Digger Phelps’ New Game : Communities: Flamboyant and brash, he used to be the coach fans loved to hate. Now he’s the point man for Operation Weed and Seed, and he wants to make a difference.

Richard (Digger) Phelps has been through this before. He’s heard the nasty comments, felt the mounting tension. He knows what it’s like to be taunted, to face a frustrated, angry group of people who don’t trust him, don’t like him, and wish he’d go away.

During the 20 years he was head basketball coach at Notre Dame, Phelps would face this kind of hostility in sold-out arenas from Los Angeles to Philly. Fans would rag him for his flamboyant clothes, winning ways and brash persona. They’d sneer at the elitist aura surrounding the Fighting Irish, and boo Phelps because he was seen as a sanctimonious jerk who reported outlaw collegiate basketball programs to the NCAA. He was the college coach out-of-town fans loved to hate.

But today is different. A lot different.

The 51-year-old Phelps, now working as a sort of advance man for a controversial federally funded program known as Operation Weed and Seed, is addressing a community group in an embattled section of the nation’s capital. He’s in a seedy-looking storefront church--all chipped wood pews, cheap wood paneling and whitewashed walls--trying to convince 25 neighborhood activists that he, the loud, big, flashy guy in the stylishly cut double-breasted suit and wild tie, really cares. Cares about the drugs, violence and filth threatening to overrun their area. Cares enough to do something about it.

But they’re not buying it. They’re looking at Phelps as if he were a snake oil salesman. They’ve seen a lot of guys like him wander around the neighborhood, give a pep talk and disappear into the night. Most of them have never heard of Phelps, and once this meeting is over, they’re convinced they’ll never hear from him again.

“This is just getting to be a vicious cycle,” says one. “Everybody wants to meet with us, they come and look around, and then they walk out the door and say, ‘Thanks.’ ”

Digger is upset. He doesn’t have to be here. He could be looking for another big bucks coaching job, playing golf, even dandling his grandchild on his knee. He’s doing this because he wants to change things, to make a difference. It’s what he’s wanted all his life.

“You’ve got pain, you’ve got frustration,” he responds, voice rising and face noticeably reddening. “I can’t change that for you now, but I’ll do my damnedest to get something done. You’ve made a commitment, and now I want to know why we’re not getting other things done.

“I promise you, if you give me the bullets, I’ll fire the gun.”

Phelps’ job is to sell Operation Weed and Seed. The $500-million program targets specific neighborhoods and cities, attempts to “weed” out gangs and crack dealers, then, funneling money through already-existing community groups, “seed” the areas with a variety of social programs. A key part of the program is setting up “safe havens”--schools, churches, community centers--where kids can go for recreation and other activities, thus keeping them off the streets and away from gangs and drugs.

“I just market it,” Phelps says, “get into the neighborhoods, listen, give them pep talks, tell them that you’re gonna be carrying the ball, it’s your show. Then I also go sell people on the outside, like corporations, who’ve never been in, and tell them ‘I need you to get in here.’ ”

In a way, it’s all about salesmanship. And caring. Digger Phelps spent two decades sitting in the living rooms of gangly recruits, extolling the virtues of South Bend. He’d talk about the fine education they’d get, and the competitive, nationally ranked basketball team they’d be a part of. He knew that for many of these kids, basketball represented a way out of the ghetto, a means to escape grinding poverty and systemic racism.

But Phelps also realized that for every LaPhonso Ellis saved from East St. Louis, scores more were left behind. And that just didn’t cut it.

Phelps always had a streak of social consciousness. Growing up as an undertaker’s son in Beacon, N.Y. (hence the nickname “Digger”), he remembers his father telling him “everybody trusts us in their time of need. Their religion is our religion, their skin color is our skin color, their race is our race.”

That lesson in egalitarianism stuck with Phelps, and was solidified by a lifetime spent coaching kids from all sorts of racial and economic backgrounds. Digger became an up-by-the-bootstraps kind of guy who stressed academics as much as any college coach in America (all 54 athletes who played for him for four years graduated).

