FROM DRUG ARREST TO PRO BOWL : Last Year, White Gained Insight as Well as Yardage

As anniversaries go in Charles White’s house, the one coming up next month ranks up there with days that live in infamy. There are no plans for flowers or dinner reservations.

Still, it will be difficult for Charles White not to pause and reflect on what was at stake that day--what was almost lost--and what a long, strange trip back it has been.

White was fortunate to have been arrested, he says now. He was looking to get caught. You don’t wander fields waving trash can lids in broad daylight and expect someone not to notice.

It was a blessing, he says now, to have been humbled so rudely and publicly, literally dragged and hammer-locked into submission.

Had it not ended that day in Brea, Aug. 21, 1987, had he been allowed to continue in his drug-induced state, what might the final story have been? Without arrest, could the miracles of the 1987 season ever have unfolded as they did?

Recalling Don Rogers and Len Bias, arrest doesn’t seem so bad.

And then there’s White’s 6-year-old son, Julian, who still doesn’t know of the thin line that separated his sorrow from his hero.

“I came into his room one time recently, just when he started to recognize what I do for a living,” White said. “He had all my pictures plastered on his wall. I come in the room and it looks like a museum for Charles White. I mean it really made me feel good. It was like, ‘He knows.’ ”

For now, what Julian and White’s four other young children don’t know about daddy won’t hurt them. There’s time to explain later.

But White’s off-season, one lived as National Football League rushing champion, did provide time for him to think, and to thank his lucky stars.

“I was about to lose all this, my family, for a measly old high,” White said recently during lunch at training camp. “Oh yeah, it was frightening.”

White’s slate has all but been wiped clean. He recently completed the last of 12 weeks of family counseling, all part of the court-ordered drug-diversion program he entered last November. Upon completion of the program, the misdemeanor charge of being under the influence of a controlled substance--cocaine--was dropped.

Daily drug tests, ordered by the Rams as a condition of White’s return to the team, have been reduced to three times weekly.

White and his wife of eight years, Judy, consider last season nothing less than a miracle, with lessons and meanings not of this world or lifetime. How else could a man, in a span of five months, go from a jail cell to the Pro Bowl?

Consider the obstacles hurdled, the dominoes that fell perfectly in place on the road to White’s redemption. In August, he was backing up Eric Dickerson, not just the greatest runner of his generation, but one who had three years left on his existing contract and a player who had never missed a game because of injury.

Of course, you know the rest of the story. Dickerson, after the contract war to end all wars, was traded to Indianapolis Oct. 31. Nice break for Charles White.

But there was more to it than that: The NFL Player Assn. strike and White’s crossing the picket line and rushing for 339 yards in 3 games, a move made initially to escape the idleness that seduces drug abusers.

It also took a stormy Monday night in Cleveland, when White stepped in for a discontented Dickerson and gained 54 yards in 13 carries. Five days later, Dickerson was gone.

“So many things had to happen,” Judy White said. “They brought in every obstacle. To say that Dickerson would have left, that Barry Redden would have left, that Greg Bell would come in, making $400,000 and get injured. It took Charles crossing the picket line, which he didn’t want to do. The way the storybook reads at the end is amazing.”

Charles White can thank two people for saving his career, perhaps his life. The first is Coach John Robinson, the only one in the Ram organization who wanted White when he was released by the Cleveland Browns and cleared league waivers in 1985.

It was Robinson, White’s college coach at USC, who comforted Judy White during the hectic hours after her husband’s arrest last August.

“He eased the pain,” Judy White said. “He said, ‘Let’s just get him healthy.’ ”

Judy, at home in El Toro at the time, almost got the news first on television.

“The phone call was simultaneous to the news on television,” she said. “They just killed him in the press. They told every little detail. It was devastating. But I just thought, if worse comes to worst, we’ll just sell the house.”

Judy White has always found a way out, to which Charles White says he owes his life.

“I think about that sometimes when I’m on the road by myself,” he said. “I’m so glad I have a family, a foundation I can go back to.”

Judy met Charles when both were freshmen at USC. It was love at first sight. “I saw her and I melted,” Charles says. They were married in 1981 and have been through love and war together.

“There’s no way you can’t get closer, especially after the things she’s been through, most of the things I’ve put her through because of my selfish reasons,” Charles said.

First, there were five difficult years in Cleveland to deal with, when Charles failed to live up to the expectations generated by his winning the Heisman Trophy. There were drug abuse, subsequent treatment centers, relapses.

There was White’s release from the Browns in 1985. Judy remembers that selling Charles White to the league in 1985 was like selling vacuum cleaners door to door.

Judy White tried to hire an agent. No one would touch him.

“Phone calls weren’t even returned,” she said.

When the Rams finally decided to give White a look, Judy White walked into Jay Zygmunt’s office and negotiated his contract.

“I had nothing to lose,” she said. “And there’s no one that has more fire about Charles than I do. And no one knows the way Charles can play like I do.”

The Rams weren’t offering much, $150,000 a season. They were more than willing to throw in incentive clauses for games played and yardage gained and Pro Bowl appearances.

