Just Consider It, Baby: Weird Al Mellows Out

Yogi was right. The future isn’t what it used to be.

The champions of the National Hockey League, those Devils, may defend their Stanley Cup trophy in Tennessee. The 1996 World Series could be relegated to the Family Channel. The Celtics have cleaned out their Boston Garden lockers; the Rams are ready to clean up in St. Louis, and the Miami Hurricanes are promising to come clean.

But as the sports world map is

becoming more outdated than the Eastern European chapters in your fifth-grade geography book, there’s one page I’m not so sure I want to turn. I’ve heard talk that Al Davis is “mellowing.”

Yep, Al Davis, the ruthless cad who dismissed a dozen years of sellout crowds in Oakland for the promise of 99 luxury boxes in Los Angeles, may be fading into the pleasant streets of Nice Guydom.

Nothing’s official yet; Davis’ decision to reunite Oakland with the Raiders carries no legal weight. But the facts are, well, in the fax: On Friday, Davis sent a “letter of intent” by fax to return his footloose team - the Raiders of the Lost Park - from whence it came.

In Oakland, lifelong Raiders fans found themselves so overwhelmed with joy they honked their Harley Davidsons and jammed tattoo parlors for the latest in Silver and Black forearm emblems. Gushed Oakland Coliseum board member Ed De Silva: “This is more than a football game. We’re talking about the rebirth of a community.”

While I’m happy for Oakland, I am concerned about the possibility that sports has lost its most distinguished antihero. As long as Al Davis was fleecing dead-end Los Angeles suburbs like Irwindale for $10 million (the jackpot he hit a few years ago by suggesting the Raiders would be happy to play in an abandoned strip mine), the distinction between good and bad was as easy to make as the distinction between right and left. Al Davis was the guy on the left; the rest of the world was on the right.

Now that Davis has moved to make amends with the city whose soul he stole, the borders of correctness aren’t so casually defined.

Oh, there are those who’ll argue relocating to Oakland was strictly a business deal for Davis. And it’s true, he persuaded the Oakland Coliseum board to agree to $85 million in stadium improvements, not to mention a $10 million gift for the construction of new training facilities and a $31.9 million loan to help the team’s complete its move in time for the 1995 season.

But enough with the fine-print technicalities. No financial terms can obscure the news that Darth Vader has turned off the high-beam on that laser gun for a chance to snuggle into some slippers and enjoy a fireplace chat with his oldest friends.

In the long and tawdry history of franchise fleeing, never had an owner concluded the grass to be greener in the rear-view mirror, as Davis did has. One wonders, what inspired him to ponder this belated but nevertheless historic U-Turn?

It has been speculated his recent induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame has softened the grudge he generally kept against most living things in general - and the NFL, in particular. It’s hard to hate a league - even after you’ve successfully sued it - when it houses a replica of your face in bronze.

Furthermore, there is the matter of Al Davis’ age: Soon he will turn 66, a bit old to continue being cast as the Angry Young Rebel of the NFL.

Again, though, the question begs: Does the world really want a mellow Al Davis? After all, we’ve got Leo Buscaglia and Mr. Rogers and Willard Scott and a reconfigured Oprah, who has vowed to change the climate of her daytime television roundtable from slightly steamy to warm and pleasant. Do we now need the happy face of Al Davis on Sunday afternoons, too?

I don’t know about you, but I admired the defiantly crass tone of Davis’ signature phrase, “Just win, baby.” I don’t want to hear, “Just play fair, baby.” Or, “Just keep your feet on the ground and reach for the stars, baby.”

He was that rare breed, Davis was, the outcast who took pleasure in the rooms his presence silenced and the smiles it erased. I can see him now, gnawing his fingernails down to the half-moon against the cuticles, cursing at the TV monitor in the owner’s box, scowling at the word through burgundy-colored glasses. It was convenient, perhaps even necessary, to assume his pulse was wired to something besides a heart.

Turns out, Al Davis had a heart all along. He just left it in the other city by the Bay.