A SECOND COMING : The Raiders’ Return Is Only Temporary, but Oakland’s Loyal Fans Are Hoping for Something More Permanent

Pinch ‘em, they’re dreaming.

It’s like the glory days, only better. Everywhere the locals look, the Jolly Raider flies, their beloved, behelmeted figure with the eyepatch and crossed swords, and the promoters’ slogan for this game: The Passion Returns.

Banners flutter all along Broadway downtown and festoon Hegenberger Road, the route from the airport. Can you imagine the look on Al Davis’ face--try a grimace masking the glee--when he rides in, once more a conquering hero? There are billboards, a downtown pep rally with the mayor, Raider alumni functions, prime-time TV specials on three stations, an outdoor DiamondVision screen going up in Jack London Square to show the game. Oh, silver! Oh, black!

Isn’t this actually more like Napoleon’s retreat with his battered army?

Forget that, Jack. What happened to the team in L.A. is L.A.’s problem, they’ve suffered enough slights of their own here, thank you. The Raiders are back for an exhibition game, and who knows, if Oakland can deliver on that $75 million it has offered, they could be back next year to stay.

Maybe Al will make the announcement.

How about at tonight’s black-tie $150-a-plate banquet honoring Raider Hall of Famers, keynote speech by an actual former President of the United States, Gerald Ford?

Picture it . . .

It’s late in the evening. They’ve eaten, they’ve drunk, they’ve laughed, they’ve cried. The old glories hang in the air like a champagne mist.

Finally a lean, solitary figure with a pompadour, dark glasses and a ring whose three huge, football-shaped diamonds throw reflections to the far walls, ascends to the podium. He stretches his arms out slowly. There are tears in his eyes. He says the magic words. Momma! They’re home!

But it’s not happening.

Not just yet, anyway.

The Raiders are up for grabs, but the offers are too tentative.

Sacramento’s offer of a $50-million signing bonus?

The developers reportedly expect $40 million of that to be public money. They haven’t yet solicited the public’s opinion.

Oakland’s proposed $32-million front money?

It’s part of a proposal that must be ratified by the Oakland City Council and the Alameda County Board of Supervisors.

Oakland City Manager Henry Gardner is still going over the numbers and won’t make his recommendation to the City Council until the end of the month.

The council, which pursued and lost an eminent domain suit against the Raiders through the 1980s, is studying this proposal, shall we say, painstakingly. It isn’t scheduled to meet again until Sept. 12.

Thus Saturday night’s exhibition appearance against the Houston Oilers remains symbolic. It’s remarkable and unprecedented and it did settle the issue of whether the Raiders would be welcomed back (the game sold out 55,000 seats in 2 1/2 hours). But, hype notwithstanding, nothing will be settled this weekend.

Davis said last week in Oxnard that speculation he’d be carried away by a tidal wave of emotion and make an announcement at the dinner, or at halftime of the game, is “ludicrous.”

But tidal waves wash two ways. Oakland, with its school system projecting a $14-million deficit next year, has a lot worse problems than a missing football team. But if the city fathers who are facing a mayoralty election see their constituents all packing up and heading for the party, they’ll notice.

Davis, adept at keeping his own counsel until the last moment, can sit back and let natural forces work for him.

He’s got it.

They want it.

Comparisons may be somewhat unfair to Angelenos, who once loved to put on their Sunday silver-and-black, bare-knuckle finery and cheer this antidote to those effete-L.A. jokes.

You could argue that what really happened in Los Angeles was that Davis let his team run down while engaging in another squabble with another landlord, that attendance fell and, when the team entered its quasi-lame-duck phase, plummeted. Under Davis, the Oakland Raiders never went two seasons without posting a winning record or making the playoffs. The Los Angeles Raiders have just gone three.

On the other hand, it’s different here.

Los Angeles has anything but a civic inferiority complex. It was Los Angeles before the Raiders arrived, and will remain the same if they leave.

In Oakland, they weren’t so sure who they were.

Howie Long, who spent his first two pro seasons here, recently compared it to a wife who leaves and returns home eight years later . . . to find her spouse has been setting a place for her at dinner every night.

“It’s a unique community,” Long says. “It identifies so much with the team. The identity of the Raiders was linked to Oakland, and the identity of Oakland was linked to the Raiders. They’re synonymous. It’s one and the same.”

You might wonder if the Oakland fans copied motorcycle-riding, handlebar-mustachioed Ben Davidson, or if it was the other way around. The Raiders were Oakland and Oakland was the Raiders, all right.

Their outlaw appeal reached across the Bay, too, into the heart of snooty, despised San Francisco.

“Many of us were closet Raider fans for many years,” says the Chronicle’s man-about-town columnist, Herb Caen.

“I always preferred the Raiders. They were rough, tough, rotten guys. The Niners were Mr. Clean. Bill Walsh is a rather God-like figure. (John) Madden and the Raiders were like the Grateful Dead.

