From Different Worlds . . . : Charger Replacements Stick Around and Star

When Les Miller first heard from the Chargers, he had clocked out at the Gott cooler factory. He had just lifted weights in the basement of the Arkansas City, Kan., Recreation Center, where membership costs $10 a month, which is not bad, considering that they just painted the walls.

He was walking out the door of his parents’ house, where he occupies a room on the back porch, to go noodling.

You know, noodling.

“Fishing with your bare hands,” explained Miller. “You jump in the creek, hold your breath and quietly feel around and pet the fish.

“Just when they’re your friends, you grab them by the mouth, let ‘em clamp down on you, and pull them out. I caught a 43-pounder like that last year. Big ol’ mouth.”

The Chargers wanted the 6-foot 7-inch, 310-pound Miller to play defensive end on their strikeball team.

Scraps of paper with phone numbers of eight other interested teams were pasted with tiny magnets on his parent’s refrigerator. There was no more room and there were no more magnets.

“So what the heck,” Miller said. “San Diego it was.”

And here he has stayed, rising from a reserve replacement to the starting defensive end for the team with the best record in the AFC. He is the only defensive lineman on the Chargers to have scored a touchdown, having pounced on an end zone fumble in the victory over Kansas City. He also has forced a fumble.

And it’s his first time even traveling west of Colorado. It’s his first time living in a town of more than 13,000 people.

He loves to stand on the beach and act as if he’s the last person on this continent to see the sun set. He loves to sit over the freeway during rush hour and watch the cars. Of course, San Diego does have its limits.

“This place is nice and all,” Miller said, “but no way am I sticking my hands in none of these fishing holes.”

When Joe Phillips first heard from the Chargers, he was preparing to do a beer commercial.

“It was for Busch,” he said. “They wanted me to head for the mountains, or something.”

Phillips had just completed a role as an offensive lineman in the HBO series “1st & Ten.” And he liked acting, liked the pay.

“Lot of money, for not a lot of lines,” he said. But it’s not football. Unless your name is Chuck Norris, you don’t get to really hit anyone.

Phillips is 6-5, 275 pounds, and thought it would be nice if he could occasionally hit someone.

“In football, after that first hit, I’m comfortable,” the defensive tackle said. “In acting, you are never comfortable. I once had four sentences, and the scene took 9 1/2 hours to shoot. Now, that’s not football.”

So he hooked on with the Chargers’ replacement team. Six weeks later, he leads the club’s surprising defensive line with 24 tackles and leads the entire team with 4 1/2 sacks worth 41 yards in losses.

“A lot of crazy things have happened in this league,” he said. “So sure, I believe this.”

What he doesn’t believe is, he had to turn down the Busch commercial because active professional athletes can’t promote alcohol. And he had to turn down a part in a syndicated series, “The New Gidget.”

“Interesting part,” he said. “Something about an ex-football player who has become a drug dealer. Oh well.”

Coming to you, live and in one of the biggest packages in Chargers’ history, the new ballast of the new Chargers’ defense. One from the heartbeat of America, the other from HBO.

Of all the extraordinary things that have happened around San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium this fall, perhaps nothing can equal this.

“I just love it,” said Gunther Cunningham, defensive line coach. “So many times, guys at our (the pro) level get lost in the shuffle. They can play, but just never get an opportunity to show it.

“Here, we have two guys who have finally gotten their chance, and who are playing like they won’t let anybody take it away from them.”

It was a couple of Sundays ago, one hour before Miller’s first game with the regulars. It was during a routine drill. Miller delivered a hit that shook Charger offensive tackle Jim Lachey down to his molars.

“I thought, wait a minute here,” Lachey said. “This was supposed to be pregame, right?”

For Miller, a 22-year-old rookie who trusts everyone and believes nothing, there is no such thing.

After graduating from tiny Fort Hayes State in Kansas, he was waived by the New Orleans Saints this fall in their final cut. Never expecting to get that far, he simply shrugged and went home to Arkansas City (population 13,000), which is pronounced Ar-Kansas City, which Miller is quick to tell everyone. He signed up for the graveyard shift (11 p.m.-7 a.m.) at a local Gott plant, affixing handles to coolers. It paid $5 an hour, which wasn’t as much as other jobs he’s had, but those jobs have all been at slaughterhouses pushing around pig carcasses, so he figured it was an even trade.

