After Being Taken, Raiders Had Last Laugh

The way life is played in the dangerous veldt of professional sports, Los Angeles steals the Raiders from Oakland. Oakland steals the Raiders from Los Angeles.

Easy come, easy go.

Los Angeles steals the Rams from Cleveland. Anaheim steals the Rams from Los Angeles.

Los Angeles steals the Dodgers from Brooklyn and the Lakers from Minneapolis, Los Angeles steals the Clippers from San Diego, which stole them from Buffalo.

San Francisco steals the baseball Giants from New York. A city to be named will soon steal the Giants from San Francisco.

Milwaukee steals the Braves from Boston. Atlanta steals the Braves from Milwaukee, which steals the Brewers from Seattle.

This is but a fragment of what has been going on in sports for the last half-century or so, the only difference today being that the stakes have changed. The price of theft has gone up. It isn’t imperative that a city acquire a pro football team. A city can stay home and watch football played in other cities. It’s all a matter of taste.

If thought is given, though, to stealing a team, the ground rules must be understood. Owners aren’t seminary students. Do business with them--and prepare to be nicked.

“We skinned the Raiders when we swiped them from Oakland,” recalls Bill Robertson, Coliseum commissioner who did the negotiating for Los Angeles. “We didn’t aim to skin them, but it turned out that way.

“We originally promised Al Davis $18 million--$5 million we would raise from the county, $5 million from the state and $8 million from the city. The deal was delayed two years by a court order in 1980 forcing the Raiders back to Oakland. When they got legally free to come to L.A., our money no longer was there. All we had to offer was a $2-million relocation fee, plus $4.7 million on the if-come.”

The if-come hinged on the success of the 1984 Olympics, from which the Coliseum hoped to profit. It did.

“I’ll never forget the look on Al’s face when I told him that all we could guarantee was 2 million bucks,” Robertson said. “He was in shock. He asked, ‘What kind of place is this?’ I said, ‘Al, if you don’t take it, I’ll understand.’ ”

The offer didn’t even include a practice field. Robertson made an arrangement whereby the Raiders could rent an abandoned school in El Segundo for $10,000 a month. For a practice facility in Oakland, they had been paying $1 a year.

Al Davis isn’t what you would call the boy next door. Irritated by a short payoff, he chose to take it, in preference to turning back to Oakland, where Pete Rozelle was trying to imprison him. Al was determined, at all costs, to win that argument.

But Davis was not without luck. Because the offer was so small, he was able to dictate the length of the lease. And he made it for only 10 years, setting up, quite unwittingly at the time, the heist that would follow in 1990.

Because Anaheim gave the Rams 90 acres of real estate and spent $30 million on stadium improvements, it was able to nail them for 35 years.

Soon to be contractually free, the Raiders have lucked into a changing market, created mainly by a place called Sacramento, which, in society, had a statement to make. Sacramento wanted pro football. It was willing to offer great riches for it.

Well, Oakland couldn’t permit a place 80 miles away to steal that team, because it would mean the league never would put a franchise in Oakland, what with still another team, San Francisco, residing in the same area.

Davis preferred Oakland, but, an American businessman, he preferred it only if it matched the dough of Sacramento. Owners, as mentioned earlier, come to play.

And Los Angeles, always boasting it is the sports capital?

It couldn’t fake it’s way into a big-betting poker game such as this with merely a fund of persuasive reasons why the Raiders belonged in this practice.

Brawling with the Coliseum Commission three years ago, Davis could have commanded from other cities but a fraction of what he has bagged today. Luck this time has been Al’s co-pilot.

And, of course, now that new standards are established, the cost of stealing a team, or of protecting one from would-be burglars, will continue to grow.

By not expanding, football owners cunningly create a climate in which existing franchises become more precious. There are only 28 to go around.

You want one in your town, you had better have friends at the bank.