Chargers Walk In, Walk Out

So the NFL strike is history.

The next step: Inform the Chargers.

The sun set Thursday at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium with no union football team in sight, with no telling when there would be one, and with no questioning of the following summation:

“This has turned into a circus,” said Charger quarterback Dan Fouts solemnly as he stood in a stadium parking lot.

On a day when the NFL Players Assn. ordered its members back to work, ending the 24-day strike, the local chapter continued to shield itself under a cloak of “unity.”

- At 12:30 p.m., through the stadium’s Gate B, the Chargers walked in to work. They were led by player representatives Wes Chandler and Gill Byrd. In a solemn, single-file line, they walked through the empty concourse, down a runway and through a hall to the locker room. But the doors were locked.

They walked back upstairs to the Charger offices on Level 1A, barking and mooing. They met for 10 minutes with Steve Ortmayer, Charger director of football operations. He welcomed them. He offered the use of all club facilities. But he said because it was past the NFL Management Council’s 10 a.m. Wednesday deadline, the players could not be paid their regular salary this week or play in Sunday’s game against the Raiders.

So the Chargers walked out.

- Charger Coach Al Saunders, in a message sent through Ortmayer, invited the regular players to a meeting at 3 p.m. today, with a possible first practice afterward in anticipation of the first game for which they would be eligible--Oct. 25 against Kansas City. The players were offered a per diem of $750 a week prorated plus $38 a day meal money for any work done before the start of Monday’s regular, salaried work week.

Chandler later said he had received no such invitation.

“I don’t know anything about a meeting,” he said. “Nobody has contacted me about a meeting. At this point, a meeting would be irrelevant.”

Chandler said the union players would practice today--as they have throughout the strike--on their own.

- Charger management said it expected the players Monday, when they will begin to work for full pay.

The players said they’d think about it.

“Where’s our players?” asked Saunders in the early afternoon. “I heard I had the team back, but nobody is here.”

When told the circumstances, Saunders said, “I hope up in L.A., they threw the Raiders out, too.”

Even after this decisive day, only this much is certain:

- The Chargers, who play the Raiders at 1 p.m. in the Coliseum, will be the non-union Chargers. They will be heavy underdogs in the face of 26 Raiders who had crossed the picket line before Wednesday’s deadline. They may be taking the final breaths of their undefeated (2-0) life.

- Next week’s practices will include both union Chargers and non-union Chargers, which could crowd the roster with as many as 100 players. That roster will be trimmed as it was during training camp. At least for a week or so, it will make for an unpleasant locker room.

Other than those two facts, well . . .

“When I left the players after our morning meeting, I invited them to meet with Saunders (today) so we could get this thing going,” said Ortmayer Thursday afternoon. “I told them our weight rooms and all our facilities could be open to them as early as this evening, if they wanted.

“But then the last thing I heard was, ‘See you Monday.’ So I don’t know what’s going on.”

Because the union ordered them to return to work as soon as they are paid a regular salary, the Chargers should return Monday. “Before Monday we’ll vote on that, and do whatever we do as a team,” Chandler said.

But in the meantime, are they actually still on strike?

“We’re not at work, put it that way,” Chandler said. “We’ve been forced out. We’ve been denied compensation.”

Ortmayer said that in refusing to pay the Chargers a week’s paycheck each, he was simply following a Management Council directive.

“We were ordered to stick with the Wednesday deadline,” Ortmayer said. “Why couldn’t the players come in a day earlier? Coming in today and demanding their money, it is almost like running a red light and not expecting to get a ticket.”

Chandler said his teammates didn’t agree.

“We do not do things because of dates or deadlines,” Chandler said. “We do things because of what is right and wrong.

“We voted to go in, we wanted to go in . . . and we were denied compensation. What does that make the owners look like? What is to say we won’t be denied compensation next week, too?”

He said the per diem offer meant nothing.

“That comes out of the 1982 Basic Agreement, and that agreement expired Aug. 31, so that per diem no longer exists,” he said. “The fact is, we want to come back and owners don’t want us to come back, and that should tell the fans something.”

Saunders would like to tell the players something: Get back. Now.

“We would like to practice (today) and even Saturday if we can,” he said. “It would be an ideal situation. It would give us a jump on next week.

“But then I guess you could have the feeling that if you let them work out on their own this weekend, it won’t distract us from Sunday’s game, which counts.”

Can the regular players, who haven’t played with pads since Sept. 20, even be ready in a week for Kansas City?

“I think we’re ready to go right now. That’s why we came in,” said Fouts, a non-union player who stayed out to help direct the striking players in practice. “We’ve been staying in shape. We can practice in pads right away.”

Chandler says the biggest problem they will have is getting used to practicing with the replacement players.

“Why should we have to play with scabs who couldn’t hack it this summer when they had their chance?” Chandler said. “It’s unfortunate and unfair if our players have to go back through the same training camp bull and risk being waived in favor of a scab just because of our beliefs.”

Said Fouts on a Channel 8 interview: “The scabs have done nothing but harm the position of the regular players. I expect a good deal of trouble between the older players and scab players.”