rest of the city sleeps, Stallings organizes practices, plots strategy, evaluates personnel and prepares for a new coaching challenge.

The Cardinals were ready for something new. After being picked by many experts to have a super--even Super Bowl--year in 1985, they lost 10 of their last 12 games and finished 5-11.

The players weren’t openly blaming Coach Jim Hanifan and his staff, but few complained when management fired Hanifan and brought in Stallings.

They welcomed this disciple of discipline.

“We wasted last year,” running back Stump Mitchell said. “Coach Hanifan had been here six years and I guess he felt he didn’t have to tell us what to do anymore. We won three of the first four and then everybody sort of just went their own separate ways.

“Now, I think everyone’s attitude has changed.”

Mitchell will get no argument from linebacker E. J. Junior, who played for Bryant at Alabama and sees Stallings as a younger version without the hat.

“He’s already instilled in this team a sense of urgency about regaining the respect we lost last year,” Junior said. “To say I see Coach Bryant’s influence is an understatement. There’s the emphasis on family, but it’s a business approach that comes from a discipline background.

“And there’s no buddy system like last year. Either the job gets done or you’re not in there.”

Junior believes that Stallings has “inherited” Bryant’s magical ability to get the most out of his players.

“We had a lot of good people out there last year, but we weren’t getting the job done,” Junior said. “Coach Bryant turned not-so-good players into good players, good players into great players and great players into consistently great players. I think Coach Stallings has a way of getting to a player’s potential, too.”

That was certainly the case at Dallas, where Stallings, the defensive backfield coach, helped turn a group of free agents--Cliff Harris, Charlie Waters and Everson Walls--and low-round draft picks--such as Michael Downs--into All-Pros.

“He’s very knowledgeable and very thorough,” said Dennis Thurman, a safety Stallings picked up the day after Dallas cut him last week. “He’s coached under the best, took a little from each and was smart enough to still be his own man.

“He hates people who don’t respect the game. It is a game, but it’s a profession, a livelihood, too. He says it’s an honor, even a blessing, and you shouldn’t take it for granted. He just won’t tolerate that.”

HARD GUY / SOFT GUY

Gene Stallings has four daughters and one son, 24-year-old Johnny. Johnny suffers from Down’s syndrome. Stallings knows all about taking things for granted and blessings, some of which come very well disguised.

He couldn’t hold back the tears during a flight from Dallas to St. Louis where he would be introduced as the new Cardinal coach.

“Johnny put his arms around me last night and said, ‘Pop, I’m proud of you,’ ” Stallings told reporters on the plane. “The doctors said he would never live to be 4. Then they said he would never make 11. It was a proud moment for me.”

Even cowboys cry sometimes.

“It was a real shock when you found out you have a little retarded child,” he said, tears again welling in his eyes. “You have a tendency to think that only happens in other people’s families.

“But it’s really turned out to be a blessing. We really enjoy him. Our children have been so sweet and kind to him and he’s added a dimension to our family we wouldn’t have had without him.

“God, I’m glad I’ve got him.”

Johnny has added perspective to Stallings’ professional life as well. The new Cardinal coach is a legend of sorts at Camarillo State Hospital, where he regularly showed up with boxes of pennants, posters, pictures, balls, sweatbands and shirts when the Cowboys were training in Thousand Oaks.

“It was no big deal,” Stallings said. “They used them as incentives for the kids to be good, you know.”

Today, on the eve of his first game as an National Football League head coach--his Cardinals play host to the Rams Sunday --Stallings will make a speech to benefit a St. Louis special education program.

He never forgets that charity really begins at home. Few may work any harder, but Stallings makes the time to play bridge with his wife and friends, go to a movie or take Johnny to a high school football game.

And despite a reputation as football’s answer to a Marine drill instructor, Stallings manages to bring a little charity out on the field.

“People respect him and what he’s been through,” quarterback Neil Lomax said. “He didn’t really have to earn that respect. He worked us hard in training camp, but I don’t think it was as bad as people expected.

“A lot of us spent the off-season preparing for hell.”

Speaking of hell . . .

