Gregory Rogers sat on an overturned bucket in a dim, wretched room of an abandoned rowhouse on Harford Road in Baltimore, a brick-front address claimed by no one except the junkies taking drags off dirty crack pipes.

Another addict stormed in, arguing over who should be there. Fussing over a smelly room in the boarded-up crack house seemed absurd to Rogers, and struck him like no drug intervention effort over nearly two decades ever did.

A few days after that February encounter, Rogers, 39, found himself in the same drug treatment program he had quit a dozen times before. The directive from his therapist was routine: Do positive things, such as helping people. The way Rogers is carrying out that directive is anything but routine.

The former football star at Calvert Hall and Towson University is the primary reason the Northeast Youth Association in Govans, where Rogers grew up, has been granted $150,000 to refurbish a football field at Walter J. De Wees Park.

Groundbreaking is scheduled tomorrow. By next summer, the association's six Pop Warner football teams will be playing on a grass field, with an irrigation system, bleachers and electric scoreboard -- quite a reverse from the lumpy, sloped surface the Northeast Chargers played on this fall.

"Greg brought this thing to the organization, and I thought it was an excellent idea," said Kevin Tyler, director of the association, which focuses its sports and community programs in neighborhoods surrounding the park. "He did yeoman work on this thing. He did the legwork."

Grassroots program

The association was one of 17 groups in as many National Football League cities selected in October for a $100,000 NFL Grassroots program grant for building or refurbishing fields in support of youth football programs. At the request of Rogers, the city's Department of Recreation and Parks contributed $50,000.

"One thing that's beautiful about this grant, it's strictly for grass-roots community organizations," said Kenny Abrams, marketing specialist for the Baltimore Ravens, which supported the association's grant application. "We want the community to feel like this is something they accomplished and ... have pride in."

'Mostly been wasted'

The football field is in a 14-acre park that is an enormous untapped neighborhood resource used by residents primarily to beat a path between their homes.

Baseball diamonds are overgrown with weeds, litter wafts in the wind with fallen leaves and the recreation building controlled by the city is often locked and unavailable even to the association.

"That field has mostly been wasted," said Tyler. "But I think this project is going to be a real rallying point for the community. I think it is going to be something that all of a sudden people can point to and take ownership of."

Residents in the neighborhood agree.

"It should make the park something to look to, not that it was bad before, but it was sort of neglected," said Nate Reynolds, whose 12-year-old twins play football for the Chargers, the name given to all the association's teams. "This will give the kids something to look forward to, rather than throwing bottles and wearing their pants halfway down their butts."

And it could get more residents active in the neighborhood, said Cheryl Utsey, whose 14-year-old son plays for the Chargers.

"Now that we'll have bleachers, you'll probably have more parents come out and offer support," Utsey said. "The community will see someone else came in and helped out with the field, so we can do something, too."

Rogers is hoping this truly becomes a field of dreams for children in the neighborhood.

"Most of these kids will never get a chance to play on an NFL field," said Rogers. "So I said, 'Why can't we re-create that feeling, give them the training, a scoreboard and a nice field to play on? Tell them you don't have to play on these old, dusty fields.' "

Rogers' father is president of the association's 10-member board. His mother is the treasurer. His brother is a Chargers coach. And Tyler is a good friend.

But Rogers isn't part of the association. The association doesn't want him, and Rogers said he doesn't want in.

Rogers doesn't even like being around the 150 boys and girls that make up the football teams and cheerleading squads -- the people he hopes will most enjoy the field.

Even the NFL charitable groups involved with the Grassroots program wanted Tyler, and not Rogers, publicly announcing the grant award.

It is noble that Rogers is seriously trying to shake a terrible drug habit. But he is finding he'll never be able to run from his past, which includes four drug-related convictions for felony theft and jail time. He is on probation for the last conviction last year.

"We thought this would work better, quite frankly, if he did this on a consulting-type fashion," said Tyler, explaining why Rogers is not in the group but allowed to work on the grant proposal.

In fact, the association had very little use for Rogers until he proved his resolve by working so intently on this grant. Before then, Rogers acknowledged, he was using crack regularly.

Rogers learned of the Grassroots program in February while reading a newspaper sports page. He immediately thought the program would be good for his drug recovery efforts and for the association.

'About the kids'

There are no hard feelings between him and the association, though, Rogers said.

"I've battled with the substances, and I never wanted to be around the kids much," Rogers said. "I'm not someone I want them to look up to. And this association is about the kids."

And that is a harder statement for Rogers to live by than it is for him to say. Rogers was quite an athlete: a 5-foot-9-inch defensive back and kick returner with blazing speed who once compared himself to Washington Redskins cornerback Darrell Green.

"There's a lot of football I could teach these kids," he said of the Chargers.

He was first-team All-Metro at Calvert Hall and a conference star at Towson University. In 1985, he tried out with the Washington Redskins but quit football during one of the team practices. By then, drugs had become more important than football.

"Now, people see me and remember I was pretty good, and they say, 'There goes the guy that threw his football career away for drugs,' " Rogers said. "And that's true, I did. But addiction is tough, man."

Rogers doesn't work. He lives in Towson with his parents and has become more involved with his church.

'Change'

There is more than recovery on Rogers' mind. He is also after redemption. The place where he often bought drugs and used crack is within walking distance of where he grew up.

He says the old neighborhood isn't as safe as it used to be because drugs have found a home there, a problem to which Rogers contributed.

Rogers says that that day in February was the last time he used crack. He said working on the field project most of this year has made him strong enough to resist the cravings that ruin most recovery efforts. By no means, however, is he declaring himself forever sober. Just lucky.

"I think of my last day [using drugs], and I think technically I should be doing 20 years in prison somewhere," he said. "I've had a lot of chances. And even though you make some mistakes, after pulling this project off, I believe now more than ever you can still get up and change."