Bill Flutie, older brother of Doug the quarterback, has been blessed with four children, all of them athletes. And he coaches them, just as Richard Flutie, Bill and Doug's dad, used to coach his kids. Sometimes, in the spring, in between football seasons, Bill's famous kid brother shows up at the Little League field and watches Bill's practices -- even though, Doug admits, "it hurts sometimes."

Doug and Laurie's only boy, almost 10, is autistic.

Bill Flutie was a pretty good baseball player, which should come as no great surprise, given his gene pool. Said Doug, in a lengthy interview last week: "He's really into the coaching. He's, like, `Billy, you're getting on your front foot too much, keep your weight back' . . .

"And I'm thinking, God, I'd just love for Dougie to be able to stand up there and hit the ball, y'know?"

Darren Flutie, the youngest brother (and among Canada's all-time leading receivers), has a son he hits grounders to. "He says Troy can stay out there all day, and he would, as long as Darren would hit him grounders," Doug said. "That's the stuff that. . . .

"It's a shame, because I saw that in Dougie."

The Chargers' almost 39-year-old passer makes no secret of his boy's disability. He has raised $3.5 million for research, much of it through his "Flutie Flakes" breakfast cereal. Through his public service announcements, he has become the face on an ongoing, and largely frustrating, quest to understand this ghastly neurological disorder that impairs the ability to communicate or interact with others. Victims become so withdrawn, they don't respond to their name, or appear to notice when someone comes into a room.

Autism typically strikes male children between the ages of 2 and 3 who, until then, appear perfectly normal.

"I saw him at 2 years old, in his room, shooting at a little basket and not missing, from around the room," Flutie said. "He'd sit with me and watch an entire basketball game. He'd hit a ball off the tee, hit it with force. . . .

"All those little things, over a six-month period, from 2 ½ to 3, just went poof."

His son can't speak, even though at 2 he spoke normally. He can't play games of ball. "He knows I'm his dad, he's excited to see me, he loves you to death, comes over, sits on your lap, gives you hugs," Flutie said. But if he understands that his father is famous, or even that he plays football -- which he probably doesn't understand, Flutie said -- there'd be no way of knowing.

It's a victory of sorts just to hear him say "Dada."

The boy isn't institutionalized, like some, though his millionaire father could surely afford it. He is part of the household, a source of both heartbreak and joy that his father the quarterback comes home to every evening.

"He goes to school every day, from 8:30 to 2:30," said Flutie. "He comes home, plays with us for an hour, hour and a half, has a tutor come for an hour and a half or two, and hangs out with us in the evening. It's just hand over hand, teaching him individual skills."

This would be devastating enough for any parent. If there's room for it to be any worse, it would be in a family steeped in athletics. Flutie, the most competitive human being in the experience of most who've met him, remembers things he did as a child in crystal clarity, as if he'd never done anything since to supplant them in his memory bank, as if there'd been no Heisman Trophy, or 16 fruitful professional seasons.

No one in the Flutie family ever said to a child, "It's only a game."

"I remember striking out with bases loaded, and I remember getting a base hit with the bases loaded," Flutie said. "Little League. At age 10. I remember hitting shots at the buzzer in junior high school, and I remember missing foul shots in high school that cost us games. Those things stick with me, because every time I played a game I relived it at home 100 times. It was important. Always has been. In our household, it never was just a game."

Dougie probably never will know such wondrous fun.

"He's doing well," said Flutie. "He's made very slow progress. He will be dependent on us for the rest of his life, but if I had him out here with me and he was walking along, you'd think he was perfectly fine. He can run, jump, get into things, open and unlock doors, loves to go in the pool. But -- his communicative skills aren't there. I believe he understands more than you'd expect him to, that he just can't respond. But they really don't know.

"It's frustrating. But we accept Dougie for who he is now, and the way he is," Flutie continued. "We love him to death. There's no expectations. There's no peer pressure for him. In a lot of ways, he's got a lot of other kids beat. He doesn't care if people think he's cool or not. He's not gonna go out and get a tattoo to please somebody else, or pierce his eyebrow because he thinks it's the thing to do. He's not gonna get into drugs or drinking or any of that."

Nor will he know the true depth and breadth of his gutsy father, the only one to whom he gives kisses.

Last year Flutie went to Washington with a West Coast group called Cure Autism Now (CAN), met with senators and congressmen, lobbying for a bill funding autism research.

"Y'know, I've played a game all my life," he said. "We live and die with who wins and loses. But for the first time I was doing something that was going to make a difference in people's lives." God willing, maybe his son's.

The quarterback understands now. They really are only games.

Staff writer Joe Hamelin's column appears Mondays. Hamelin can be contacted by phone at (909) 782-7595 or e-mail at jhamelin@pe.com.