4 Friends Try Hogging Their Time on Line

There’s a wood-frame, split-level home overlooking the Washington Redskins’ blocking sleds here, its balcony strewn with beach towels hanging half-dry from a clothesline. In five, maybe 10 years, the original Hogs -- Russ Grimm, Joe Jacoby, Mark May and Jeff Bostic -- hope to rent the place for a reunion, and typically they’ll haggle over who brings the beer.

As time drifts into the 1990s, this foursome inevitably will be broken up; it could even be next year. “Who knows, I might get hit by a bus?” May said. Few realize they already have climbed into their 30s -- May actually doesn’t arrive there until November -- and if Gerald Riggs fails to revive the team’s plow-ahead running style, axes surely are to be aimed their way.

“When things go well, they say the quarterback had a great day or the running backs were grand,” May said. “When it’s bad, it’s ‘Geez, the offensive line didn’t open holes.’ We’re used to this.”

Grimm, Jacoby, May and Bostic have had parallel setbacks -- Grimm kept needing surgery, Jacoby kept missing Lawrence Taylor, May kept getting in fights, Bostic kept getting blamed for Jim Burt. Yet they steadily turned “50 Gut” into as much of a household phrase as a simple dive play can be.

One day last week these four were telling war stories with former Redskins quarterback Billy Kilmer, who always did prefer the company of linemen to the flashier types on George Allen’s teams of the 1970s.

“These guys would’ve fit in perfect with the ‘Over The Hill Gang’ -- play hard on the field and off the field,” Kilmer said. “George Allen would’ve loved ‘em. With George, they’d have 10 more years, in fact.”

Still, the game of football has changed dramatically since those days. Not only must these Hogs now block 300-pound defensive linemen, they must pitter-pat outside and refrain 240-pound linebackers from steamrolling their quarterback. So, at age 30, the beer-Gatorade ratio must lean more toward Gatorade, and the offseason vacation to Maui must shrink to a week or 10 days.

Their guru, offensive-line coach Joe Bugel, constructed a list of do’s and don’ts this winter, and most of his concern centered on their waistlines. “Bostic, we listed as unlimited,” Bugel said. “He could gain as much as he wanted, though you wouldn’t want the guy showing up at 300. Grimm, we wanted at 275. (Jim) Lachey and May at 295. Jacoby, 305.”

In 1987 Bugel advanced the theory that bigger was better, and diets became a foreign word. He decided that the brick-walled New York Giants defense could be handled only along a massive offensive line, and Bostic -- always the shrimp -- was benched.

Now, as Bugel engages in his weight-watcher stage, Bostic said: “I guess it’s just like clothes. If you wait long enough, they’ll come back in style.”

Jacoby was thrown for more of a loop than anyone. At last season’s end, he was admittedly a step or two slow, having lost his left tackle spot to Lachey, and his weight -- 347 pounds -- didn’t help. His safest strategy would have been to maroon himself on an island and munch only on twigs, but instead he nearly starved himself and ran 25-30 minutes a day on a treadmill.

He and Grimm adopted a law: If you drank beer on Tuesday, you couldn’t eat Tuesday. And vice versa. Jacoby, more impressively, restrained himself from his ultimate addiction: pizza.

“Since January I’ve only had three,” he said. “Usually it was one a week.”

“Well,” Bostic said, “pizza’s just one of his soft spots -- there’s brownies, pies, lasagna. ... “

That Jacoby is now 301 pounds soaking wet is of great relevance. It’s better for his heart and his chronically aching ankle.

“Pizza and spaghetti -- when I wasn’t coming over to cook that’s all they had,” said Grimm’s wife, Karen, who at the time was Grimm’s date. “I’d visit them, and there were empty pizza boxes everywhere and a big pot of spaghetti on the stove. They’d leave it there for days, and keep reheating it. I said, ‘Can’t you get sick from leaving it out?’ They said heating it up killed all the germs.”

Grimm’s mission this winter was to lose 10-15 pounds, to save his creaking knees. “I got a wok one day, and he said, ‘Why’d you get that?’ ” Karen Grimm said. “I threw sprouts and mushrooms and anything healthy in there, and he said, ‘I’m not eating rabbit food!’ But he liked it. If only he’d try things, he’d like it.”

As the training camp weigh-in approached, Grimm’s weight fluctuated. If he came in over 275, he’d be fined $50 a pound per day. “I wasn’t going to pay that money,” Karen said, “so I starved him.”

The last couple days before camp, Grimm was hopping on the scale three or four times a day; Jacoby meantime would weigh himself following any form of exercise: cutting the grass, jogging. One day prior he was two pounds over, so he fasted. Yet the Saturday night before Monday’s weigh-in was pizza and beer night, and Karen ordered: “No pizza, but maybe a beer or two.” Sunday he was two pounds over, so he ate nothing, ran and sat in the whirlpool. “I came in on the money,” he said.

Jacoby and Grimm are two peas in a pod. They’ve been training-camp roomies since the beginning, only now they reside in an Adams Hall suite, as opposed to a cluttered, tiny room. “Ah, it has a big table, couch, king-size beds, TV and VCR,” Grimm said. “We kick back and relax.”

Also, Grimm scrimmages here with a baseball cap tucked in the back of his football pants -- the latest in sideline fashion.

May is slightly removed from those two, yet he’s been Grimm’s teammate for 13 years, back to their days at the University of Pittsburgh. He has had a reputation as a dirty player, but he’s been steadily healthy and productive, and has no weight-pizza hangup. Instead his fetish is his baby girl, Abra Lauren, born July 19. One of his closet pals up here used to be a quarterback, Joe Theismann, with whom he’d play cards .

“How was it? Prosperous,” May said of the card games. “I miss those days. I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart and part of my house from Joe.”

May is the most business-oriented of the four, often sprucing himself up in a business suit on his way to a Ford dealership in Virgina. May aspires to have his own some day.

Bostic was the only Hog asked to increase his girth, and it shows in his midsection. He’s a little roly-poly at this stage of training camp, though he said he didn’t attempt to round himself off so much. “The shortest guy on the line is the only one allowed to gain, isn’t that crazy?” May asked. “The little fat guy gets to gain.”

Bugel has admitted, though, that Bostic is now almost irreplaceable on that line, a little bulldog who won’t shoo away. Together these four are still clockwork along the line -- which is why Bugel won’t budge them -- and all their wives are comfortably close, which ensures Hog barbecues into the next decade.

Nevertheless the future is plain to see as Bugel assembles young linemen like 26-year-olds Lachey and Raleigh McKenzie (a guard-center), 23-year-olds Mark Schlereth and Ralph Tamm (both center-guards) and 27-year-old tackle Ray Brown.

“Yeah,” May said, “we’re gonna rent that balcony across the way, crack open some cold ones and watch young guys push the sled for Coach Bugel -- a yearly reunion.”

Bugel snapped: “In five years? No way. They’ll still be here.”