Babe Is Finally Calling Shots : Well-Traveled Quarterback Laufenberg Is Making a Name for Himself in San Diego

When he was a toddler, Brandon Laufenberg carried around a little plastic bat that he would point, barrel skyward in the manner of Babe Ruth, before swinging it.

So he became Babe Laufenberg.

But he never really wanted to be a baseball player. Even when the San Francisco Giants drafted him out of Crespi High School in Encino.

Thanks, but no thanks.

Nor did he want to be a basketball player though he did well enough at Crespi to get the attention of a recruiter named Bob Knight.

Thanks, but no thanks.

All Babe Laufenberg ever wanted to be was a quarterback. But all he ever heard was, thanks, but no thanks.

Again and again and again.

Before landing the starting job with the San Diego Chargers for Sunday’s season opener against the Raiders at the Coliseum, Laufenberg spent more time with a suitcase in his hand than a football, enduring the agony of being cut six times.

The journey began in Washington where the Redskins had made Laufenberg a sixth-round draft choice in 1983. From there, he went to San Diego, back to Washington, on to the New Orleans Saints, the Kansas City Chiefs and back to Washington before finally signing with the Chargers again earlier this year.

That doesn’t even take into consideration the 10 teams he tried out with, the Raiders included.

Heck, this guy couldn’t even sit still in college. He played for four of them.

Why?

“Just getting ready for the pros,” he said with a smile.

Asked why he’d stuck to just one high school, Laufenberg cracked, “The priests wouldn’t let me transfer.”

After setting a school career passing mark at Crespi with 2,678 yards, Laufenberg enrolled at Stanford. Only to find himself in competition with a pretty good quarterback named John Elway.

Instead of staying, Laufenberg, for the first of many times, reached for his suitcase.

He transferred to Missouri, didn’t like the situation there and left without throwing a pass. Instead, he returned to the San Fernando Valley and played at Pierce College for a year. Then it was on to Indiana, where he established all sorts of passing records.

But in the pros, there always seemed to be some people ahead of him--people such as Joe Theismann, Jay Schroeder, Doug Williams and Dan Fouts.

He kept getting put down, but he never let himself get down.

“I never really doubted myself,” Laufenberg said. “All I had to do to keep my confidence up was to turn on the TV on Sundays and watch some of the guys who were playing quarterback. . . . I felt like there had to be a spot for me somewhere.”

But where?

“I told myself,” he said, “that before I die, I will be a starter in this league. I never had a timetable. I don’t know if it’s my personality or my nature or what, but I just take it one day at a time and try not to look too far into the future because the future usually doesn’t hold much for me.”

He toyed with alternative careers such as real estate and law. But he could never bring himself to make the switch.

“It’s tough to go to some company,” he said, “and tell them, ‘I’d like to work for you, but if some team calls, I’ll be gone tomorrow.’ ”

Laufenberg had a solid believer, though, in Jerry Rhome, a former quarterback himself and an assistant at Washington. When Rhome moved to San Diego, he didn’t forget his star pupil.

It was a new era for the Chargers. Fouts was gone. Air Coryell had been scrapped. And the quarterback job was wide open with veterans Mark Malone (Pittsburgh), Steve Fuller (Chicago) and Mark Vlasic (rookie) in the hunt.

Enter the Babe.

“He’s kind of like the Horatio Alger of the NFL this year,” said Al Saunders, Laufenberg’s newest in a long string of coaches. “I’ve never been around anybody that has as much confidence in his own ability as Babe Laufenberg. He just brings everybody up to a little bit higher level of performance. They look at him and they say, ‘Son of a gun. If he can have as much confidence in himself after all he’s gone through, maybe we should have a little confidence, too.’ ”

Along with the confidence, Laufenberg arrived in San Diego with credentials about as strange as any you will ever find on a pro field. At 28, he had already qualified for a National Football League pension, but had never thrown a pass in a regular-season game.

The only two times he’d ever even been in a regular-season game were during his days with the Saints when he took the field in the closing minutes to hand off and run out the clock.

“Believe me,” he said, “I was tempted to audibilize just so I wouldn’t have to keep hearing how I have never completed a pass.”

Besides, Laufenberg said, there’s another statistic that people keep overlooking when they mention that.

“I haven’t thrown one, either.”

That was not his problem in the 1988 exhibition season. Finally given a good deal of playing time, Laufenberg made the most of it, completing 46 of 83 passes (55.4%) for 626 yards and 6 touchdowns. He threw only 1 interception.

In his first outing, he drove the Chargers to three touchdowns in the final eight minutes to beat the Dallas Cowboys, 24-21. He entered the third quarter last week with his team trailing the Rams, 31-0, and produced three touchdowns in the quarter.

“He’s a guy everybody in Mission Valley in every single bar is having a beer and talking about,” Saunders said. “He’s got the great name. He drives up to the stadium in a 1979 Pontiac, all rusted and chipped. I told him, if he ever gets a BMW, not to drive it to the stadium.”