The Two Sides of Harry : Chargers: A pass rusher-turned-offensive lineman, Swayne has the temperament to be a great tackle. But he has another side--teammates haven’t nicknamed him Sybil for nothing.

The trade of tackle Jim Lachey to the Raiders might have marked the darkest moment in the Chargers’ decline in recent years and solidified the team’s reputation for getting it all wrong.

But then along comes tackle Harry Swayne, perhaps a beacon to present-day success.

“Harry is the best young left tackle in football today,” said Colt offensive line coach Alex Gibbs, who previously worked with the Chargers. “In another year or two you’re talking about an Anthony Munoz-type of guy.

“If free agency comes about, look out, this is going to be one of the premier people folks are going to want. There isn’t a left tackle coming out in the draft that is even close to this guy. This is a great young talent.”

The Sporting News recently polled NFL general managers, personnel directors and scouts, and in rating the league’s top offensive tackles, they placed Harry Swayne’s name at the top of the list of “Best Young Guys.”

“I don’t doubt that,” said Arkansas State Coach Ray Perkins, who coached Swayne while with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

If Steve Ortmayer is to be blamed for giving away Lachey, Perkins is to be commended for giving the Chargers the opportunity for redemption. After two years of nonstop badgering, Perkins convinced Swayne to move from defensive end to offensive tackle.

“I thought he lacked the quickness and speed to be a defensive lineman, but he was calm, level-headed and smart, the things you look for in an offensive lineman,” Perkins said. “I told him it might take him two years to make the change, but then maybe he could play another 12 to 15 years as a result.

“He didn’t want anything to do with it, but once he tried, I knew he’d make it. He’s got something in him. You’re talking about somebody special here.”

Mary Swayne has known that all along, of course, but there are times when a mother has to raise her voice.

“I call him, ‘Little Harry,’ ” she said.

The boys in the locker room are going to just love that.

Oh, and about those bowling trophies, Harry. Mom has them in a box along with those darling little figure-skating trophies. If you want to show them to the guys, you know, just call.

“Imagine that guy in a tutu,” said teammate David Richards.

“Figure skating?” yelped teammate Leo Goeas. “Harry, could you like, twirl?”

Swayne could twirl, jump and carve out the best figure-eight you’ve ever seen. “A very, very good figure skater,” Mary said. “The best figure-skating school in Philadelphia wanted him; he was that good. But he didn’t want to go; peer pressure. My heart was broken.”

Harry Vonray Swayne III. Vonray? “My grandfather was from Germany and he was kind of messing around with some French women and some French men didn’t like it,” Harry said. “He decided it was best to change his name because there were some people after him. He dropped the Swayne, and stuck in Vonray.”

At 6 feet 5 and 290 pounds, Swayne is big enough now to be called whatever he wants, but there was a time when he really was “Little Harry.” He was an altar boy, he played the drums and advanced to guitar. He liked school. He was different.

“He’s not your stereotypical football player, that’s for sure,” said Tampa Bay guard Tom McHale, who blocked defensive end Harry Swayne and who blocked with offensive tackle Harry Swayne. “He wasn’t the type of guy who just lived and breathed football.”

Swayne played basketball and football while growing up and he liked to assemble model cars. “All the kids in the neighborhood would have their parents buy them models and then bring them to Harry to put together,” Mary said.

Busy, busy, busy, and that exactly how Mary had it planned. She was a single mother, and she was working three jobs to pay the tuition to send her daughter and son to Cardinal Dougherty High School.

“Two hour ride on public transportation to get there, and two hours back,” she said. “By the time Harry got home each day all he could do was eat and sleep. I never gave him time to get in trouble. Trouble is much more expensive than the tuition I was paying.”

The Swaynes lived in south Philadelphia, and “the drug thing was just starting to escalate,” Harry said. “I had to go to a public high school one year because my mom couldn’t afford to send both my sister and myself to private school, and it was like hell every day. I couldn’t get anything done.

