Enshrinement Long Overdue for Al Davis

Some scientists have to wait too long for their Nobel Prizes. Some actors and actresses have to wait too long for their Oscars.

Al Davis waited way, way, way too long.

While lesser figures of contemporary football rushed into the Hall of Fame full-speed ahead of him, and while baseball counterparts were being ushered into their own shrine a mere five years beyond their playing days, the owner of the Raiders and onetime commissioner of the American Football League was effectively blackballed from his game’s most exclusive club.

You think Susan Lucci has labored long without an Emmy?

Davis has been in pro football since 1954.

On Aug. 1, one of pro football’s most outlandish mistakes finally will be corrected. Al Davis will be inducted into the Hall of Fame at Canton, Ohio.

To say that his emotions are mixed would be a major understatement.

On one hand, because John Madden will be alongside as his presenter and because so many other dear friends will be nearby, Davis says: “In many ways, this is going to turn out to be my personal field of dreams.”

At the same time, being bypassed season after season took an understandable toll.

“I suppose that’s one reason why I don’t look forward to it with quite the same anticipation that I might have sooner,” he admitted.

Whatever fireworks might have accompanied this man throughout his life and times--he even was born on the Fourth of July--nothing should have interfered with Al Davis’ being enshrined years and years ago.

No, hold on.

Make that decades ago.

Davis personally has presented eight inductees. Numerous others were once in his employ. But you would think Davis had done 10 to 20 in a federal pen, the way voters went out of their way to keep him excluded.

Indignity upon indignity went unexplained. Until 1991, Davis never even had been one of the six nominees on the final ballot. This was slightly insane.

And then when he did finally make it, at a vote in Minneapolis before Super Bowl XXVI, it evidently was because the Hall of Fame had instituted a “minimum of four” procedure that required the approval of at least four new nominees.

Although the official vote is kept top-secret, one source from the 31-member selection committee disclosed that he had informally canvassed voters afterward. Automatic induction required 25 “yes” votes, but no one received 25.

Davis apparently got the most “yes” votes of anyone. Nevertheless, nine voters rejected the Raider owner, according to the anonymous committee member. And he never even got around to polling everyone.

“When Davis finally entered Canton,” wrote Dave Anderson of the New York Times, “it was through the side door.”

It might not be terribly flattering. But Davis has been in football long enough to know that you take your victories however you get them. To heck with the final score. What matters is being a winner.

Davis, who turned 63 Saturday, has come to accept this award as “a reflection not so much of my own work but of those with whom I’ve worked in my life: big people, little people, hundreds of people.”

And besides, he is too busy preparing for another NFL season to put much stock in any preseason pomp and ceremony.

Training camp is imminent and the Raiders have to rearrange some X’s and O’s. They have replenished their supply of world-famous running backs, Eric Dickerson for Bo Jackson. They must evaluate quarterbacks, old and young. And they have a couple of rookie 300-pounders to mold into NFL-fit linemen.

“We’ll have to see what Eric Dickerson can do,” Davis said. “It was a tremendous blow to lose Bo Jackson. He was one of those guys who put the fear of death into people.

“Bo wasn’t necessarily what baseball would call a high-percentage hitter. He didn’t hit for a high average. But, like Reggie Jackson, come October when it counted, he could really bust one.”

The younger Jackson wouldn’t even arrive until late October. Did Davis mind? Does he empathize with the bosses of the Atlanta Falcons, who have urged Deion Sanders to spurn baseball for football?

“No, I wanted Bo to play baseball,” Davis said.

Wanted to? Why?

“Three reasons,” he said.

“One, I felt he could do it. He was capable of doing both. Two, don’t laugh at me, but I feel there’s a need for people out there who are mavericks, people who are determined to do something beyond the norm. Bo was special. He wanted to do something special.”

And Reason 3?

“I wanted a Raider to be the first one to do it,” Davis said.

Being first isn’t everything. Being first isn’t the only thing. But it ain’t bad.

Al Davis should have been the first Raider in the Hall of Fame.