WHICH ROLE? : Gault: From Star Billing to Bit Player

Willie Gault wanted to get into acting, but he thought he could wait for the off-season until a most untimely injury cast this role player in an unfamiliar role:

How about Claude Rains as “The Invisible Man?”

Cary Grant as the ghost in “Topper?”

Whatever happened to Willie Gault, the toast of Chicago who wowed them on the football field and danced with the city’s ballet troupe?

Not to mention being National Collegiate Athletic Assn. indoor sprint champion in 1983; holder of the world’s second-best time in the 110-meter high hurdles in ‘82; Summer Olympian in ‘80; Winter Olympian in ‘88, and a self-confessed “nice guy?”

He’s a Raider, acquired at great cost--a first-round pick next spring and a couple of other picks in future drafts. If you want to know what the Raiders got in return, it’s hard to tell since he plays little, is rarely thrown a pass and has caught just 2 since the first month of the season.

Owner Al Davis is said to wonder out loud about this daily.

Coach Mike Shanahan, who was no less excited at Gault’s acquisition, seems to have decided that under the circumstances--struggling quarterbacks, an ever-rebuilding line, Bo Jackson’s late arrival, Gault’s injury, Tim Brown’s accession--the thing to do is play it out this way and think about a Brown-Gault tandem next season.

How about Keith Carradine as the perplexed newcomer in “Welcome to L.A.?”

Ron Reed as the football star derailed by fate in “The Fortune Cookie?”

The most amazing statistic about Gault is not his low, low 14 receptions this season, against his previous low, 33 his rookie season.

It’s the game he missed because of a bruised shoulder--the only one he has ever sat out because of injury in his 6-year career.

Gault had already suffered hamstring and groin strains trying to get into shape fast, after his holdout and the trade to the Raiders. There were people to show and expectations to live up to.

Gault hadn’t made this deal and there were people who wondered how Davis could have.

The Raiders had just compiled the sixth-worst record in football, had question marks everywhere, no established quarterback, had just taken a Heisman Trophy winning receiver, and traded their No. 1 pick in a Troy Aikman draft to upgrade their strongest position.

At that point, Mervyn Fernandez wasn’t even a factor, because the Raiders had all but formally written him off as a bust. When Swervin’ Mervyn busted back, and Gault was slowed, the newest receiver fell to No. 4 in a 4-man corps.

Not that you couldn’t see what had intrigued Davis.

There is fast, faster and Gault-fast. From the day Gault arrived, and caught a long bomb in his first workout, he trailed jet fumes all over Oxnard. Shanahan remembered preparing for the Bears as a Denver assistant, where the first precaution was to detail extra coverage to Gault and then worry about Walter Payton, Neal Anderson, et. al.

Gault’s first few games were OK. Against the Houston Oilers, he set up 2 touchdown drives with interference calls against the rookie trying to stay with him.

After 4 games, he had 12 receptions and a 20-yard average, putting him just off a 1,000-yard pace, which no Raider wide receiver had reached since 1976.

In the sixth game, though, against the Dolphins, he suffered a badly bruised shoulder diving for a low ball. For the next several games, he played sparingly and sat out the one at New Orleans, altogether.

Brown became the starter.

Gault got lost in the shuffle. And after he had healed, he stayed misplaced.

“Well, I’m a little surprised,” Gault says. “But you look at the scheme of things. Tim Brown has been playing excellent as a receiver and as a kick returner.

“Even though I was starting ahead of him, you can’t just take him out. Even though the coaches originally said, ‘You can’t lose your job because of injury.’ But in a situation like that, a guy playing as well as Timmy, you can’t just say, ‘OK, Tim, Willie’s back healthy now. Sit on the bench.’

“We have four, in my opinion, of the best receivers in the league. It becomes difficult when all those guys can’t play all the time. And you can’t, because you’ve got two great running backs. You’ve got to spread it around.

“I think, with all due respect to everyone on the coaching staff, everyone here is new to everyone. It’s a feeling stage where everyone is trying to learn about everyone. It’s a trial-and-error thing.

“When you don’t have the numbers, people look at you and say, ‘Well, he had a terrible year.’ I’ve dropped some passes while my shoulder was sore and I couldn’t get my arm up. People say, ‘Well, he’s dropping passes.’ It doesn’t get me down because I know the situation and the coaches know the situation.

“But it has been difficult for me. It’s been like an uphill battle.”

How about Woody Allen, the target of playmates’ taunts in “Take the Money and Run?”

Or Jimmy Stewart, whose wife, Donna Reed, stands by him in “It’s a Wonderful Life?”

As if things weren’t tough enough, Gault’s old buddy, Jim McMahon, took the opportunity to rip away.

McMahon told Sports Illustrated that the trade had already improved the Bear offense, that Gault “always wanted to go out to the West Coast and be an actor. Well, for 5 years, he was an actor playing a football player.”

Gault has never replied, but his wife, Dainnese, wrote a letter to the Chicago Tribune, which it published, asking McMahon what his problem was.

She wrote: “You can announce to one of the Bears that Willie will never make as much money as you. Ha! Maybe if your wish to be a Raider would have come true, you would be happy, too.”

Gault, himself, barely raised an eyebrow.

“She gets into it more than I do,” he says. “I don’t really care what people say. I don’t get into that. I know where I’m going and what I’m doing and I don’t really care what people say I should and shouldn’t do.”

Gault hasn’t been through a season like this, but he isn’t an easy man to discourage at any time.

“I know the way Mr. Davis feels about me,” Gault says. “I feel I give 100% whenever I’m there. I don’t feel I have anything to be ashamed of. I’m glad to be here and I think the organization’s glad to have me. I think better days are ahead. (Grinning,) They have to be because nothing’s really happened this year.

“I consider myself strong-minded. I think you have to take the good with the bad, but I’ve had to fight adversity through my life. Coming up in the South, as a little kid and a minority, you fight adversity. I definitely consider myself a strong-minded person.

“Do I ever wonder if I did the wrong thing? (Laughing,) When I look at the weather report for Chicago--blizzard, 6 below? No.

“I know things will work out. Positive thoughts cause positive reactions. I know they will.”

Or Robert Redford, finally touching ‘em all in “The Natural?”