“I got to appreciate, though, what my mom was doing to send me to private school after that. I saw what kind of kid I might have turned out to be had I stayed in that atmosphere. She got me out in time.”

Defensive end Burt Grossman laughed. “Is he telling you one of those, ‘I lived in a bad neighborhood’ stories? We’re both from Philly, and he went to an all-white prep school. He went off to school with his blazer on and corduroys and it cost money to get in there. How rough of a childhood was that?

“I know Harry very well. We played against each other in the Catholic League championship game. They had two black kids on the team and they were known as ‘Thing 1,’ and ‘Thing 2.’

Swayne nodded. “The head coach gave us the nicknames; we were the only two defensive linemen. I was ‘1.’ I liked the nickname.”

In the neighborhood he was also the first guy his friends called on when they were in trouble.

“I was the biggest kid, and I was supposed to be the enforcer,” he said. “But you know, there’s always someone bigger and badder than you. I found that out.”

Swayne became big enough, however, to catch the attention of a number of college recruiters looking for football players. Mary’s first pick was William & Mary. Her second choice was Boston College. Harry chose Rutgers.

“That’s Harry, but I insisted on one thing: It had to be a good school,” Mary said. “Education came first, When the scouts came I had to see stats. I wanted to know, ‘What happens to your athletes?’ ”

Harry agreed. “I wasn’t that interested in playing football,” he said. “I just wanted that free ride to get a good education. I knew I needed to get out of Philadelphia and out of my neighborhood, and that was the important thing.”

Swayne earned a degree in sports management from Rutgers, and like his mother he has a keen interest in business. He already has donned a suit in the off-season and worked as an intern for sports promotions.

“I know he’s a man, but he’s still my child,” Mary said. “He has a great head for business, but I’m also still in awe of him, this grown man playing football.”

The Bucs selected him in the seventh round of the 1987 draft, and he made it. In his two years as a defensive end in the NFL, he had more figure-skating trophies than sacks.

“He has quick hands and great feet, well, not that good of feet, or he would still be a defensive end,” Grossman said. “He’s a real good offensive lineman, but then he was a pretty good defender, too.”

The mental approach to offense is quite different than the one taken to defense. And it has taken Swayne time to adjust.

“A defensive player comes ripping and snorting off the ball,” he said. “A defensive lineman doesn’t really have to think. It’s all reaction.

“On offense it’s controlled aggression. You’re supposed to step back and let people beat on you. It’s not easy to control my aggression and behavior. I’ve always had this aggressive violent side; it comes from growing up in a tough area. Words don’t always get it done.”

Once a defensive lineman, always a defensive lineman.

“You can tell,” he said. “The offensive linemen who were once defensive linemen are the guys who hit defensive linemen in the back after the play is over or start the fights. A defensive lineman always gets the last shot in.”

When the Bucs shifted him to offense in 1989, they allowed him to practice, but he never earned the opportunity to start. That chance came later in San Diego.

“I was working in business management at Tampa Stadium in the off-season, and when no one was around, I was working to become an offensive lineman,” he said. “I didn’t tell any of my teammates that I was making the change, and when the first day of training camp arrived, I just ran out on the field and joined the offensive linemen.”

Two years later he was still trying to fit in, and the Bucs were still losing. Perkins was fired, and Swayne was left unprotected in Plan B free agency.

“I get this call to look at this guy, and so Marty Hurney (Charger coordinator of football operations) and I drive out to the practice field,” Gibbs said. “It wasn’t like there were 15 scouts and videotape or anything, although a couple of years from now everyone will be talking about the day they discovered Harry Swayne.

“There are very few left tackles who can move in space. Most of these guys are just big. Imagine getting one of those for nothing.”

A training camp injury to Goeas allowed Swayne the opportunity to step into the starting lineup, and by season’s end his peers had voted him Charger co-Lineman of the Year.

