To Charger Fans, He’s the Man, Not Perot

The 1992 national campaign took a pivotal swing here Sunday, with the voices of the Perot supporters in the Jack Murphy Stadium parking lot getting drowned out, four hours later, by the shouts in the San Diego Chargers’ locker room:

“Gill Byrd for President!”

For more than 53,000 San Diegans, whose eyes had seen the glory for themselves, no 30-minute infomercial with pointer and pie graphs would be required.

Their man is a man of experience--10 years’ worth, none of them easy, all of them devoted to erasing San Diego’s malaise-inducing deficit against the rest of the National Football League. Their man is a man of action--a bold American who has stared into the eyes of a fearsome enemy and intercepted John Elway nine times, including twice on Sunday.

Most of all, their man can make a speech. The Chargers who listened to the latest one, delivered seconds after Eric Bieniemy fumbled late in the fourth quarter with San Diego holding a fragile three-point lead, swear it to be the best they ever heard.

“Gill gathered the whole defense around him and said, ‘This is our game to win,’ ” Charger linebacker Gary Plummer recounted. “There was no mention of ‘We’re not going to lose this thing.’ There was no mention of losing at all.

“ ‘This is ours to win,’ is all he said--and he said it with a great deal of conviction.”

And, to the highly pleasant surprise of Plummer:

“The guys believed it.”

With the Chargers, for far too many years of 4-12 and 6-10, seeing has not been believing. You see so many fourth-quarter breakdowns, you see so many fourth-quarter giveaways, you begin to stop believing that things can ever change.

There they went again: Handing 56 1/2 minutes of inspired football, and a 24-21 lead over the Denver Broncos, to Bieniemy and watching their backup tailback cough the ball up at the San Diego 34 with 3:17 to play.

Same old Chargers, it appeared.

As always, their own worst Bieniemy.

It was at this juncture that Byrd cleared his throat and spoke his mind, delivering the sideline oratory that will heretofore be remembered around Friars Road as “Keep Hope Alive II.”

On the very next play, Elway tries his hand at the two-second drill and lofts a spiral toward the left goal-line pylon and Bronco wide receiver Mark Jackson.

And the over-the-shoulder catch is made by . . . Charger cornerback Tony Blaylock.

What a sequence. Byrd interjects, Blaylock intercepts.

What a victory, too. Stan Humphries drives the Chargers to a pair of first downs, just enough to burn all of Denver’s remaining timeouts, and takes one knee, takes two knees, takes the game clock all the way down to 0:00.

“The biggest win since I’ve been here,” declared Plummer, in his seventh professional season. “No doubt. It’s the biggest because it gives us the opportunity to stay in the running in the AFC West. We haven’t been this far into a season with a legitimate shot at making the playoffs in a long, long time.”

It is tempting to categorize the Chargers as the Rams-By-Baja because, like the Rams, the Chargers recently ended a lengthy losing streak, are rebuilding under a new coach and are presently thrilled to be a game under .500 at 3-4.

But the Rams’ woes go back only to 1990. Excluding the strike year of 1987, the Chargers haven’t had a winning season since 1982, when Byrd was a senior at San Jose State, playing for Elway’s father, Jack.

The damage done has been nasty. Since 1982, the Chargers have gone 6-10, 7-9, 8-8, 4-12, 8-7, 6-10, 6-10, 6-10 and 4-12.

And, for the first month of this season, 0-4.

Floored early by a knee injury to starting quarterback John Friesz, the Chargers got back up only to be clocked by the 1-2-3-4 punch of Kansas City, Denver, Pittsburgh and Houston.

Finally, the Chargers regained their footing against Seattle, but doesn’t everyone? Then they beat Indianapolis, which seemed like no big deal at the time.

But Denver?

That would entail winning three games in a row, a feat San Diego had managed but once since 1987.

So Humphries goes out and throws for 300 yards for the first time since turning pro . . . and San Diego has two receivers, Anthony Miller and Derrick Walker, go over 100 yards in receptions for the first time since 1985 . . . and the Chargers reverse a how-do-we-screw-this-one-up? trend that has been firmly in place since Dan Fouts retired.

“A lot of boys grew up and became men today,” Byrd said. “Now they know what it takes to win at this level and how to beat a team with a great quarterback like John Elway.”

You beat John Elway by intercepting him. Easier said than done, no?

No, apparently, for Byrd, whose two interceptions Sunday brought his career total to nine against Secret Agent Orange 007.

“John’s such a great quarterback that it raises your level of concentration,” said Byrd, groping for a rational explanation. “I’ve just been fortunate. Over the years, he’s gotten me, too. He got me the first game this year. It’s always a game of cat-and-mouse whenever you play John.”

And with 3:17 to go, Byrd had one piece of advice for the mice:

Play deep.

“I knew exactly what he was going to do,” Byrd said, referring to Elway. “In that situation, Denver likes to go for the jugular. I knew he would try to go for it all right away.”

Look up, Byrd told his teammates.

It will be there for the taking. The football, the victory.

“I knew we needed to turn it up a notch,” Byrd said, “so I told them, ‘It’s not over yet. We can still win this game.’ ”

But did anybody actually, truly, sincerely believe him?

Having been nominated by his secondary mates, Blaylock and Stanley Richard, the grass-roots independent candidate for President pondered the question.

“I think they do now.”

* CHARGERS-BRONCOS: C5