THE CANDIDATE: : Is Ed Ratleff 49ers’ Man?

He waits patiently for his time to come, although those who want him to be the basketball coach at Cal State Long Beach insist it has already arrived.

Considered the greatest player in 49er history, Ed Ratleff is the local favorite to replace Ron Palmer, who resigned March 2, a victim of the losing that has been habitual at Long Beach this decade.

“He’s put in his time,” said Coach Jerry Tarkanian of Nevada Las Vegas, who coached Ratleff at Long Beach. “I think he’d make an excellent coach. He knows the game and deals with people so well.”

Ratleff, an assistant basketball coach at Long Beach, is close to 37 but still is fresh-faced, lean and athletic. And he remains as popular on the campus and in the city as he was in the early 1970s, when he helped give Long Beach national exposure.

He was called Eddie then. A 6-foot 6-inch guard with a billowing Afro that was in style and a no-look pass that wasn’t, he averaged 21.4 points a game from 1971-73 as the 49ers went 74-12 under Tarkanian.

They reached the NCAA Western Regional final twice, losing both times to UCLA. But mainly because of Ratleff, an All-American, people east of the Mississippi River became aware of the school commonly referred to as Long Beach State.

Despite his popularity and a clean image, though, Ratleff has not been free from contentions that he doesn’t work hard enough and that he didn’t support--and even tried to undermine--Palmer. Ratleff denies these rumors, as do sources close to the basketball team.

He has also been accused of playing too much golf.

“That’s not true,” Ratleff said. “Ask any coach and they’ll say they see me all the time during recruiting. And at summer tournaments, I’m there all day, so how could I be playing golf? I’m a natural athlete, so I can go without playing golf for a month and still hit the ball so well it looks like I play every day.”

Palmer said: “I was satisfied with the service I got from him in the three years. He did everything I requested him to do.

“I was not pressured to hire Ed Ratleff, although a lot of people seem to have the impression that I was.”

Dan Bailey, the 49ers’ trainer, said that he, too, had heard the undermining rumors about Ratleff.

“I’ve never seen that,” Bailey said. “I’ve never heard him rap anybody. When someone asks him what’s wrong with the program, he’ll tell them, and they might take that as a rap on Palmer. Ed’s very friendly and when people ask him about the program he tells them.”

Ratleff has been an assistant for six seasons at Long Beach--three under Palmer, one under Tex Winter and two with the women’s team. He also was head coach at El Dorado High School in Placentia for a season.

But before the 1983-’84 season, Ratleff left as a Long Beach assistant because of difficulties with Coach Dave Buss. Ratleff said that Buss insisted on Ratleff’s being in the office from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Ratleff, who thought he could be more valuable if he were out recruiting or promoting the program, then took the El Dorado job before returning the next season to join Palmer.

“They say you have to pay your dues,” Ratleff said.

That means an assistant must wait loyally for years for a chance he may never get. He recruits. He runs practice drills. He sits in a suit on the bench, without recognition but without blame either, away from the heat only the No. 1 man feels, the heat he wonders if he could take.

“Some guys want to stay assistants because they don’t want the pressure,” Ratleff said. “I think I can handle the pressure. I’m ready for the job.”

A first-round selection in the National Basketball Assn. draft, Ratleff went to the Houston Rockets in 1973.

“When Eddie came in, because he was a highly publicized scoring machine, you thought he’d be a gunner,” said Rudy Tomjanovich, a former Rocket and now an assistant coach with the team. “But he was a solid player.”

The fundamentals came naturally, Ratleff said.

“I was one of those players fortunate enough to understand the sport,” he said. “In practice, I actually got bored. We’d go through a play once and I’d have it down, but we’d go over it and over it.”

Ratleff played five seasons with Houston, averaging 8.3 points a game before a back injury forced him to retire.

He has tried to maintain an image as clean as his appearance.

“I’m not into drugs . . . a beer now and then,” he said. “I never went out and partied a lot. I wasn’t the type of person to be wild, and I’m still not wild. I try not to do anything that will get me in trouble with the law.”

Tom Morgan, a physical education professor at Long Beach, has known Ratleff since Ratleff arrived from Columbus, Ohio, as a freshman.

“He never changed when he signed a big (pro) contract,” Morgan said. “He’s always been very humble. He’s an excellent teacher. He takes as much time with a beginning volleyball class as he does with a varsity sport.”

Ratleff said he wanted to go to college in a place he could later make his home. “I thought if I did well and the team won and if I kept out of trouble, maybe I could go live there afterward and people would remember me. (Now), anytime you mention Long Beach State, my name always comes up.”

True enough.

“The success of Long Beach State and Ed Ratleff are one and the same,” said Tim Sweeney, basketball coach at Lakewood High School. “If he’s not ready (to be head coach), I don’t know what it takes for a person to be ready. He’s very popular with coaches, administrators and players.”

But Ratleff prefers not to think of himself as either a good-will ambassador or a Pied Piper, seeing himself as more of a loner, although that is hard to imagine, considering the way people gravitate to him.

“It’s just amazing how he gets along with people,” Tomjanovich said. “I see him once a year now, and it’s like a receiving line in the corridor after a game.”

Few students pass Ratleff without getting some kind words and a big smile from him.

There is a tough, demanding side to him, according to 49er players, who say they would welcome that after Palmer, who they thought was not tough enough.

“(Discipline) is the No. 1 priority,” Ratleff said. “We had it when I played here. Kids need it. They want it. What saddens me is when you see a team lose and players don’t give their all. You need a kid who plays his heart out. If he doesn’t, don’t play him.

“I want to win. Losing drove me crazy the last few years. (The 49ers were 23-64 under Palmer.) I know I can bring the program back . . . “

Among others reportedly interested in the coaching job are Bill Mulligan of UC Irvine; Paul Landreaux of El Camino College; Mack Calvin, an assistant at Virginia, and Rick Majerus, former head coach at Marquette and now an assistant with the Milwaukee Bucks.