NEWS
HELP MAKE A DIFFERENCE
CHARITY EVENT BRINGS RAMS BACK TO ST. LOUIS
By Jim Thomas, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
The Lombardi Trophy in the lobby has been replaced by soccer trophies. The poster-sized pictures of Marshall Faulk, Ricky Proehl, Orlando Pace and Co. that once hung in the hallways have been replaced by posters of young soccer players.
The one artificial field among the three outside fields still has “Rams” painted in the end zone. But inside, the locker stalls are gone, as gone as the Rams are from St. Louis.
What was once Rams Park is now headquarters for the Lou Fusz club soccer program, but for a day at least there were Rams on the practice fields in Earth City. Former Rams, that is, some of whom hadn’t been in the facility for years.
For example, the last time defensive end Leonard Little stepped on the field was nine years ago — for practice in December 2009, the last of his 12 seasons in St. Louis.
“Once you walk in here and start looking around, it brings back memories,” Little said. “Training camp mostly for me. Good and bad, but it does bring back memories.”
For defensive back Dre’ Bly, it was even longer.
“I haven’t been in that building in about 15 years,” said Bly, who last played for the Rams in 2002. “And I still get goosebumps. Memories.”
The occasion Saturday was a charity flag football tournament run by the Isaac Bruce Foundation. Teams from 12 businesses in the St. Louis area competed in a tournament, with ex-Rams (and former track and field great Jackie Joyner-Kersee) serving as celebrity coaches.
Truth be told, there wasn’t much coaching going on. But the participants in the tournament — as well as their friends and family — got to mingle with the former Rams (and Joyner-Kersee) all morning and afternoon. There was tailgating all day in the parking lot, and in between the morning and afternoon games former safety Keith Lyle got an earful from a couple of fans still bitter over Stan Kroenke’s decision to jilt St. Louis for greener pastures in Los Angeles.
Lyle played his rookie season with the Rams in Los Angeles in 1994, then spent the next six in St. Louis after the team moved to the Midwest. A well-rounded player and a colorful quote for the media, Lyle was a ballhawk who intercepted nine passes in 1996 and eight in 1997.
“This is where my career began,” said Lyle, standing on practice fields that have grown scruffy since the Rams left after the 2015 season. “I know I was in LA (as a rookie), but this is where I became a good player on this field. This is where I became an NFL player.”
Like almost all of the Rams from the 1999 and 2001 Super Bowl seasons, Lyle is in his 40s. He has dabbled in coaching, but mainly sells commercial real estate in Tampa when not looking after his 5-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter.
“I wanted to bring my son and my daughter to a game here and say, ‘This is where your dad won a championship,’ ” Lyle said. “I wanted them to see where Daddy did it. How great would that have been?”
Alas, the former Edward Jones Dome sits empty, at least when it comes to the National Football League.
It was difficult to get an accurate head count, because some players arrived late, and some came and went. But there were about 10 ex-Rams on hand Saturday, making it the largest “alumni” gathering since Bruce’s Legends of the Dome flag football contest involving former Rams during the summer of 2016.
Returning to Rams Park brought back a flood of memories. For Bly, who intercepted 14 passes in four seasons for St. Louis — returning three for touchdowns — the one that still resonates most is of his first full-squad practice in the spring of 1999.
“I got baptized by Isaac Bruce,” Bly recalled. “Very first rep of one-on-ones. He didn’t call Todd Lyght out, he didn’t call Dexter McCleon. ... He called me out. He wanted to see what I was about, and so he called me out. He embarrassed me, he made me look bad.”
But as Bly sees it, it was part of his rite of passage, helping to make him the player he was in an 11-year career that included two Pro Bowls. After all, if you could keep up with the likes of Bruce, Proehl, Torry Holt and Az-Zahir Hakim in practice, Sundays seemed almost easy.
Bly, who turns 41 later this month, lives in Charlotte, N.C., as does Little. They were on the same flight to St. Louis for this event. Bly is making a concerted effort to get into coaching; he has hired an agent to help in that endeavor and has a coaching internship with the Miami Dolphins this month as well as training camp.
Little, who made a Pro Bowl and was considered one of the league’s elite pass rushers in his prime, remembers most the heat and humidity of summers at Rams Park. About midway through his career, the Rams switched camp from Western Illinois University to Earth City.
“Training camp weather was horrible for us,” Little said. “It used to be 100 degrees with humidity, so it’d feel like 120 degrees and we had full pads on. That was the one thing I thought about when I first came out here today.”
As for center Andy McCollum, he never left St. Louis once his NFL playing career ended, a 15-year run that included nine seasons and 109 starts for the Rams. He settled in Eureka, where he coaches youth football and also coaches offensive line for the Eureka High squad.
He pulled double duty Saturday, serving as “celebrity” coach for one team in the flag football tournament: he’s a financial planner for Resource One Advisors, and his squad included sons Jake and Drew.
“I’m still looking for doughnuts,” McCollum joked. “I’m kinda disappointed that Isaac didn’t supply doughnuts for us. I haven’t been in this building and not had a doughnut, so it’s kinda weird.”
Once a Doughnut Brother, always a Doughnut Brother.