A Bleak Look at Raiders

After the San Francisco 49ers took the Raiders apart last Sunday, columnist Glenn Dickey poured it on the next day in the San Francisco Chronicle.

“The Raiders are a one-dimensional team--great defense, mediocre offense--and one-dimensional teams do not win championships in the NFL,” wrote Dickey.

“Al Davis’ luck has run out with quarterbacks. Jim Plunkett bought him some time, but the truth is, Davis hasn’t drafted a good quarterback since he got Ken Stabler on the second round in 1968. He has passed up quarterbacks like Dan Marino and Neil Lomax in the interim.

“When the Raiders have had great teams, they had a great quarterback, a great offensive line and a great defense. One out of three ain’t good.”

Dickey concluded: “I hope Davis enjoyed that sellout crowd yesterday. As the fickle L.A. fans discover that the Raiders are pretenders rather than contenders, those crowds will go down, down, down.”

Add Stabler: Buddy Martin of the Denver Post asked him to rate the quarterbacks he had seen, and he said he was partial to Terry Bradshaw.

“I’m a big fan of Bradshaw’s,” Stabler said while pointing to the Super Bowl ring on his right hand, “because he has more of these than anybody.”

Last add Stabler: He said he’s writing a book called, “The Snake,” which will be published next August. He said he has no axes to grind.

“It’s just a book about some of the funny things in my life, about breaking the curfew at Oakland,” he said. “Hey, there’s nothing wrong with reading the game plan by the light of the jukebox.”

22 Years Ago Today: On Sept. 29, 1963, Stan Musial ended his career by going 2 for 3 as the St. Louis Cardinals defeated the Cincinnati Reds, 3-2, in 14 innings at St. Louis. Musial, 42, wound up with 3,630 hits, a National League record.

Note: In the same game, rookie second baseman Pete Rose of Cincinnati went 3 for 6.

Says Musial: “Even then, he was gaining on me.”

Would-you-believe-it dept.: It’s a chant nobody in Florida ever thought they’d hear, but when the 0-3 Tampa Bay Buccaneers left the field after their last loss at home, fans were yelling, “We want McKay.”

The Phoenix Suns held a press conference to introduce 6-8 Georgi Glouchkov of Bulgaria, and the Associated Press wrote: “NBA news releases usually list a player’s biographical data and statistics. But this time, Tom Ambrose, the Suns’ public relations director, passed around maps of Europe pointing out where Bulgaria is.”

Add Glouchkov: He said he had learned two English phrases, one of them being “Phoenix Suns”.

Asked the other one, he said, “Pretty girl.”

Said Rolando Blackman of the Dallas Mavericks, complaining about how people are always getting his first name wrong: “The other day, I got a piece of mail, addressed Renando. To show you how bad it’s gotten, it was from my bank.”

Listening unsympathetically was the rookie center from Indiana, who said: “You think you’ve got problems.”

It was Uwe Blab.

Quotebook

Tony Kornheiser of the Washington Post poses this question: “Who’s going to win 300 games first, Phil Niekro or Dwight Gooden?”