HE’S UP . . .HE’S GOOD! : Former NFL Kicker Benny Ricardo Now Makes His Points From a Stage

Making the jump from the playing fields of the National Football League to the stages of comedy clubs around the country may seem like a big stretch. But for ex-kicker Benny Ricardo, the transition from jock to joker has been a breeze.

After all, Ricardo says, “I was booed by 80,000 people and that didn’t bother me; what’s a couple of hundred at a comedy club?”

Actually, Ricardo, who is appearing at Comedy Land in the Pan Pacific Hotel in Anaheim Friday and Saturday, is generating anything but boos on stage.

Ricardo, a Paraguayan native who graduated from Costa Mesa High School in 1971, is a polished performer who has made the transition from opening act to headliner in less than two years.

As a comic, he’s a natural. Ricardo, who completed his 11-year NFL career in 1985, had been cracking up his teammates on the Detroit Lions, New Orleans Saints, Minnesota Vikings and San Diego Chargers for years.

At 5 foot 10, 170 pounds, he was, he says, “a little man in a giant’s world” who quickly learned how to rely on humor.

“It’s kind of like the Richard Pryor thing: When you go to jail, you’ve got to make those guys laugh,” he said in an interview. “I used to identify with that all the time, being in that locker room with all those giants.”

Ricardo, who was a junior college All-American at Orange Coast College and All-American at San Diego State, retired from the NFL in the top 10 all-time field goal percentage. He still holds the Viking record for most consecutive field goals (15).

Naturally, much of his material deals with sports.

He opens his act by saying: “You probably don’t recognize me as a football player anymore. I used to be 6-8, 300 pounds when I was on steroids. . . . Nah, I didn’t do steroids. I wanted to watch the Kentucky Derby and not have an urge to run in it.”

He also does a bit about ex-heavyweight champ Mike Tyson.

“Mike Tyson has had such a rough year in 1991, he now has a voice mail answering service:

“If you’re calling about a paternity suit, press 1.

“If you’re calling about a rape, press 2.

“If you’re calling about a date, press 1 and 2.”

Ricardo, who worked as the sports director and morning drive-time personality for “Magic” 102.9 FM in San Diego after leaving football, credits his rapid advancement in the stand-up comedy pecking order to the fact that “I have so much material to draw on from sports.”

But he’s well aware that “I can’t do all sports up there because I’d lose the women, so I do a lot on women and stuff.”

That includes everything from a bit about women watching a football game to women going shopping and having to deal with pushy sales people, who “are worse than Chicklet salesmen in Tijuana.”

Ricardo derives much of his material from personal experiences--such as the time he went to the post office and saw “the sign up there that says, ‘No Dogs Allowed Unless Accompanying a Blind Person.’ I thought, who is this sign for? It’s not like the dog is going to say, ‘I’m with him. ‘ That’s like going to K mart and hearing there’s a blue-light special on all the Braille books: ‘Just look for the blue light.’ ”

One of Ricardo’s signature pieces is a routine in which he verbally “seduces” a young woman in the audience by using car names and terms:

“With your Accord, I would like to Escort you on a Festiva journey of love where I would take down the top and I would feel the Corinthian leather, I would gaze at the instruments and the knobs that beckon me to turn them on. . . . “

But his verbal virtuosity is best displayed in another signature piece--a monologue leavened with numbers and performed with a machine-gun delivery:

“Last night I stayed at the Motel 6, in room 222, didn’t know what to do, so I drank some ‘MD 20-20,’ and I called 411 to find out where the nearest 7-Eleven was. So I jumped in my 911, went down to 7-Eleven. All of a sudden I realized, Hey, I don’t have any money, so I pulled out my .357 and I pulled a 211.”

After completing the rapid-fire bit he then does it again--backward (“for the dyslexic people”). Then he asks if there are any Spanish-speaking people in the audience and does it yet again in Spanish.

Despite his growing success in stand-up comedy, Ricardo has no regrets about not going straight into show business rather than football. It’s precisely because he was in professional football, he said, that he has progressed so quickly.

“I can go to the biggest redneck bar in Mississippi and do nothing but football stuff, and those people will just love me.”

His football career also launched his budding acting career--as a player he had small roles in “North Dallas Forty,” “Two Minute Warning,” “Semi-Tough” and “The Best of Times.” He just completed filming a new movie, “Shadow Force,” starring Dirk Benedict, and next month will tape the pilot of an interview show in which he’ll serve as host.

It’s a natural for Ricardo.

The show, in which current and former ball players will relate their funniest stories (and for which no broadcast details are available yet), is called “Locker Room Laughter.”

Who: Benny Ricardo.

When: Friday and Saturday, Jan. 17 and 18, at 8:30 and 10:30 p.m.

Where: Comedy Land in the Pan Pacific Hotel, 1717 S. West St., Anaheim.

Whereabouts: Take the Katella exit off the Santa Ana (5) Freeway and go west. Turn right on West Street. The Pan Pacific Hotel is next to the Disneyland Hotel.

Wherewithal: $5.

Where to call: (714) 979-5653.