BEAR’S FUNCTION IN JUNCTION

Stallings was a lanky end (they didn’t call them wide receivers in those days) out of Paris, Texas who ended up at Texas A&M; because his girlfriend (now wife), Ruth Ann, thought a military school might offer less temptations. (There were no co-eds at Texas A&M; in those days).

After an uneventful freshman year, a new coach took over. And that summer of 1954, the Aggie football team--to be remembered from then on as the Junction Boys--got their first taste of Bear Bryant.

More than 20 years later, the taste is still fresh to Stallings.

“We reported to College Station and he told us get a change of underwear and a pillow and we’re goin’ on a trip,” Stallings recalled. “Nobody knew where we were goin’.

“We went out and got on a couple of buses and took off. After a while we come to a place called Junction (Texas). . . . I’d never even heard of it.

“It had this pretty little creek in the back and everybody was playing in the water and havin’ canoe races. This was a day before practice started and that night, about 10:30 or 11, we were playin’ cards and Coach Bryant came down and said, ‘There’ll be no card playin’, but I won’t have to tell you after tonight ‘cause when it’s time to go to bed, you’ll be turnin’ the lights out.’

“We didn’t really know what he was talkin’ about. But we sure did the next day.”

The team was staying in Quonset huts and Stallings’ bunk was just a few inches from the tin roof. The temperature hovered around 100 degrees, but that didn’t stop a single player from stretching out when he had a second to rest.

“Anywhere there was a level piece of ground we practiced,” Stallings said. “You’d go ‘round one hut and there’d be one drill goin’ on and another ‘round this hut. Everywhere you looked, there’d be a drill.

“And there was these big ol’ goatheads. You know, sand burrs? And everywhere you put your hand down was one of these blue stickers. So we didn’t have a lot of wait-for on our stances.”

The next day, the Junction Boys awoke to discover it wasn’t a nightmare . . . and there was only one way out.

“We had one good football player from the year before,” Stallings said. “His name was Fred Broussard and he’d made all-conference as a sophomore. We’d gone down to this little town of Junction to work out on their field, ‘cause it didn’t have no goatheads on it, and Freddie walked off a drill.

“Coach Bryant asked him what his problem was and Freddie said he couldn’t do nothin’ right that day. That night, when Fred went to eat, they wouldn’t let him eat. The next mornin’, Coach Bryant told him, ‘If you’ll quit on my damn practice, you’ll quit on a game.’ And he fired him right there.

“Now here was a guy that we all thought was a great player and if he’d let him go, what would happen to us. Yeah, he got our attention in a hurry.”

For a week, the Aggies practiced until they dropped, then pulled themselves up and worked some more. On Saturday night, Bryant came in and asked how many players wanted to go to church the next day. Everyone raised their hands.

“So Coach Bryant said, ‘Great, we’ve had a good week of work and we’re all going to go to church tomorrow . . . right after practice.’

“We couldn’t believe it. But we all went. And I remember lookin’ down that pew and everyone was sound asleep.”

Stallings also remembers wishing the bus that took them into Junction would crash through the guard rail of a bridge.

“I used to, deep down, hope the brakes would fail or somethin’ and we’d go into the river and die. I wasn’t about to quit, but I thought if I could just die, it’d be over and an honorable way out.”

Ten days later, it was over. About 60 would-be Aggies left for Junction and only 29 returned to College Station.

“We left in two buses and came back in one,” Stallings says.

Twenty years later, the camp was re-created for the movie “Bear” with Stallings on hand as technical adviser.

“It was realistic. Anything I had to do with, it was realistic,” Stallings insists, grinning.

How realistic?

“They’d hired 75-80 actors that had some football experience and shaved their heads and all,” he said. “We ran wind sprints and full-speed tackling drills.

“I told ‘em, ‘Men, I know you can throw up on cue ‘cause that’s your business. But today, you’re gonna puke ‘cause your tired.’ ”

THE BEAR HUG

Stallings stayed with Bryant as a graduate assistant at Texas A&M; and then moved with his mentor to Alabama. In 1965, at the age of 29, he was named head coach at Texas A&M.;

That seven-year stint at the helm of the Aggie program remains his only experience as a head coach. And a less-than-satisfying one at that.

“I was head coach at 29 and that’s too early,” Stallings said. “We won the championship my third year there, which is too early. And it was awfully hard to recruit at military institution then. It was durin’ the war and everyone was protestin’.

