Is Henning’s View Just Raisin Hopes?

Is there any way I can whisper this? Maybe I should just have it set in small type.

I just don’t want to have to listen to the laughter.

The Chargers, you see, are daring to use that word. No, not a four-letter word. It’s nothing you’d hear in a rap video or an Andrew Dice Clay monologue. It’s just a word more commonly associated with places (and teams) like San Francisco and Cleveland and even Denver.

The word is . . .

Playoffs.

Gasp.

Who, pray tell, had the audacity to use “Chargers” and “playoffs” in the same sentence? Those words tend to be mutually exclusive, avoiding each other as they have for all of these years.

Yet here was this fellow sitting on a park bench at UC San Diego on an idyllic afternoon that gave meaning to the word hooky. His name was Dan Henning, and he was defining the word success as he would apply it to the Chargers’ 1990 season.

“I don’t think this team as a collective group would accept anything less than the playoffs,” he said. “That’s what were gonna shoot for. That’s our objective. That’s our goal.”

I squinted into the sun, thinking maybe I was visiting with Henning the magician rather than Henning the coach.

Wouldn’t Henning the coach have to be something of a magician to get this team into the playoffs?

I looked closer. He was eating something. The label on the box said he was eating raisins. I wondered if the box was a cover and that he was really eating shriveled mushrooms laced with hallucinogens. Maybe, I thought, raisins could have the same effect on a man’s perception of reality.

Playoffs? Nothing less?

This team has not been to the playoffs since Air Coryell crashed in 1983 after flirting for four years with the National Football League’s highest strata. It has not since had a winning season with real players, therefore excluding the 8-7 in ’87 when replacement players went 3-0 during the strike.

Indeed, if the Chargers were a radio station, they would probably have to bill themselves as 6-10 on your dial . . . and in the standings. That has been typical of the last seven seasons . . . and was precisely how they finished in 1988 and copycat 1989.

Thus, when I asked Henning to define success, I thought maybe he might borrow a page from Lou Holtz’s “Glory of Gloom” and suggest that stepping up to 7-9 or 8-8 would be a step in the right direction.

This must be Henning the magician. I see him for a low pair and now he was about to raise the ante. It must be the raisins.

“Our objective,” he said, “is to win the division and have the home-field advantage in the playoffs. That’s the best way to get into the playoffs, and that’s the best way to get into position to win the silver trophy.”

Silver trophy?

Doesn’t that go to the Super Bowl winner?

Henning obviously has given some thought to this numbers game.

“Generally speaking, in the past, of 10 teams in the playoffs . . . 12 now . . . nine of the 10 teams were probably the best,” he said. “Maybe one that should have been didn’t because of injuries and somebody shouldn’t have been gets in because they stayed healthy. Maybe it’s one and one or maybe it’s two and two.”

Now, however, there is that additional wild-card entry in each conference, should the Chargers have to resort to slipping in a back door.

“If we can avoid catastrophe,” Henning said, “we can be in that 12.”

OK, so maybe this does seem a little cynical. But maybe it’s the Padres’ fault. Maybe they have managed to erase the collective optimism of the whole community. When a team that looked so good can turn out so bad, what good can be expected of a team that has been so bad for so long?

Maybe more than we expect, though maybe not quite as much as Dan Henning expects?

Realistically, this will be an improved Charger team. (Go ahead and say it almost has to be improved.) It might even manage to squeeze into the playoffs, particularly with (a) a fifth-place schedule, (b) a weak division and (c) the extra AFC wild-card spot.

And these Chargers might just get to the playoffs because they are one of those teams that deserve to be there.

There . . . now I’ve used the words “Chargers” and “playoffs” in the same sentence.

Care for some raisins?