THE BITTER END

Could Kurt Warner propel the St. Louis Rams into the Super Bowl? Could the Ram defense persist in keeping the pesky Tampa Bay Buccaneers out of the end zone? As the final minutes ticked away in last Sunday’s NFC championship game, one of the more loyal employees in Ram history suddenly faced a more pressing question.

Paper or plastic?

Pete Donovan devoted 12 of the best years of his life to the Rams, working in public relations, marketing, promotions and corporate sponsorships. When the Rams moved to St. Louis in 1995, Donovan didn’t. When the Rams played Tampa Bay, Donovan didn’t watch.

“I went grocery shopping,” he said. “I was probably the only guy at Albertsons.”

As many toast the Rams for their magical journey to the Super Bowl, the celebration is bittersweet among Ram employees who did not follow the team from Southern California.

Don Hewitt, hired as equipment manager in 1966, helped the Rams pack for St. Louis, but not happily.

“My whole life was the Los Angeles Rams,” Hewitt said. “After they moved, I was heartbroken.”

There are few traces of the Los Angeles Rams. They played in Anaheim Stadium, an oversized and colorless monstrosity since reborn as Edison Field, a wonderful and whimsical baseball park. The Angels are not wonderful, but they are here.

The Rams practiced at Juliette Low School in Anaheim, since restored to an elementary school. The paint remains on five “reserved” parking spaces, in team colors, faded gold letters on a blue background. If you look closely, you can make out “FRON IERE” on a space reserved for Ram owner Georgia Frontiere. The T, apparently, was lost to the elements.

The Rams still own their administration building on Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles, and lease office space in Orange County. Five employees work in Southern California, including treasurer Jeff Brewer, who joined the Rams in 1986. Jack Faulkner, who first worked for the Rams as secondary coach in 1955, works in a second-floor office in Santa Ana.

“We’ve got a small office about the size of your bathroom,” said Faulkner, who reviews game tapes and prepares scouting reports. “I fax them everything. It’s just like being down the hallway, except I don’t get bothered by people walking around.”

About once a week, Mickey Dukich drops by that office to say hello. Dukich, the first full-time cinematographer in NFL history, joined the Rams in 1956.

“I put my heart and soul into that organization,” Dukich said. “I didn’t think they were going to move up until they said so. I think Southern California was the loser. I just wish everyone felt like I did.”

Joe Abad, the maintenance superintendent for 16 years, closed Rams Park for good in 1995, cleaning up the place for two months after the moving vans left for St. Louis.

“It was like a ghost town,” Abad said. “It was sad to see.”

Abad’s heart was lightened last week, when he went to the store and saw people wearing Ram shirts.

“A lot of fans came out of the closet,” he said. “In many years, you wouldn’t see people wearing Rams stuff.”

The passion to support a team, perhaps, follows the passion to acquire one. This is more of a commitment than putting on a blue and gold T-shirt.

Hewitt’s son Todd succeeded his father as equipment manager and moved to St. Louis, and Hewitt flies there to help at home games. As Hewitt describes the St. Louis fans, or fanatics, it is difficult to imagine Southern Californians embracing any team, even a winning one, with rah-rah Midwestern fervor.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Hewitt said. “Everywhere you go, it’s the Rams. . . . They’ve painted the streets blue and gold. . . .

“They set a Viking ship on fire [before the playoff game against the Minnesota Vikings] and sent it down the Mississippi.”

Many former employees don’t begrudge Frontiere’s decision to take the money and run. But they do wish she had left the Ram name and colors behind for a future team to inherit. Art Modell did that when he moved his Cleveland Browns to Baltimore, and Cleveland’s expansion franchise assumed the Browns name.

“If it were the St. Louis Whatevers, I think it would be much easier to take,” Donovan said. “A lot of us feel Bob Waterfield’s name doesn’t belong up in a St. Louis stadium.”

Although it wouldn’t be out of place in Cleveland. After all, the Rams moved to Los Angeles from Cleveland in 1946, only one year after the rookie Waterfield led the team to its first world title.

The Rams celebrated what a team press release called “the rich football tradition of St. Louis” by initiating a Ring of Fame this season, with the inaugural inductees including Ram Hall of Famers Waterfield, Eric Dickerson, Tom Fears, Elroy “Crazy Legs” Hirsch, Deacon Jones, Tom Mack, Merlin Olsen and Norm Van Brocklin.

“I think Cleveland showed how it should be done,” Dukich said. “Let ‘em go, but keep your records and your helmets and your Hall of Famers right here in Southern California and hope for a new franchise. I think that’s going to do wonders for Cleveland. They got a new team with a historical base.

“Now all of our great heroes are on a board on a stadium in St. Louis. They belong here, not there. They never played a game there.”

The old gang will not get together to watch the Super Bowl. Faulkner and Hewitt are in Atlanta for the game. Dukich will watch from his Santa Ana home. Abad will watch from his Corona home. And Donovan?

“I don’t know what time the game is,” said Donovan, a sportswriter for The Times before he worked for the Rams. “If they win, that’s great for them. I won’t go out of my way to watch it. I don’t care passionately enough to rearrange my day.”

Donovan is 57, the youngest of these employees whose families and lives were too entrenched here to consider moving to Missouri. Abad is 64. Dukich is 75. Hewitt is 76. Faulkner is 73. Time passes, but sometimes life does not go on.

Faulkner’s wife of 53 years, Betty, died in November. Fears, the Hall of Fame receiver, died three weeks ago.

“Well,” Dukich said, “we all seem to see each other at funerals.”

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SUPER BOWL

TENNESSEE vs. ST. LOUIS; Sunday, 3:15 p.m., Ch. 7