Then he decided to join the Chargers’ strikeball team, even disassociating himself with his pro-union agent, Tom Condon, to do so. But he flew to San Diego without calling the factory, missed one shift, and then called the factory apologetically.

“Told them I was in San Diego,” he said. “Told them I might miss one more shift, but I wasn’t sure.”

And he still isn’t sure.

“It’s not going to hit me until I get home, after this season has been done,’ he said. “Nobody has promised me anything. I’m still just a kid. This is too much of a dream to believe it.”

When the other replacements who made the regular roster checked out of the Hanalei Hotel into apartments, Miller resisted. “If they cut me, I ain’t getting stuck with a six-month lease.”

When other replacements began buying clothes and furniture and other things in celebration of their financial windfall, Miller resisted. “I’ve only bought one pair of shoes--high tops--and nothing else. You know, I still have all my paychecks? Ain’t cashed a one of them.”

But the Chargers aren’t sending him anywhere. He was the first replacement to be assured a starting job, after defensive end Terry Unrein dislocated a finger. Miller has won points for heart and honesty.

In one of the first practices, he was approached by Cunningham, who asked him how much he weighed.

“Three bills and some change, sir,” Miller said.

“You mean 310 pounds?” Cunningham asked.

“Yeah,” Miller said. “Three bills and two nickels.”

“You get that big by lifting weights?” Cunningham asked.

“No sir,” Miller said. “Hay bales.”

Explained Cunningham later: “Les looks like somebody who dropped right out of the sky. He is by far the most surprising player on this football team.”

Miller’s off-field life is not quite as exciting. He spends his free time driving around the city, sightseeing, before returning home to sit on his Hanalei balcony and watch the rush-hour traffic.

“I’ve got good advice for tourists,” he said. “Get in your car and follow those funny ‘Scenic Route’ signs all over town. Follow those arrows. That’s what I spend all my time doing, except when I’m home watching the cars whiz by. Lot of whizzing cars in this town.”

This is, after all, a man who once quit the high school football team to play rugby. “I could score points in rugby,” he said.

This is also a man who once quit the Kansas State football team after being named Big Eight Newcomer of the Year as a freshman because his new coach, Stan Parrish, wanted him to attend etiquette school. “He wanted to change us country boys, but I am what I am. Life is too short to be changing it.”

Too short, indeed. This is why Miller spends much of it giving laughter and one-liners. “Every week I keep thinking, it’s going to end, I’m going to wake up and not be here, they are going to tell me goodby,” he said. “Until then, I’m going to have fun. And when it comes to football, there ain’t no such thing as too much fun.”

From a different world comes Phillips, who with big shoulders, blond hair and a light beard, looks the way America thinks linemen should look.

“You read all these strike stories about getting guys out of the gravel pit,” he said. “Well, that’s not quite me.”

Not even close. We’re talking about a college career at SMU, being drafted in the fourth round in 1986 by Minnesota, an entire season with the Vikings--even starting one game--and then a last-minute release this season.

If he doesn’t make it with the Chargers? No problem, he already has a place saved at Whittier Law School. And you can still watch him on HBO reruns.

On “1st & Ten,” his character is named Marius McClain, a first-round draft pick from Pittsburgh.

McClain is the quiet type; he has had only 30 lines in five episodes. But because he is involved with a main character, John Matuszak, he is often on camera.

“That’s not as easy as it sounds,” Phillips said. “My wife and I rehearse and rehearse, but once out there in the lights, you still have to produce.”

He became involved in acting through his wife, Cynthia Phillips, an actress. But his wife put her career aside to join him in San Diego once he made the final 55. In last week’s 27-24 overtime win over Cleveland, a victory largely attributed to a fourth-quarter defensive stand, Phillips earned a film grade of 82, highest among the defensive players.

“I’ve got a great deal of respect for the Minnesota franchise,” Cunningham said. “But they let one get away. Joe is just what the doctor ordered. He opened the eyes of a lot of people. He’s emotional, excitable.”

And the other day in practice, he had his best lines thus far. He was complaining about slipping on the turf when Cunningham screamed at him: “Quit whining, you’re whining!”

“You’re whining,” Phillips screamed back. “You’re the whiner.”

Cunningham looked stunned, and then smiled, and Phillips smiled.

“You have to have pride in yourself,” Phillips said. “Les (Miller) and I are both like that. We can do it. Just give us a minute.”

Charger Notes Center Don Macek (sore knee) did not practice Thursday for the second straight day. However, he said the knee feels better, and he plans to participate in drills today.