Two-Way Elway Gets His Way

By Tom Callahan

The No. 1 N.F.L. pick beats Baltimore with a baseball bat

New York Giants General Manager George Young, a stupendously large man with touchingly weak eyes and a gentle outlook on most things, refers to football players in terms of livestock, as in "The Cincinnati Bengals certainly have the livestock." Since most pro-football people speak this way, it was kind of exciting over the past two weeks when the meat talked back.

Quarterback John Elway of Stanford, the first item up for bid at the National Football League's annual college mart, declined to show his teeth to the Baltimore Colts, who did not win a game last season and therefore had the right to any sirloin in the shop. Herschel Walker, a fullback formerly of Georgia and currently of New Jersey, once spoke of challenging this entitlement in court but never got around to it. Elway, 22, a golden Californiabred whose pedigree is by Johnny Unitas out of Mickey Mantle, had another option: he could play baseball.

How well Elway could play was a question, but how well he would be paid was not. The baseball "rights" to Elway belonged to the New York Yankees, who belong to George Steinbrenner, a free spender capable of buying a pennant and everything else on the shelf. And he seems loath to pay less than $1 million for anything. In six weeks of minor league baseball last summer, Class A ball in Oneonta, N.Y., Outfielder Elway batted .318. However, since Class A pitchers seldom throw a curve on purpose, there was naturally some uncertainty about whether Elway could ever be a major league baseball player, much less a star. Regarding his football skills, there is less doubt.

Elway stands 6 ft. 4 in. tall and does not stand still. Even at a perfectly sculpted 202 Ibs., say the scouts, he has the footwork of a middleweight boxer. Besides Elway's passing ability, they admire his "escapability," a word with a hint of a shiver in it, evoking images of 280-lb. linemen and broken bones. Still, given his choice, Elway asserted he would never elect baseball as a safer course. In his heart, he was a football player who played baseball on the side, not the other way around.

He was not given his choice, at least not right away. Despite Elway's expressed desire to play on the West Coast, Baltimore stubbornly did not trade the pick to San Diego, Seattle or the Los Angeles Raiders. "I don't want to be a jerk or anything," Elway told Colts Coach Frank Kush, "but we [meaning Elway, his agent Marvin Demoff and his father Jack, the head football coach at San Jose State] have been telling you for three months I'm not going to play in Baltimore." Elway then called a press conference to declare, ''Right now, it looks like I'll be playing baseball with the Yankees. [The Colts] knew I held a straight flush and still they called me on it."

Gambling was an embarrassing analogy to Kush, whose No. 1 draft choice of 1982, Ohio State Quarterback Art Schlichter, ran up a reported six-figure tab with bookies and recently turned to the FBI for protection. Going 0-8-1 on the field last year in his first N.F.L. season, Kush is 0-9 this year in the Supreme Court, which decided that he would have to defend himself against charges stemming from a sideline assault case brought by a former punter at Arizona State. That incident four seasons ago ended Rush's prosperous 22-year college coaching career. Probably Elway did not crave Kush's style of discipline.

Even if the coach was the one rejected, the city of Baltimore could not help feeling slurred. That Baltimore now constitutes the N.F.L.'s Black Hole of Calcutta seems rather sad if you know the charms of gritty cities and remember Lenny Moore, Raymond Berry, Jim Parker, Gino Marchetti, Alan Ameche, L.G. ("Long Gone") Dupre, "Big Daddy" Lipscomb and other remarkable players on exceptional Colts teams. "It is nothing but money, greed and selfishness any more," laments former Baltimore Quarterback Johnny Unitas, who never turned down any money but whose first salary in the N.F.L. was $5,000 in 1956.

Last week the Colts finally struck a deal with the Denver Broncos: two No. 1 draft choices plus a spare quarterback for the rights to Elway, who signed instantly, for $5 million over five years, with Denver, as close as he could get to the West Coast. The affair ended the way all N.F.L. episodes conclude lately, with Raiders Operator Al Davis claiming a league conspiracy had prevented him from trading for the Elway pick. One thing, though. The sympathy ordinarily felt toward the livestock seemed to go off somewhere else too. No matter how good they are, workaday towns are nobody's No. 1 draft choice. --By Tom Callahan This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.