A year ago I wrote a story for the Beacon titled “Los Angeles Needs the Rams back.” I was referring to the old Los Angeles Rams that went as far back in LA history as the halcyon days of halfback Crazy Legs Hirsch. I soon found that I wasn’t the only person around making a case for the kids of Los Angeles County to be inspired by the presence of a home NFL football team. Surely if there any kids in the world who really need inspiration from pro football, it is the kids of LA.  So in the meantime, I was happy to find out that that I was actually among an army of loudmouths here to cry into the media the need for LA pro football.  It turns I out  was simply among an enormous  shouting group helping to push for a new pro football stadium near the Staples Center, and now it looks like the Jacksonville Jaguars may move there.  All the more reason to keep up the noise until an opening pro kickoff finally comes into town.

The gentleman that I am introducing in my upper front picture today is Flipper Anderson, number 83, a Los Angeles Ram.  He is watching in the picture his quarterback, Jim Everett, because he is free of any protection.  In a moment Everett will see Flipper’s hard-fought freedom and slam the football to him from 30 yards.  Flipper snatches the football into his chest in the end zone and gallops right out of the field into his locker room, his legs crossing like scissors in an atomic accelerator.

It is all over in overtime, and the Rams have beaten the New York Giants in the Giants’ own Meadowlands field in a playoff game in January, 1990.  You can hear an announcer screaming:

“The Rams won the playoff!  The Rams won the playoff!”

Of course, announcers have always been saying that in this kind of game, ever since San Francisco Giant Bobby Thomson won a pennant for his team with his last-minute playoff home run in 1951. Back in Los Angeles County in 1990, thousands of Californian families are taking pieces of the victory feeling that the Rams have brought them like it’s a big family pizza that they had delivered.  The children of these families will never forget this feeling, because it is their Rams that delivered.

But that is not so today.  In fact, today Los Angeles – without argument one of the greatest cities that has ever existed on the planet Earth – has no professional football team for its families and children.

In contrast, even bare-bones Floridian cities that the people of the world have never heard of – Tampa Bay and Jacksonville – have provided all sorts of home football games for its families and children.  But not megacity Los Angeles.

It’s almost like the Los Angeles Rams were taken away from our Southern California family by social workers.  It seemed to be determined in some court that we were not feeding and housing the Rams as well as could St. Louis.  So without having a chance for us to say even a word, the Rams were displaced from us and placed into their present foster home in St. Louis.

And so all we get of our old Rams, our old kids – who were with us for 49 years – are pictures.

Look, here is an old picture of our kids known as “Fearsome Foursome.” They were Lamar Lundy, Roosevelt Grier, Merlin Olson and Deacon Jones.  They weren’t just great line of Rams defensive players.  They were wonderful Angelinos – they were four great men of Los Angeles.  We also remember Merlin Olson for his premiere football broadcasting and his acting on “Little House on the Prairie.”

We remember Roosevelt Grier too for his in-the-crossfire efforts to save his friend Senator Bobby Kennedy from his death by assassination on a monstrous June night in Los Angeles in 1968, when he tackled the assassin and wrested the gun from him.  Later, we remember his ongoing work as a minister to bring inner-city young people outward-bound cultural and Christian experiences.

 Look, in our Ram Family photo album here is Pat Haden, quarterback of some of the greatest Rams teams that ever existed.  Pat was always stubbornly slight of build and he could never have thrown an 80-yard pass like the 6 foot 4 inches, 235 pound Roman Gabriel, another great Rams quarterback of the past.  But what Haden lacked in brawn he made up for in brains and planning. This attorney at law, former USC Rose Bowl hero and Oxford University Rhodes Scholar understood better than anyone what the percentages for success were on every play, and he was said to pull practically perfect quarterback play calling in leading the Rams to three straight division titles.

Then here is Eric Dickerson, whose unsurpassed 2,105 total rushing yards, 5.6 yards per carry and eleven games with over 100 yards led the Rams to a playoff berth in 1984.  His destructive and fierce running in his terrifying football helmet that had three face guards helped give fuel to the growing popularity of Pac-Man of video game history.

We began in our Ram family photo album the great catch made by Flipper Anderson in the 1990 playoff game against the New York Giants.  But back in a game against the New Orleans Saints in 1989, Anderson caught 15 passes for 336 yards, a total of pass-receiving yardage that has still not been surpassed by any other NFL football player.

At least we still have their pictures and their stories, these Rams who were seized from us virtually in the middle of the night and sent to St. Louis.  The people who took our Rams had all the right lawyers and judges on their side, and of course all the right money to do it legally.

But the children of Los Angeles County were left without an NFL football team, which is surely as much of a crime as would be taking away World Cup Soccer from the children of Europe

I am sure that the great Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes would say that the abduction of the Rams from the kids of Southern California may have passed every case law and statuary law standard, but that it woefully failed a higher common law.  For the common law, in the description by the great supreme-court judge, justice depends on a glaringly unarticulated major premise that lies outside the law.

And so this leaves the 17th year in a row without an NFL team in L.A. Where are you hiding, you so-called leaders of Los Angeles?

Chris Sharp- Commentary

Chris Sharp is an Educator and a prize-winning professional writer. His commentaries represent his own opinions and not necessarily the views of any organization he may be affiliated with or those of the West Ranch Beacon.