“There were wonderful scenes in the parking lot before games. It looked like ‘Road Warrior.’ It was fun to go around and see the people barbecuing what looked like other people.”

Nor would time and separation change their love.

“Even in the ‘80s, you could look around the community and the Raider logo was everywhere,” says Steve Page, an official of the Oakland Athletics, who had their own problems with the Raiders. “It’s never really died.”

In the first years after the move/betrayal/abandonment, Bay Area TV ratings for Raider games were higher than in Los Angeles. Raider games are still carried on local radio. The voice of the Raiders is still Bill King, a Bay Area institution.

In the late ‘80s, an Eastbay fan named Don Maroney started a Raider newspaper. He was a kid in high school when the Raiders left, but now he has a printing company in Hayward and a passion on the side that he can indulge. Since his paper is independent, he can’t use the team name or logos so he calls it The SportsPage and gives Bay Area fans the full Raider panoply, which the local papers are missing.

His circulation is 23,000. For the current issue, they’re printing 37,000.

With no reason to believe the Raiders would return, with civic memories focused on how they had been burned and civic energy focused on getting an expansion team, Maroney campaigned for the pipe dream of pipe dreams, bringing the Raiders back.

It was 1987 and the Irwindale move was stalled when he went to an Alameda County Board of Supervisors meeting to ask why they didn’t pursue the Raiders.

A board member called Raider limited partner Jack Brooks to ask if a bid would be entertained. Brooks said it would.

At the time, the Oakland Coliseum Commission was casting around for an NFL exhibition game to show that it was still fertile country for an expansion team. Commission head George Vukasin struck a deal with Oiler owner Bud Adams, whose first plan to bring in another team for an ’88 game was foiled by a conflict with the A’s.

Vukasin, still working on it, attended the ’88 NFL meetings in Phoenix. Spotting Davis across a lobby, he suggested to the Oakland Tribune’s Jon Rochmis that he ask Davis if he’d consider playing in Oakland.

Rochmis did. Davis glared at him and walked away without a word.

Not long afterward, the Raiders decided it wasn’t such a bad idea, after all. Their cut is reportedly $500,000, a huge haul for an exhibition, and besides they are getting a free marketing survey.

Now, Oakland bids for permanent possession.

It bids within oft-mentioned parameters, however. Raider fandom is somewhat split between enthusiasts from the surrounding towns such as Fremont and Hayward, and the residents of the poor central core, who have an array of urban woes staring them in the face every day. Oakland is not inclined to run financial risks for a large plaything.

The Raider deal is represented as costing nothing, since it would be financed by the Coliseum’s bonds and repaid from luxury box profits. The key is the city’s faith that the Raiders would continue to sell out, as they did for their last 11 seasons in Oakland, ensuring that there will be profits.

It’s not a done deal, but they’re working on it.

“It’s something we dreamed of years ago,” Maroney says. “Not too many people shared that dream. It’s exciting to see people in the area sharing it now.

“America was founded on people standing up for what they believed in, but it’s never happened in sports before. This is unprecedented. Not only the Raiders coming back to Oakland, but sports fans standing up for what they believed. This wasn’t some politician’s idea. This came from the fans, the ones who got burned last time.”

The guys with their heads on swivels are the Raider players, obliged to play before dwindling gatherings--their two exhibitions have drawn two of the franchise’s three smallest crowds in Los Angeles--while awaiting new marching orders.

“It hurts,” Howie Long says. “Lack of enthusiasm in the stands tends to be less inspirational on the field. It doesn’t send the chills down your spine. It’s not that magic moment that you dream about growing up.

“Ideally? I’d like to play there (Oakland) and live here (Los Angeles.) We’ve had that kind of enthusiasm here once--the AFC championship in ’83. That’s one time when it hopped--like it did every week up there. Every week up there, that’s just the way it was.”

Only Long, Matt Millen and Todd Christensen of current Raiders ever played in Oakland. Vann McElroy and Marcus Allen lived there as rookies in 1982, when the Raiders practiced in Oakland and played in Los Angeles.

“At that time, there was a lot of resentment about the team leaving,” McElroy says.

“It was bad. People were very upset. You could see there was a lot of fan support because people were upset about it. Little comments were made, but most of the people realized a player is paid to do what he’s paid to do. He plays the game wherever it is. That’s a management situation. Management is going to do what it’s going to do.

“It’s not a knock against anybody. I don’t want to say L.A.’s a bad place or Oakland’s the place. When the stadium’s filled, you feel the excitement when you walk in. I haven’t felt that here in a long time. We had that on our drive to the Super Bowl (1984). The place was packed and, I mean, it was exciting. You walked out on the the field and chills went down you. I mean, you got fired up to play a game.

“Now you go out there, you got 30,000 people, it looks like a scrimmage. You’ve got to really work mentally to get yourself going. It becomes more of a job.”

Saturday night, they get their chills back.

What Oakland gets, it will have to wait to find out.