Mosebar Moving Front and Center : Former Trojan Could Become Only Third Raider to Start at Position

They’re warming up another Raider center, an event that occurs about once every decade and a half.

He’s Don Mosebar, who is being switched from guard, where he was already considered one of the team’s best young linemen. If you want to know something about the changes in football, all you have to do is look at him. At 6 feet 6 inches and 260 pounds, he is going to be one of the bigger men ever to play the position.

Assuming that he moves into it one day, he will be the third Raider ever to start a game at center. Twenty-five years, six American Presidents, two Raider centers.

The first, Jim Otto, played for the first 15 years, and made the Hall of Fame. He was a charter Raider, snapping for the first Raider quarterbacks, Tom Flores and Cotton Davidson.

Al Davis was a Charger assistant coach then. The Denver Broncos wore vertically striped socks. New York was represented by the Titans, who played in the Polo Grounds. In football history, it was the dawning of the new world.

The second Raider center is the incumbent, Dave Dalby, to whom the transfer of 23-year-old Don Mosebar cannot be the best news ever.

Dalby has started all of the last 10 seasons. He has played in 189 straight games, second on the Raiders to--who else?--Otto. Dalby has been in 22 postseason games, nine AFC championship games, three victorious Super Bowls and a Pro Bowl. He has been offensive captain for the last three seasons.

He is only 34 and not ready to go anywhere. What can he be thinking about all this competition? Competing quarterbacks tend to nod politely to each other. Jim Plunkett recently characterized his relationship with Marc Wilson this way: “We say hello to each other, but we’re not close in any way.”

What mayhem, then, is possible in dueling centers?

On the Raiders, none.

“I want to play football,” Dalby said. “But I want to help Don out as much as I can. That’s what Otto did with me. Whatever happens, happens. All I can do is play as hard as I can and let the chips fall where they may. I’m sure Don is in their future plans. I just try to take care of myself.

“Every year they’re always coming up with somebody. That’s what makes the Raiders a good organization. When someone steps down, they’ve got someone ready. I played offensive guard when I got there (a fourth-round draft choice from UCLA). I sat around for two years before Jim retired.

“When you first come in, you’re in awe of the (Gene) Upshaws, the (Art) Shells, the Ottos. I just wanted to fit in. Otto took me out to the Bamboo Room (a Santa Rosa bar) the first day. We took a liking to each other right away.

“The way it’s always been around here, we’re going to help each other out. I’m just trying to help Donny out as much as I can. I want to win, too.

“I think (retiring) was hard for Jim to accept. But you can only play so long. He’d had a good career. Jim and I communicated--we didn’t really talk about it. I know I felt from talking to him, he knew it was kind of my turn. He wished me luck.

“I saw him quite a bit after that. When I won Raider lineman of the year, he was there at the ceremony. That meant a lot to me. After all the Super Bowl games, he was always there. We’d talk to each other. I know he was sad he couldn’t be in it, but he was happy we won.

“Jim kind of taught me (the importance of staying in the lineup), because of his love for the game. There’s plenty of times you don’t feel good, but you play this game to play in the games, not to practice. . . . I’ve had five knee operations. There was one season, where we set back the surgery until afterward. I had to play. There was no one else.”

The price they pay is considerable. Otto had nine knee operations, a spinal fusion and now has a completely artificial knee. A recent special on Home Box Office showed him barely ambulatory.

“He wasn’t typical,” said Dr. Robert Rosenfeld, Raider orthopedist. “Otto was the ultimate.”

Dalby said: “I worry about it. But it’s just part of the game, the way I see it.

“Jim was starting to show it. He’s had so many knee operations. He played in a lot of pain the last couple of years. . . . It’s the bad part. I don’t like to think about it. There’s no way you can think about that and play football.”

He was sitting in the room he shares with Bob Nelson, into which they have lugged a large refrigerator with a padlock on the door, wearing a baseball cap that says “BamBoo,” a last link to the old days.

“With the turnover every year, there are probably 10 guys left who ever played in Oakland,” Dalby said. “We have very few guys who remember what it was like to play up there.

“My first quarterbacks were (Ken) Stabler, (Daryle) Lamonica and (George) Blanda. That’s the best part of football, the people you play with, the teams you’ve been with. I’m sure a lot of the people I’ve played with will be in the Hall of Fame--Shell, Upshaw, Stabler. . . . All the great players, (Dave) Casper, Nelson, the guys who weren’t the so-called stars.”

There are all sorts of distinctions, and constancy is one. They build those Raider centers to last, and this one aims to.

Raider Notes

The Raiders cut three free agents, defensive backs John Krimm and Chris Syndor and linebacker Archie Carter. The squad is now 96, plus the injured Curt Marsh and holdout Bob Nelson. . . . Nelson’s holdout reached its fifth day. Raider Coach Tom Flores: “It’s just too bad because the days are going by quite rapidly, and Bob needs the work.”