PLAYING SCARED : Brown Always on Lookout for Rams’ X-Man

Nervously twisting the gold band around his finger, Richard Brown recalls the knot that tightened in his stomach the day the X-man walked by his window.

It was about this time last year. Brown, a free agent from San Diego State, had earned a place on the Rams as a linebacker-special teams player in 1987, but the 1988 camp had been a nightmare.

He had come to camp at 265 pounds, 25 above his playing weight. He had been so eager to improve during the off-season and to disprove the neighborhood folks who saw his glass as half empty that he ran himself twice as hard. All that produced was a stress fracture in his right foot.

Doctors had forbidden him to run until the day before the 1988 camp opened.

“I was strong enough when the camp opened, but I didn’t have any stamina,” he said. “By the end of practice, I was fading.”

When the X-man passed by his window a second time, he felt himself falling.

Despite his poor camp, he had survived every cut so far. Now came the last cut. Brown was sitting in the Anaheim apartment near Rams Park that he and his wife Heather had rented.

Ray San Jose, the Rams’ X-man--he’s the guy who tells you that you’ve been Xed off the roster--walked past Brown’s window several times. Able to stand it no longer, Brown finally called San Jose over.

“I said ‘What’s going on? Is my name on the list?’ ” Brown said. “He showed me the list. All the other names were typed. My name was written out in blue ink.”

Of all the things that could have stuck with him about that moment, the blue ink remains the most indelible.

“Bluuuue ink,” he repeated, then sighed. “Man, last year was really tough. I’ve got to make this team this year. I’ve got to.”

And so Richard Brown looks for the X-man everywhere--in a coach’s sideways look, in the whispers around the training table. Never mind that he is at his playing weight and is having a great training camp.

Never mind that defensive coordinator Fritz Shurmur and Coach John Robinson have showered praise on him and indications all point to his making the team.

Never mind that injuries to other inside linebackers such as Fred Strickland, Mark Jerue and Larry Kelm have given him the opportunity to play. Or that after two exhibition games he is leading the team in tackles with nine.

The X-man is out there, and the X-man cometh at the most inopportune times.

“I don’t want to get myself comfortable,” he said. “I want to keep an edge, and I always can by just looking back on what happened to me last year.”

After he was cut by the Rams, Brown had tryouts with the New York Jets, San Diego Chargers and some Canadian Football League teams.

But nothing worked out.

“The Ram camp had taken a lot out of me,” he said.

So he went to work in his father-in-law’s scale business, working in a service department. Then he and his brother got into landscaping. But his heart was never in it.

He knew that people were talking behind his back.

Brown, 23, played his high school football at Westminster High School. He was a tight end and a linebacker but preferred defense because offense meant “you had to play under control.”

When he got a scholarship from San Diego State, he remembers hearing the neighborhood people saying he would flunk out of school.

When, as a free agent, he tried out with the Rams, he heard the neighborhood say that he was silly to even try and that he should settle into something steady.

When he made the team, he heard, “Well, you only sit on the bench.”

Obviously, a tough audience.

“I don’t like to deal with the mental games, the talk,” Brown said. “I’m the type who likes to get down to basics. Let’s play the game, slap heads, have some fun. I like to hit, but the talk gets to me.

“I don’t know why things are that way; I wish I had the answer. There just happens to be a lot of people who are more than willing to put someone down who is trying to accomplish a goal. It eats me inside out. But it’s something I just had to swallow up last year. My real friends got me through last year, my real friends and my wife.”

When people compliment him on the training camp he is having, Brown is fond of saying his training camp began the day he was cut in 1988.

When people tell him to take it easy, that his performance so far has virtually assured him a spot on the roster he tells them, “I don’t even think positive.”

When a reporter asked to interview him, he sheepishly agreed but only under the condition that the interview be done in his apartment, as much as saying that only stars deserve to be interviewed out in the open.

Sitting on the small, single bed that makes sleep difficult for a man 6-feet-3 and 240 pounds, with already a lot on his mind, Brown talks in the bedroom of his apartment.

They put him on the third floor, along with the rookies.

Across the quad of the Ram compound, in an apartment converted into a media center, Bill Hawkins, the No. 1 draft pick who signed Thursday for $1.9 million, is being interviewed en masse.

Attention, big money, little doubt about his future, Hawkins has just about everything Brown doesn’t.

“Hey, he deserves it, he should enjoy it. Some guys are blessed,” Brown said. “We’re two different players. I’m sure he doesn’t know what it’s like to be in my position or see things from my perspective.”

From Brown’s perspective, the X-man is still out there. At a Monday practice, Brown hurt his shoulder and wasn’t able to go full speed for a couple of days. X-man notices those kind of things. So sore shoulder or not, he was going full-bore Thursday.

“It’s not a matter of wanting to play with pain, I’ve got to,” he said. “You don’t know if you’re going to aggravate it or not. But I got to play, I got to make it this year.”

Ram Notes

Coach John Robinson said his offense was hurting, and meant it quite literally. There are no uninjured tight ends to practice with, and fullback Robert Delpino and tailback Gaston Green were listed as uncertain for Monday night’s exhibition game against Phoenix at Anaheim Stadium. “Right now, Richard Calvin (a free agent from Washington State) is our starting tailback,” Robinson said. “Hopefully that situation changes.”

Robinson said the only tight end with even a chance of playing Monday is Vernon Kirk. Asked if the team may pick up a free-agent tight end for the one game, he said, “No. It might be embarrassing Monday, but we can live with the embarrassment rather than get off track. We’re going to resist giving in to the present state of affairs.”