A BANGED-UP JOB : Raiders’ Oft-Injured McElroy Could Really Use a Bodyguard

Legend has it that Alexander the Great was offered a choice between a long, dull life and a short, eventful one.

And Alexander lived long before there was a National Football League.

Little Vann McElroy of Uvalde, Tex., was given a similar option, and made a similar choice--bright lights, big city.

You want to know what it’s like to be a star?

OK, all you aspiring free safeties, this is how the Raider incumbent, having already suffered a thrice-hyperextended knee, bruised ribs, pulls of his left and right groin and a fracture of his larynx--even for him this is a rough season--spent the hours after the glorious victory over the Denver Broncos.

“I can’t sleep. I’m lying there, just wired up from the game. My body is pretty much aching all over.

“It’s 1:30, it’s 2:30 . . .

“Around 5:30, I went downstairs and watched Oral Roberts on TV.

“This is like a horror picture. I had just bought my daughter a dinosaur set. There’s 15-20 pieces, all over the floor, with spines all over ‘em. It’s pitch dark. I go in there and I’m almost to the couch--and I step on one. Then I step on another one. I’m hopping around on all of them.

“I reach the couch. I’m lying there going, ‘Why me?’ My body hurts. I turn the TV on, and lo and behold, it’s Oral Roberts.

“Then I watch the sun come up. Then I get up, come over here, have a little breakfast and start in on a little treatment.”

Are you sure you’re ready for this gig?

Surely your Sunday night was better than that.

The amazing part is, except for the dinosaur set and Oral Roberts, this is McElroy’s normal postgame routine, and that of such teammates as Matt Millen, the Dawn Patrol Commando who haunts the El Segundo facility, waiting for the game film to come out of the soup so he can watch it that night.

If you’re going to last at this level, you’re going to have to learn to look on the bright side, and fracturing one’s larynx is not without its benefits.

This isn’t the first time McElroy did it. Two years ago, he took a shot to the throat that pushed his Adam’s apple off to the side of his esophagus.

They told him that he might talk like Joe Cocker the rest of his life.

McElroy allowed as how at least he’d sound like a football player, even if he didn’t look like one.

Then at Seattle 2 weeks ago, he took another blow to the throat.

“This time, (Dr. Robert) Huizenga told me--seriously--he thought it had knocked my Adam’s apple back closer to the middle,” McElroy said, laughing. “If I can play football a little while longer, I might get back to normal.”

This cannot be deemed mere bad luck. From the day he arrived, and began taking on fellow rookie Marcus Allen daily, McElroy has been a 1-man human assault wave. He didn’t have that much of a body to throw around--he’s listed at 6 feet 2 inches, 195 pounds--even before he started offering it up on a weekly basis.

“In college, I was beat up some,” he said. “But your season’s 10 games. Your body’s younger. Training camp is, max, 10 days.

“Here training camp is 5 weeks of 2-a-days. Your body just goes through an amazing transformation. Especially defensive backs. You have to backpedal full speed for 20 yards and stop on a dime. Your hip flexors and your groin are going through some mixed emotions.

“Then you’ve got the contact. You’ve got a back who goes 220 and runs like a deer, and if he breaks the line, he’s going full speed, and you’ve got to run right into him. You put all those things together, and it’s a very grueling position.”

Then you add in psychological factors, such as insecurity.

McElroy is a 2-time Pro Bowl performer and generally considered as indispensable as anyone on the unit by his teammates, but the word went around this season that Al Davis was high on Eddie Anderson.

McElroy heard it, too.

“Myself, I’ve always been the kind of person, I never felt like I’ve done enough,” he said. “You can call it paranoia. What it is, is a fear of not being successful, I guess.

“There are players who can last in this league forever. I’m not going to be one of those players--just the way I attack, the fact I don’t weigh 220 pounds. But if I didn’t play the way I do, I wouldn’t be where I am now.”

Where is he now?

He has a nick here and there--and there and there and there--but he makes a good living, and it’s fun. It may be a perverse kind of fun, but only a few get to have it, and not for long, either.

“I guess what I really like about it, it’s being around the coaches and the players, the camaraderie,” McElroy said. “It sounds kinda corny, but you win the game on Sunday, you come back here Monday, everybody’s talking about it. It’s like no one understands the situation but another player.

“I’ve been around some great players, and mostly I’ve been on winning teams. If I wasn’t, I don’t think I could take it, playing the way I play. I know from last year how draining it is if you’re not winning. It’s just not worth it.

“The fans are looking at you funny, the media, the coaches, like, ‘What’s going on here?’ Now it’s a whole new feeling. The first part of this year, it was like, you go in the locker room and say, ‘Is my name still up there?’ It’s like a selfish-preservation-type thing.

“Now we’re winning again. That’s exciting. That’s what keeps you playing.

“Besides, in the off-season, I don’t do jack. I just lie around and let my body heal. That’s another transformation. Where are all those anti-inflammatory drugs? I just go cold turkey.”

Does he ever think about what his body is going to feel like, say, in 10 years?

“If I did, it might scare me to death,” he said, grinning.

And his wife, how does she take it?

“She says, ‘ Honey, are you sure it’s worth it?’ But she knows how much I enjoy it, and the things we’re able to do because of it.

“But she’s definitely not saying, ‘You’ve got to keep playing, we need the money.”’

Eventful?

He has been up, down, banged-up, let-down, a young comer, an all-star, a Super Bowl champion, a veteran and an old pro threatened by a young comer.

“How old are you again?” he was asked.

“Twenty-eight,” said Vann the Man.