Wednesday Audible: 1987 replacement players left a mark

They were strange days indeed, the 1987 NFL players' strike, when you could just as easily find your favorite player sporting a sandwich board, picketing his team's headquarters and harassing bus loads of "replacement players" as you could stumble upon him crossing those same pickets to play alongside said "scabs" for three games that counted in the standings.

The "Phony-Niners" took over Candlestick Park. The "Masque-Raiders" did their thing in Los Angeles. The "Dol-Finks" broke in a new stadium in South Florida. The "Spare Bears" tried to replicate the Monsters of the Midway. And the "Scab-Skins" served as a catapult to a Super Bowl title.

"It was an ugly situation," said former Jackson High School star Vance Mueller, who was in his second NFL season with the Raiders when the strike hit. "A mind-blowing experience."

How long ago was the strike, which eventually led to free agency? There are but two active players who were around back then – Atlanta kicker Morten Andersen and Carolina quarterback Vinny Testaverde.

But how deep is the scar tissue? Innate enough to still get Hall of Fame quarterback Dan Marino riled up.

"All they did was take game checks away from guys that were the real NFL players that had families and had situations in their life that they had to take care of," Marino said of the replacements on HBO's "Inside the NFL." "I wasn't happy about it. And I know over time ... you tend to forget about it, but you always remember what they did and who they were."

Twenty years and a week after the second NFL work stoppage in five years mercifully ended, The Bee looks at how the surreal strike of 1987 is seen from three perspectives.

The Replacements

Tracy Franz (Rio Americano High School) and Gary Hoffman (Christian Brothers) were beneficiaries of the owners' desire to avoid losing revenue through dropped games, as they experienced in the 57-day 1982 strike. That season was reduced to nine games.

This time, the owners invited non-union players to suit up, and only one game was lost.

Franz, who played at San Jose State and in the United States Football League with the Oakland Invaders, and Hoffman, who played collegiately at Santa Clara and spent a season with Green Bay, suddenly were offensive linemates on the 49ers' replacement team after San Francisco cut both during training camp.

"Bill Walsh did a good job of holding the team together," said Hoffman, who was running a Santa Clara watering hole called The Hut when the 49ers called.

"In our first game, we were playing the New York Giants, and about halfway through the third quarter, we ran some option on them. I remember Bill Parcells looking across the field at Bill Walsh and throwing his hands up in the air.

"Hey, you've got to deal with what you're dealt."

Walsh also looked to baseball for some motivation, as the Giants had just fallen to the St. Louis Cardinals in the National League Championship Series and the 49ers were about to host the then-St. Louis Cardinals in the final replacement game.

"He said we had a responsibility to get the city's honor back," Hoffman said.

The 49ers' compound, then in Redwood City, was a sanctuary, of sorts, for the replacements. There was no physical picket to speak of, and with such stars as Joe Montana, Roger Craig and Dwight Clark breaking ranks to play with the likes of Hoffman and Franz, "it made it all the more special," Franz said.

"When they called us back, it was like they had already put their ducks in a line," said Franz, who was working in construction when the invitation came. He now runs his own trucking business in Carmichael, and his daughter Michelle plays volleyball at Sac State.

"After six weeks of double-days in training camp and the 49ers ask you to come back, you don't look at it like you're crossing some line. It was more like a tryout. A couple of guys stuck and won Super Bowl rings the next year."

Neither regrets breaking the strike. And neither played football again after the strike ended.

About the writer:

• Call The Bee's Paul Gutierrez, (916) 326-5556.