Raiders’ Return Revives One Writer’s Nightmares

Maybe it was the bridal shop photo. Or the official contract signing photo. Something made the Raiders nightmares return. That ghastly pirate with the eye patch and sabers. The landscape of silver and black.

I’ve been free of Raiders dreams for years. Now, with the team, they’re back, like some virulent strain of malaria I thought I’d shaken for good.

The bridal shop photo showed a young Castro Valley, Calif., woman with the face of an angel, standing in the window of a boutique. She had planted a silver-and-black “Welcome Back Oakland Raiders” sign in the gloved hands of a bridal-gowned mannequin. I screamed when I saw it.

A few days later, a huge color apparition appeared on the front page. The Genius. Raiders owner Al Davis. Finally signing an alleged 16-year contract to play NFL games in the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum.

I say “alleged” because I learned as a reporter, some 15 years ago, that a wise person puts “alleged” in front of any Raiders’ business that does not take place between white lines on a football field.

Understand, this has nothing to do with being a bitter ex-fan. I never was nor ever will be a Raiders fan. In fact, I apologize for such a harsh analogy, but Raiders fans have long struck me as pro sports’ equivalent of the ultimate battered wife.

No matter how many teeth they get knocked out, no matter how many black eyes they suffer, broken arms, split skulls, verbal annihilations in front of the neighbors - no matter if Mr. Wonderful runs off with a cocktail waitress and refuses to pay child support - Raiders fans beg for more.

This behavior is painful and embarrassing to watch. No region is richer for having to witness it.

At least since 1982 (when the Raiders ran off to L.A. with the cocktail waitress), such behavior has been easier to ignore. Davis and the Raiders were gone. Their battered Bay Area loyalists could only mewl about yesterday’s memories or tomorrow’s dreams.

Now, it’s today’s reality. They’re baaaack.

The horror is, you don’t have to be a Raiders fan to be abused and made miserable by them. All you have to do is live where they play football and be in journalism.

Not just sports journalism. When I stopped writing sports and turned to regular news, I thought I’d never again have to do a story about Raiders promises, threats, betrayals and rejected offers.

But no. The promises, threats, betrayals, rejections and the dastardly flight to L.A. were considered regular news. I have my file to prove it. Begun in 1980, its label says everything: “(Bleep)ing Raiders.”

The file is chock-full of old microfiche. Feb. 6, 1980: County reveals offer to Raiders; June 12, 1981: Raider owner claims moving his legal right.

My favorite clipping: March 12, 1990: Al Davis made it official Monday - he wants to bring his Raiders … back to Oakland.

The file includes a print-out of a telephone list I used to carry on my person at all times, like an emergency medical bracelet. Office and home phones of people who are dead now or people who might as well be, like former NFL Commissioner Peter Rozelle and former Raiders coach Tom Flores.

Phones for U.S. congressmen, long-deposed politicians, retired attorneys and just about anyone who ever worked for the Oakland-Los-Angeles-Oakland Raiders.

Except, of course, The Genius. Nobody called Al Davis at home. Nobody still does.

I read last week that Davis postponed a 1 p.m. contract signing ceremony in Oakland until 3, then finally showed up about 5. The next day, I read he tossed in a little “surprise” at the 11th hour of the signing: a requirement that the Coliseum pick up the first $600,000 in legal fees for the Raiders in the event they are sued by the NFL over ticket revenues.

“There’s a risk in everything, but our negotiators have tried to secure everything as tight as they can,” said Gail Steele, president of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors, explaining why the Coliseum accepted the Davis surprise.

The $600,000, she insisted, is the only extra risk assumed by Alameda taxpayers - if you don’t count their commitment to lending the Raiders $64 million for the move “home.”

“The most wonderful thing would be for everything to turn out wonderful, and in future years we would look back and see there was no need to worry,” Steele added.

Oh, Lord. As Mia Farrow screamed in “Rosemary’s Baby,” “This isn’t a dream - it’s really happening!”