On unbearable summer days like this when you could cook an entire breakfast buffet on the hood of your car, it is wise to remember that pro football training camps do not do romance very well. While the baseball poets can make spring training sound like a pilgrimage into spiritual enlightenment, for the most part football's more realistic literary scholars leave the artistic metaphors alone and cut right to the cold-blooded truth.

Under most normal circumstances, NFL training camps hold about as much romantic charm as a puddle of perspiration, which by the way you can find in abundant supply at the feet of every Rams player who slowly trudges off the field after every grueling two-a-day practice in the broiling 100-degree heat and oppressive 98-percent humidity at Rams Park. Now, that doesn't mean there aren't any particularly charming tales to find in the thick of a not-so-romantic NFL summer, but it usually means they're going to be soaked in sweat and occasionally lost at the bottom of an endless depth chart.

Here at Rams Park, the Sam Bradford story dominates everything. He is the kid with the golden arm, the giant contract, the overwhelming expectations and the undeniable talent to back it all up. But on the other end of the training camp spectrum are guys such as Danny Amendola and Brandon McRae, a pair of un-drafted and unlikely wide receivers doing whatever they can to make this Rams football team.

They are the best sort of training camp stories there are in pro football.

Promised nothing and given even less than that, they are the million-to-one dreamers who each summer fight their way out of the bottom of the depth chart and find a way to make teams notice them.

Two years ago, Amendola went undrafted after catching 103 passes as a senior at Texas Tech. He spent the '08 season on the Dallas and Philadelphia practice squads, went through the '09 training camp with the Eagles and wound up on their practice squad again before the Rams scooped him up in September and immediately gave him the kickoff returner's job.

A little guy at 5-11, 186 pounds, Amendola led the league in kickoff returns (66) and kick-return yards (1,618). But when the Rams drafted Mardy Gilyard in the fourth round in this year's draft, it let Amendola know the Rams were trying to replace him.

"Throughout my three years in the NFL, I've never really had anything set in stone for me," Amendola said. "It's not in my control, but competition is what it's about in this league. They are always going to try and find guys to take your spot whether you're a veteran or a rookie day in and day out. But I like the competition. That was my mentality going into this year, too. I'm going to do my part in training camp and these preseason games to work as hard as I can to get my spot and leave all the big decisions up to the coaches."

Amendola has been running with the first-unit offense as the third (slot) receiver since the start of offseason minicamps and now through the first two weeks of camp. The book on him is that he is an undersized guy who is quick enough to get open consistently, just not the sort of breathlessly elusive playmaker who can take a short hitch and turn it into a 30-yard gallop, or take a kickoff and burst through the seam and take it to the house (in 66 returns last year, while he did average nearly 25 yards a return and had five returns over 40 yards, he did not score a single TD).

But no matter how much the Rams try to replace him, he keeps finding ways to stay in the conversation as one of the guys who have a legitimate chance of making the team and being a reliable contributor to the offense.

While Gilyard has spent most of the early part of camp on the sidelines nursing bumps and bruises, Amendola keeps going out there with the first-unit receivers, scooting across the field, running under perfectly thrown passes from Bradford and forcing people to notice his production. And he doesn't spend a lot of time fretting over who the Rams have drafted or what odds keep stacking up against him.

"Look," he said, "I have the cards that have been dealt to me and all I can do is try to deal with it as best I can."

Here's what makes these training camp dreamer stories so fascinating. Danny Amendola and Brandon McRae — who are about as different physically as two receivers can be — are essentially the same guy.

While Amendola is the undersized guy with a great college resume who has had to overcome the NFL's caste system, McRae is the physically gifted gazelle who stepped right out of central casting (6-foot-3, 207 pounds) when it comes to fulfilling all the ideal physical traits of an NFL wideout. His greatest drawback that left him undrafted last April was a light college résumé (only 67 receptions in three seasons) and a broken right leg as a senior.

So he arrived at Rams camp as just another face in the crowd, the lowest man on the NFL food chain, an undrafted "project."

But all he has done since showing up at Rams Park is catch people's attention by catching every ball that is thrown in his direction, and doing it often in spectacular fashion.

"Yeah, he's definitely made some plays for us," Bradford said. "I think a great instance of that was we were in the red zone last week and I threw a corner (route) up (high) to him, and, to be honest, I really thought I missed it. He went up out of nowhere and just grabbed it. He is a big body who has got a lot of athletic ability and can go up and get the ball."

It's way too early to say that either one of them will be here when the Rams walk onto the field for the season opener next month. But they are trying their best to defy the odds.

"I do believe I have pushed myself into some conversations, but I don't believe I am where I need to be just yet," McRae said. "I have to work 10 times harder than every one else. If we're doing gassers, I have to do an extra one just to get on (the more highly touted player's) level."

And every time he goes up to make one of those dazzling catches, like the deep dig route he hauled in Tuesday, soaring above two defenders and snatching the ball out of the air off his back shoulder, McRae doesn't bother to show any great emotion.

He just lowers his head and quickly trots back to the huddle.

"All I'm thinking when I make one of those catches is 'Keep doing it,'" McRae said. "All I'm thinking is 'do it again... do it again.'"