“We’d go play Ohio State or Michigan and I would take some state troopers with us just to watch our plane.”

Stallings’ 27-45-1 record was less than spectacular, but there was one win, a 20-16 victory over Bryant’s Alabama team in the 1968 Cotton Bowl, that he’ll always treasure.

After the game, Bryant made his way through the crowd, found his protege and lifted him off the ground.

A real Bear hug from a man hardly prone to public displays of affection.

“He said he was tryin’ to throw me down,” Stallings says, smiling, “but I know he was happy to see us doin’ well. I played for him, I’d been on his staff and was the assistant head coach at Alabama when I left. He didn’t want to lose that game, but he was pleased to see us goin’ in the right direction.”

After the game, Stallings was answering sportswriters’ questions when the team manager got his attention and told him Bryant was coming in the locker room.

“I naturally assumed he was comin’ to see me so I excused myself and went to find him,” Stallings said. “I said, ‘Coach did you want to see me?’ And he says, ‘Nope, I sure didn’t. I’ve seen enough of you this afternoon.’ And then he went around the room congratulatin’ our players.

“I thought that was a great gesture on his part.”

LANDRY’S FINISHING SCHOOL

Four years later, Stallings, by this time the Aggies’ athletic director as well as football coach, was fired.

It was a year before his contract expired and Stallings is still bitter about that. Of course, this is a man who turned down a chance to be the head coach of the USFL’s Birmingham franchise because he felt he should honor his contract with the Cowboys.

Mostly, he was disappointed. Bear’s Boy, the former Aggie returned home, had failed. At least that’s the way he perceived it.

Bryant, who always called Stallings after losses (reminding him “when you’re winning, you don’t need friends, son”), didn’t want one of his boys sittin’ around and moping. So he called Landry.

“Hell, I didn’t know anything about pro football,” Stallings admits.

Another disguised blessing. Under Landry, Stallings became more than a motivator. He became a technician.

He mellowed, too. The first time he walked into the Cowboys’ locker room, he found himself staring at All-Pro lineman Bob Lilly, who was smoking a huge cigar.

“What are you doin’?” Stallings asked.

“I’m smoking a cigar,” Lilly replied.

Stallings thought to himself, ‘Yep, this is gonna take some gettin’ used to.’

Somewhere along the way to 12 playoff appearances, six divisional titles and three Super Bowls, he adjusted. But he also encountered his share of frustration about his career.

He watched three other Cowboy assistants--Dan Reeves (Denver), Mike Ditka (Chicago) and John Mackovic (Kansas City)--get head coaching jobs.

When he first came to Dallas, he figured his chance would come in three or four years. Three or four ended up 14.

“There was a little bit of frustration,” Stallings said. “But at the same time, the guys who got those jobs deserved the jobs. I felt like I was as well qualified, but that doesn’t always mean that’s the guy who gets the job.”

There were reports that Bryant wanted Stallings to be his replacement at Alabama and Ray Perkins was the second choice.

“Nobody will ever know,” Stallings said.

So he doesn’t know?

“I didn’t say that,” he said, smiling. “I meant nobody else will ever know.”

Stallings finally got his chance after a marathon search by Cardinal owner William Bidwell. After Stallings was interviewed, former and current Cowboy players such as Waters, Harris, Roger Stabauch and Lee Roy Jordan wrote Bidwell letters recommending Stallings.

No one, of course, would have been happier than the Bear.

“I’m sorry Coach Bryant couldn’t be here,” Stallings said at the St. Louis press conference. “I know somewhere he’s smiling.”

Even if Bryant is still pulling for him, Stallings faces a challenge far more formidable than anything the Bear dished out in the heat of a Texas prairie.

The Cardinals are picked to finish anywhere from the middle of the pack to last in the always-competitive NFC East this season. There were rumors of drug problems last year, although Stallings says he has seen no evidence of that on this team.

And winning in the NFL is bit more complicated than getting a player to gut out one more wind sprint. Still, the Cardinals have some talent and Stallings seems to possess the work habits, the background, the savvy and the personality to win.

At least he can take comfort in the fact that a whole lot of people--and not just the folks heareabouts--are rooting for him.