PRO FOOTBALL / Week 9 : Fencik Feeling Right at Home Amid Mayhem : Chicago Bear Zoo Doesn’t Have Ivy Leaguer Climbing the Walls

The Chicago Bears, of course, are outrageousness. Their quarterback’s greased-up hair these days sticks straight up like the needles on a porcupine’s back. Life must be fun being Jim McMahon.

The folk hero of a season ago, William Perry, this year has ballooned into a full side-by-side refrigerator/freezer.

He brought home a lot of bacon in the off-season. Ate quite a bit of it too.

The coach and quarterback both wrote books during the spring and don’t speak to one another. One linebacker’s mouth flows like a running faucet.

Somehow, free safety Gary Fencik just doesn’t seem to belong with the free spirits currently holed up in the Chicago Bear Zoo.

Fencik is a Yale man, true and blue. There’s talk of him running for mayor of Chicago someday. He has a master’s degree and is a member of the Illinois Banking Board.

The only difference between Fencik and Thurston Howell III is that Fencik can numb a fullback with a tackle.

But aren’t the Bears great theatre, lovey?

“It’s constant entertainment,” said Fencik, in his 11th season. “You can pick your characters, whether it’s Jim McMahon or The Fridge. It’s just an entertaining group of people to be with. It makes the day go by easier.”

And while Fencik may not appear to belong in this cast of zanies, he said he feels right at home as a member of the Super Bowl champions, who play host to the Rams Monday night in Soldier Field.

Fencik, yes, is different from the rest, but not distant.

“The spectrum is large,” he said of the range of personalities. “I don’t know how I fit in, but I’m just glad that I am part of the group. . . . The key thing is that this group is very close. And while there are cliques on every team, there are basically no people on this team that are disliked or that the majority of people would rather not have here.”

Make no mistake about it, Fencik is a football player first. And he’s waited years for the success the Bears are now enjoying.

Fencik was for so long a star in a good Bears’ defense that never went anywhere but home for Christmas.

Fencik made the Pro Bowl after the 1981 and 1982 seasons and has 36 career interceptions, one short of the all-time team record.

He was a wide receiver at Yale and was only a 10th-round pick by Miami in 1976. The Bears signed Fencik as a free agent after the Dolphins released him in training camp.

But the success of the Bears’ Super Bowl victory last season has launched Fencik to new heights of popularity. His Ivy League good looks recently earned him a cover shot and story in Gentlemen’s Quarterly magazine.

And now there’s talk of a political career after his playing days. The head of the Republican Party in Cook County, Ill., recently mentioned Fencik as a possible opponent of Chicago Mayor Harold Washington.

Fencik isn’t sure how serious the idea was, though.

“I think it’s an honor for anyone,” Fencik said. “Particularly since the quotation came from a person who is involved in politics and is a member of the GOP party here in Illinois. It’s an honor to be considered, even if it was a throw-away name. I’d have to say that I would give it some consideration, but certainly not while I’m playing football.”

Fencik has become a regular yuppie in the Bears’ defensive secondary. He’s young, urban and professional, which complements nicely his ability to separate a football helmet from a head.

But it’s not a moniker with which he’d like to be associated.

“I don’t think anyone considers a yuppie anything but a derogatory term,” Fencik said. “But it’s something I don’t think too seriously about, one way or another. But I happen to be one of the few guys that lives in the city, so I’m the only guy you can start out saying is urban. Most of the guys live in the suburbs.”

And some, you might say, reside in a land even farther out than that.

Which is, of course, what makes football so much fun for Fencik these days.

And, argyle socks aside, is he really that much different from the rest?

“I really think I’m the type of guy who fits into a (Coach) Mike Ditka system pretty well,” Fencik said. “All he asks for is for someone to play really hard. He considers me an overachiever, and I guess after 11 years I’d be hard pressed to say that that wouldn’t be one of my attributes.”

Sounds like a campaign slogan, perhaps. “I’m getting to the end of the hour glass,” he said of his football career. “I’ve been on a year-to-year basis for several years. I recently signed a two-year contract. I expect that would be the far edge of the limit.”

Who knows? Then it might be Mayor Fencik. And Police Commissioner McMahon. And William Perry, head of the Dept. of Weights and Measures.