He worked with the Special Olympics, and serves on the board of the Commission of National and Community Service. So when Phelps left Notre Dame in 1991, after a season during which the Irish posted their worst record in 20 years, it seemed only natural he would look for a position in the public sector.

It didn’t hurt that he had a buddy named George Bush. Phelps met the future President at a golf tournament 18 years ago, and they became fast friends. The duo stayed in touch over the years, and when Phelps, a life-long Democrat, announced he was leaving Notre Dame, Bush was among the first to call him. Last April he was named as a $104,000-a-year special assistant to Bob Martinez, director of the Office of National Drug Policy.

Critics contend the brand-new Weed and Seed is Election Year posturing from the Bush Administration, an attempt to prove the President has a domestic agenda. They claim monies allocated to the program are a reshuffling of existing funds into a sexier package, and wonder why local U.S. attorneys’ offices, rather than social welfare organizations, are coordinating the show.

Phelps sees Weed and Seed as “a concept where we’re trying to go grass-roots up and out, which has never been done before, versus the whole trickle-down concept, which never (works). There’s never been a balanced program where you can get the conservatives and liberals happy. But when you look at the ‘weed,’ it’s ‘oh, yeah, law and order,’ and when you bridge it with the community service and safe havens, you can come into it together.”

Digger Phelps came to Washington to learn. Not about the bureaucracy, but the streets. He was given a crash course in the down side of American life.

He went to the projects and a drug-ridden street in the poorest part of the city. He visited a boot camp for juvenile offenders, and contrasted schools and recreation centers in depressed parts of D.C. with similar facilities in the upscale suburb of Bethesda, Md. He even read “The Autobiography of Malcolm X.”

John Johnson, one of Digger’s new mentors, didn’t trust him at first. All he could see was a big, blustery guy who was slumming. But after spending time with Phelps, watching how he reacted to the poverty and desperation he was seeing, the 23-year-old hotel room service waiter changed his opinion.

“I think because he had to do a lot of recruiting, he saw the conditions, and I think he cares about people,” Johnson says. “He put his ego aside and said, ‘This is wrong, and it needs to be changed.’ He’s dealt with young blacks all the time, and he’s seen them succeed. The hook that Digger has on the black community is that he’s a basketball coach. And if he can use that in a positive way, people will listen.”

Johnson’s experience is not atypical. Others who have come into contact with Phelps have been initially put off by the bombast, the irrelevant stories about his recruiting days, the lack of knowledge about specific programs. But then they discover that he listens. And cares. And acts.

Christine Blakeley runs New Image, a Philadelphia residential facility for homeless women who are chemically dependent. Phelps visited the program more than a month ago, where he encountered some of the same frustration and anger as at the D.C. community meeting. Blakeley even publicly criticized him for being all talk and no action.

Then a strange thing happened. Phelps followed up on the visit. He put New Image in touch with other organizations that could help them. He became accessible to Blakeley and her staff, and visited the facility a second time. He returned phone calls.

“I’ve learned to respect him,” Blakeley says. “He’s approaching a problem like he would a team--he’s getting his players. He’s putting the pieces together. He’s not sitting in any office, he’s going out in the field and seeing what he has to work with.”

In the end, they’re all recruiting trips for Phelps. Make the pitch, sell the product. Some people will buy it, some won’t. The important thing is to keep focused, remember what the goal is. Winning games, rebuilding neighborhoods--it’s all a team effort.

Digger Phelps has this vision of what Weed and Seed could become. It’s all-encompassing, naive in the best sense. He sees safe havens in every tough neighborhood in America. Accountants and computer analysts, journalists and yes, even basketball coaches, volunteer their time a few hours every week, teaching kids self-esteem and job-related skills. Drug dealers and other thugs are thrown into boot camps, where the intense discipline rebuilds their egos, and they are taught marketable skills. Community groups band together with corporations to take back neighborhoods, beautify and uplift.

This vision thing is not political with Digger. It’s straight from the heart.

“People can make a difference,” Phelps says. “Politicians aren’t going to make a difference. I’m not in this to run for office. I could be playing golf all summer. But there’s something in me that says ‘no, you gotta go try.’ ”