“I came here because of Alex Gibbs,” Swayne said. “When I worked out for him, he showed me things I had never seen or done. He intrigued me, and I wanted to learn more. It’s hard at this level to find a coach who will go out of his way to help a guy who doesn’t know what he’s doing. It’s expected that you will know it, or otherwise it becomes an overtime type of thing.

“Before last season we’d go out to the field and there would be five defensive linemen waiting to beat up on me. I’d look around, and I was the only offensive lineman out there.”

There were still concerns initially, however. In his first scrimmage with the Rams, he played poorly. In his first full workout against Leslie O’Neal a few days later, he took a beating.

“He went into the tank,” Gibbs said. “It decimated him, and I was worried we were losing him. Until he grew out of that and could move onto the next play, there were concerns. Everyone makes mistakes, but Harry didn’t think he could make mistakes.”

Still doesn’t. No one is tougher on Harry Swayne than Harry Swayne.

“It’s a fear of not being as good as I want to be,” he said. “I wanted to be a solid starter at left tackle and anything short of that was letting myself down. Getting beat or losing just ticks me off.”

In this year’s exhibition opener he successfully blocked Phoenix linebacker Ken Harvey, but after quarterback John Friesz had thrown a pass, Harvey hit Friesz and put him out for the season with a knee injury.

“I took that personally,” Swayne said. “It was a late hit, a cheap shot, but I should have known it was coming. He did the same thing earlier in the game and I should have stayed with him after the pass was thrown.”

After Harvey hit Friesz, Swayne went after him and the officials had to pull Swayne off Harvey. The Cardinals took Harvey out of the game on the following play, and then sent him back in.

“I took some cheap shots,” Swayne said. “His reaction? It was nothing compared to what I was doing to him. I was very upset. I will see him again.”

Swayne might wear glasses away from his work and look like a professor, but there is a reason his teammates have nicknamed him “Sybil.”

“One minute he will be all happy and jovial,” said Richards, “and the next he will be trying to choke one of the defensive lineman.”

In Tampa, Swayne was known as, well, it can’t be printed. “I was the guy who would go all out on Thursday while everybody else was going half-speed,” Swayne said. “Some people didn’t like that.”

Swayne attempts to disguise his multiple personalities by wearing a tinted visor on his helmet. It doesn’t work.

“I’ll hear defensive linemen talking and they’ll say, ‘This is a just a walk-through,’ ” tackle Broderick Thompson said, “Harry will say, ‘OK, OK.’ And the next play he’ll knock the heck out of them.”

Little Harry would do that?

“I’ve seen him on the field, and, wow, he is different,” Mary said. “But there is this very sensitive side to Harry. I always had to go outside and tell the neighborhood kids to give Harry his toys back because he’d just give them away.”

Grossman can relate to that. Two years ago Swayne was matched against Grossman while still playing for the Bucs, and true to his good nature he allowed Grossman to pick up two sacks.

“It was like high school,” Grossman said.

Last week, however, when Grossman was forced to practice against Swayne, he backed off. He spent much of his time warning his teammate not to listen to those little voices in his head.

“Hey, I didn’t want Sybil snapping on me out there,” he said.

As a rule, Swayne is locked in combat in practice with Leslie O’Neal. Try and tell one of them to take it easy.

“In order to have a good offense you have to have a left tackle who can pass protect,” Richards said. “It’s crucial; that’s where all the best pass rushers come from.”

Since trading Lachey, the Chargers have employed nine different left tackles.

“They’ve found him,” Grossman said, “and he’ll be around here for a long time.”

Swayne, the studious football player, takes notes on his opponents and updates them after each encounter.

“I don’t think too many guys know or worry about me,” Swayne said. “I’m still too green and new on the scene.

“But the day is coming when they will know me. That’s what has gotten me through the tough times and kept me from going south when I was growing up. I always had it in my mind that I was going to be something bigger than what people expected me to be.”