There Really Is No Catch to This Receiver’s Success

The voice is small for a presence so large.

“Is there, uh, going to be a picture?”

“A what?”

“A picture. Is this story going to have my picture?”

Russell Shaw has never had a picture before.

Never even had a story before, truth be told.

This University of Michigan junior wide receiver will enter his campus stadium today before more than 100,000 fans and jog smack into his hometown team from UCLA.

Later, he will probably run at least one touchdown route around his hometown players.

He will probably make at least one diving catch for his hometown viewers.

He will probably have red-faced Keith Jackson waxing about the wonder of Los Angeles’ hometown stars.

And this, the week before the game, is the first time he has ever spoken to anyone from his hometown newspaper.

Because Russell Shaw suffers from a plague that has increasingly infected large numbers of Los Angeles’ inner-city athletes, robbing kids of recognition and the community of role models.

It is the plague of normality.

Russell Shaw is too normal.

And where he comes from, normal doesn’t sell.

For all of his 20 years, he has lived with his family in a modest home with barred windows on 105th Street in South-Central Los Angeles.

Not once has he been involved with gangs. Or drugs. Or any other sorts of crimes we love to document when an athlete overcomes them.

Or when he doesn’t.

As a child, he rode his skateboard to Pop Warner football games. As a teen, he attended Inglewood High, Locke High and El Camino College without incident.

Because he did poorly on his Scholastic Assessment Tests, he could not immediately accept a major-college scholarship offer. So he enrolled in El Camino for two years and raised his grades while becoming the top junior college receiver in the country.

Russell Shaw’s parents have been married 27 years. His mother, Georgia, made him turkey sandwiches every morning. His father, Russell, has rescued him from his old car with the family tow truck.

He does not come from a broken home, there is no broken spirit, there are no broken windows.

Russell Shaw is simply a darn good football player who is probably headed for the NFL.

One of many darn good football players from this city who have been ignored.

Because they don’t live up to the majority’s idea of what a South-Central kid should be.

If Russell Shaw were from the San Fernando Valley, he could fill the door of his bedroom with press clippings.

If he were from Orange County, his face would have adorned the cover of a special section.

If he were from a small town in Nebraska, the presses would be belching out his biography.

Instead, his walls are dominated by letters from colleges, and a handwritten dedication to an older sister who died of lupus.

Instead, he may be the first top-10 college star this season to actually ask a reporter whether his story would include a picture.

It’s as if the world has said to Russell Shaw:

“Go hurt somebody and serve two years in a youth home and then show up at some big school in a wheat field with tattoos and an attitude . . . and then we’ll watch.

“March on to some campus with a big mouth and an end-zone dance, and then we’ll listen.

“Until then, we have to run, chase down this offensive linemen from Agoura, he’s going to Stanford, must be a good story there somewhere.”

In South-Central, it seems a great player has to have a shtick or a hardship.

Anywhere else, a great player just has to be a great player.

Keyshawn Johnson, the loud No. 1 draft pick who has repeatedly swallowed his foot while with the New York Jets, might sadly understand this better than anybody.

Russell Shaw acknowledges that there will be friends watching TV today who will be learning for the first time that he is starring for an undefeated national power.

“People are going to be saying, ‘Look at him,’ and at first, they aren’t going to believe it,” Shaw said.

Pause, a soft voice grown even softer.

“But, they’ll have to believe it.”

College and pro scouts believe it. The 6-foot, 180-pounder is tied for the team lead with two touchdown catches for the seventh-ranked Wolverines.

His first was a leaping grab of a 10-yard pass from Scott Dreisbach that clinched an opening-day, 20-8 victory over Illinois

His second was a sliding catch of a 23-yard pass from Dreisbach for Michigan’s first score in a 20-14 win over Boston College.

His mother has received, by mail, every story featuring his name. She says those stories have all come from the Midwest.

“I don’t know why nobody around here ever does anything about him,” she said. “But it’s fine with us. We’re happy.”

Are they ever.

The family will gather at 105th Street today and howl at the three TV sets that will be showing the game.

Just the way they gathered this summer at a park in Culver City to celebrate Shaw’s departure for Michigan.

Georgia will even be flying to Ann Arbor later this fall, her first trip on an airplane.

Next thing she knows, she will be making her first trip to Disneyland.

“Can you believe that, I’ve lived here all my life and never even been to Disneyland?” she said.

Next thing we know, Russell Shaw is going to become another Robert Brooks and a big NFL sensation and fly home during a bye week and take Georgia to Disneyland personally.

It will be a wonderful story, one of hope for those who have ever driven a junker or flunked a test or put their dreams on hold while they rolled up their sleeves.

But it will be a story untold.

Because Russell Shaw won’t know this town anymore.

And this town won’t know him.

And outside that Pop Warner field, a child on a skateboard flies past.