Charles White in the Pro Bowl? Are you kidding?

Last year, with incentives, White took home $400,000. This season, the Rams increased his salary to $225,000 with the same incentive package.

“Actually, Charles should have taken over Eric’s old salary ($683,000),” Judy says now. “They didn’t skip a beat with him there. He had more yardage. But we’ll take any crumbs Eric left. We’re grateful for anything we get.”

There are a dozen reasons why Judy White might have left Charles over the years. For starters, there was Charles sitting in jail and Judy at home with five kids.

“Divorce was never an option to me,” Judy said. “Both Charles and I are from broken homes. We were raised by our grandparents. Come hell or high water, we make it work. There’s a deep and sincere love. We’ve been together since we were 19 years old.

“Charles is really such an innocent. He’s a dichotomy. Everything he seems like he is, he isn’t. Like with the drug thing, he’s just like a child that got caught in a bad situation.

“People see him and think of Hollywood Henderson, a black guy who had a drug problem. But he’s more childlike, sincere, sensitive. It’s almost like he got caught in a trap. He’s not totally innocent, but he’s very vulnerable.”

Judy says their love is unshakable.

“We’ve been through so much,” she said. “I’m not the type to be devastated. I get stronger. I’m more apt to leave when things are great. In fact, we probably argue more when things are wonderful.”

White’s drug problems, however, have not come without a price tag. The NFL rushing champion last season has not received any commercial endorsements since winning the title.

I’m happy for Charlie. But any back can do well behind a good offensive line. But to do great--that’s a different thing. Charlie’s a good back, but he’s not in my caliber. I’ll tell you, I’ll tell Charlie, I’ll tell John Robinson that. I have nothing to hide when it comes to that, about sticking my talent up against any other back in the league. Charlie’s not my caliber running back. Charlie ran behind that line in practice, and then he ran behind it when I didn’t play, all year long. . . . Give me one full season with the Colts. One full season. And I’ll lead the league again.

--ERIC DICKERSON, in Inside Sports magazine

Dickerson isn’t the only one who thinks White’s 1987 season was a fluke. White gained 1,374 yards, 86 more than Dickerson and only 4 fewer than his 6-year total entering the season.

There were three strike games, which Dickerson missed, but before that, White was still Dickerson’s benchwarmer for the first two games of the season, a period when Dickerson carried 53 times for 239 yards, White 2 times for minus 9 yards.

Still, few expect White to repeat his performance.

“No one thought he could do it the first time,” Robinson said, “Nobody ever has. Why would anybody change?”

Dickerson has peppered White with verbal jabs since the trade, but until now, White has remained silent. He still would rather respond on the field, though it’s impossible to keep everything inside.

“It shows insecurity in himself,” White said of Dickerson’s many comments. “When anyone starts boasting off at the mouth, I think they’re in fear of something. I think he’s in fear of me and what I can do with this line I have. I really think he thought that losing him, because he was the man, that the Rams weren’t going to exist. But the running game kept going.”

White, 30, is not likely to get as many carries this season, especially with the addition of Gaston Green. But White has never doubted his ability on the field.

Whatever fears he might have are born out of temptation and boredom, of time spent in the long hours of the off-season. Charles White has never been afraid with a football in his hands. With it comes control, the very thing cocaine takes away.

“You have to stay busy,” White said of his off-season. “You can’t sit around and watch Pinocchio and Gumby.”

White returned to Rams Park in March and worked out three times weekly until camp opened. “You have to stay busy,” White said.

Yes, White was lucky to have been arrested last Aug. 21. It was the best break he ever got.

“To change that now would mess something up in the whole order of things,” he said. “This way, it turned out to be positive in the long run. Of course at the time, I didn’t even want to be seen. God works in mysterious ways. I wanted to disappear, I wanted to go to Europe, where they don’t know who I am, where I’d be just another black man walking down the street.”

After his reinstatement last summer, White remembers the trepidation he felt while waiting to be introduced at Anaheim Stadium before an exhibition game against the Denver Broncos.

“It was like, ‘Oh no, what’s going to happen?’ ” he said. “But (the fans) went crazy. People were yelling ‘Welcome back, Charlie.’ It was a neat feeling. It was like, ‘Wow, people care about the human side of the downfall of an athlete.’

“When you’ve had a problem, you expect the worst for some reason. You look at the negative. But there is positive out there.”

Ram Notes

Sources in Indianapolis say the Colts are offering quarterback Mark Herrmann to the Rams for the rights to retired wide receiver Ron Brown. Herrmann is the Colts’ third-string quarterback. There reportedly also are talks about a swap of Ram holdout guard Tom Newberry for Colt Pro Bowl guard Ron Solt, also a holdout. Here’s the catch: Solt is seeking a contract of about $500,000 a season, a salary the Rams probably wouldn’t pay.

Veteran defensive end Ross Browner, 34, signed a one-year deal with the Rams Thursday but won’t play Saturday against his former teammates, the Cincinnati Bengals. Browner, a nine-year starter with the Bengals, was released by the Green Bay Packers July 19.