No. 1 Raider Tries to Get His Team Past a Crisis Situation

Al Davis slips into the booth that is reserved for him at all times in the coffee shop of the Raiders’ hotel. The waitress brings him his usual pitcher of ice water.

On the table is a pink--honest!--cordless phone, the Raider hot-line. A picture window affords Davis a lovely view of a golf course, upon which he has never set foot. Just between us, Al considers golf a colossal waste of time.

When he wants exercise, he goes back to his suite and pumps iron.

“It’s an ego thing, I admit it,” says Davis, who is 58 and trim as a cougar. “I want to look younger. Let’s be honest, I’m not lifting for strength anymore. I’m lifting for health and to keep my lines.”

Al’s Raiders, also struggling to keep their lines, will break camp soon, or vice versa, and the thrill-packed exhibition slate will get under way. Davis is looking forward to the 1987 season, to getting his life’s work back on track. He is in the business of domination, and business has been lousy.

The Raiders finished the 1986 season with four straight losses, a statistic that stuck in Davis’ craw the entire off-season. Then the L.A. Coliseum Commission reneged on a promise, forcing the Raiders to shut down remodeling work and go shopping for a new home field.

Last month, Davis lost a close friend when Dodger coach Don McMahon died of a heart attack.

For all these seemingly unrelated occurrences, Davis takes the blame.

Not that he could have done much more for McMahon, but he tried. They were high school teammates in Brooklyn, friends for 40 years. Just after McMahon was fired as Cleveland’s pitching coach two years ago, Davis ran into Tom Lasorda at Matteo’s restaurant and asked Lasorda if he needed a good coach. The next day Lasorda hired McMahon.

In ‘84, when doctors told McMahon he needed bypass surgery, Davis stepped in.

“We called several different doctors, brought Don to Cedars (-Sinai, in Los Angeles),” Davis says.

This is something Davis has done many times. When a friend is critically ill, he takes it upon himself to fight the illness with any and all resources. It becomes Davis vs. death.

“It’s tough to dominate death,” Davis says. “I’ve always been intrigued by death. It’s the only thing that’s an unknown to me. I’m not looking for any plaudits. It’s something I do. We saved (another friend’s) life. They’d given up on him. We pushed the thing. I don’t believe in giving up. I don’t think in our society we’re doing as much with management of a person’s sickness as can be done.

“I wish I could start a business, call it Crisis Management or something like that. If you’re in the hospital, you can call, and we assign someone to your treatment, give you the ultimate care, day and night. It’s a challenge to dominate something society hasn’t been able to dominate.”

For Davis, football is only slightly less serious than life and death. He constantly broods about the Raiders, continually doodles plays and notes. He seldom, if ever, relaxes. Once a day, sometimes twice a day, Al writes down the name and position of every Raider player and a word or two about each man, something he noticed in practice, so he can offer a constructive comment to the player.

“It’s not fun,” Davis says of the football business. “While you’re doing it, it’s not fun. All the pressures . . . “

Then why bother? Davis is wealthy, and he has proven himself in football. Why not retire and seek some fun?

“The reward after doing it (winning) is fun,” he says. “That makes it worthwhile.”

Last season, there was precious little reward.

“(Last season,) we’re 8-4, then we blow the season,” Davis says. “It’s the first time we’ve cracked in a long while. We’re a pretty good team. Maybe not the best--I’m not sure there is a dominant team--but we’re pretty good, and we cracked.”

So Al of Oxnard plows ahead, striving to re-establish Raider domination. Will he ever retire?

“(Coach Tom) Flores asked me that the other day during a philosophical discussion,” Davis says. “I don’t know. . . . The Raiders have the best record in professional sports over the years, and I want to maintain it. Maybe once I get (the team back on track), I’d be satisfied. Only one group has something over us. The (Pittsburgh) Steelers have won four Super Bowls.”

If Pete Rozelle hears that one or two more Super Bowl titles might prompt Davis to retire, Rozelle will probably award the Raiders some bonus draft picks, or Vinny Testaverde.

As it is, the Raiders will go into the season with a few handicaps, including an unsuitable stadium.

“I feel I’ve let our team down there,” Davis says.

The planned Coliseum remodeling would have brought several thousand seats closer to the field.

“(Players) need the roar of the crowd,” he says. “It could’ve helped us. It would’ve put the fans right on top of the field. We wanted something functional, clean and new. The Coliseum is dirty, let’s be honest.”

Al’s life the last year or so hasn’t been all one long slump. He had a good time watching the Lakers, for instance.

“That guy (Magic Johnson) put on the greatest exhibition of one individual dominating a sport that I’ve ever seen,” Davis says.

Then there’s Bo Jackson. Davis is withholding his enthusiasm for the Raiders’ newest running back until Bo proves himself in NFL battle. But Davis comes very close to cackling when he imagines the general reaction in Kansas City when Al the Hun plucked a Heisman Trophy runner from the Chiefs’ backyard.

“It must have been like, ‘Christ, the Russians are coming to Kansas City,’ ” Davis says, smiling.

Al Davis’ life isn’t all fun and games, but it has its moments.