Dead-End Kid Is Out of Place

You look at Jim McMahon and your first thought is, “They must be shooting a Bowery Boys movie somewhere nearby.” This is Leo Gorcey in pads. A great part for Mickey Rourke.

First of all, there’s the pugnacious Irish-American face, the bulging eyes, the spiked hair, the cocky air. It is the portrait of a guy on his way to the electric chair. You picture him diving off a dock into the East River, hitching rides on the back of streetcars, stealing fruit from a neighborhood stand. A throwback. A wise guy, a street kid.

It was hard to believe a brash, abrasive specimen like this came out of the genteel programs of Brigham Young and not the mean streets of Hell’s Kitchen.

The thing about Jim McMahon was, he didn’t care what you thought of him--so long as you gave him the ball. He fought with his coach, the commissioner, his foes, the media, all with equal degrees of skill and enthusiasm.

It was hard to like him--but not hard to respect him. He was good. That was the trouble. Jim McMahon with a football in his hands was as dangerous a sight as a rival coach wanted to see.

He was as fragile as a truckload of eggs. He didn’t have a career, he had a chart. His bio is dotted with entries like:

--”1984: Missed seven games plus playoffs when he suffered hairline fracture of right hand and bruised back vs. Denver and kidney laceration vs. Raiders.”

--”1985: Missed three games with shoulder tendinitis and did not start at Minnesota due to stiff neck.”

--”1986: Played in just six games due to shoulder injuries. Placed on (injured reserve) for remainder of season on 11/25.”

--”1987: Spent beginning of season on (injured reserve) recovering from off-season rotator cuff injury. Activated 10/23 and started next six games before departing at Minnesota in fourth quarter with pulled hamstring. Sidelined last three regular-season games. Had minor surgery on right AC joint on 1/26/88.”

--”1988: Started first nine games of season before suffering right knee sprain at New England. Placed in injured reserve and did not return to active roster until week of regular-season finale at Minnesota. Had minor surgery to right knee following season.”

Still, he had this habit of coming off the injured list, entering a game and turning it immediately around. Against Minnesota in 1985, he came off the bench in a game his team was trailing, 17-9, and threw touchdown passes the first two times he got the ball and another one a short time later. He won the game, 33-24.

He led his team to the only Super Bowl it was ever in and, when there, in between insulting the host city of New Orleans and alienating half the populace of Louisiana, he routed the New England Patriots by the most lopsided score in Super Bowl history.

On the face of it, you would think the last thing the Chicago Bears would want to do is cut this living legend adrift, that he is as much a part of the mystique of the city of the big shoulders as the stockyards, Mrs. O’Leary’s cow--or Walter Payton, whom nobody would dare think of trading away.

Coach Mike Ditka is not much of a sentimentalist. Coach Mike’s notion was that he was trading away a limp, not a legend. McMahon had a large and vocal fan club in Chicago. Ditka was not in it. The two got along like Mike Tyson and Robin.

Ditka finally unloaded McMahon’s contract to the San Diego Chargers last month for a piece of paper and Mac took the act into the sun.

Will the bad-boy image play in San Diego? Will a new coach be glad of the arm and cheerfully take the character attached to it? Will Jim McMahon last longer where the ground is soft, the temperature temperate and the coach sympathetic? Will he take the Chargers to the Super Bowl?

His start Sunday in the L.A. Coliseum looked as if it may be a while. Jim McMahon, of all people, looked unsure of himself out there.

Eight of the first 13 passes he threw were incomplete and he only completed two passes in the second half. Of course, he wasn’t around long. There were 6 minutes 37 seconds left in the third quarter when the coach lifted him. No one is sure why. The score was 28-14, the game was still within reach.

Not even McMahon can walk into a new system, with new coaches, unfamiliar personnel, and start throwing 40-yard touchdown passes. He was not exactly contrite after the game but neither was he defiant. “I was terrible,” he said resignedly. “It’s tough to block for somebody when he’s not where he’s supposed to be, and I wasn’t where I was supposed to be. You’d think with all my experience I’d be where I was supposed to be but I couldn’t find the mark.”

Humility never played well in Chicago. McMahon had no need to criticize himself. Ditka did it for him.

It remains to be seen whether you can be a Bowery Boy in San Diego anyway, a place where the coach, even though he took him out of the game, said he thought McMahon had played creditably. That kind of support at the top is probably enough to throw McMahon’s timing way off.

It’s clear this Dead End Kid performs best when his coach is standing on the sidelines with his ears getting red, his neck cords standing out, his language sputtering and the pupils in his eyes getting narrower and narrower and his teeth dripping as if he’s about to turn into a bat. That’s what relaxes Jim McMahon and turns him into a Super Bowl quarterback.