If Oakland Can Pull This Off, Brooklyn May Try for Dodgers

Never mind the fact that NFL owners passed a resolution that will generate some of the necessary funding to put a state-of-the-art football facility in Inglewood. Forget the fact that the resolution also requires the Raiders to remain in the Los Angeles area over the next two seasons while the facility is under construction.

There are still people in Oakland who refuse to give up on the Raiders. Some Oakland officials recently took out full-page ads for a letter directed at owner Al Davis, offering him his old home back.

“Don’t settle for replacement fans and fickle friends,” said the letter, put together by an informal committee of politicians and executives. “Come home to the biggest red carpet you ever saw, to the heart and soul of your history and your franchise.”

In all, 63 people signed the appeal, which ran free in the Oakland Tribune, courtesy of the Alameda Newspaper Group.

“There’s a number of reasons why we want this to happen and we have to take our best shot,” said Dennis Cuneo, vice chairman of the Alameda County Economic Development Advisory Board.

The letter ends: “Just come home--and win--baby.”

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Well traveled: Before the Raiders came to the Los Angeles Coliseum, they played their home games in the Oakland Coliseum. But before that, they had three other home fields.

In 1960, their first year of existence, the Raiders, then in the American Football League, shared Kezar Stadium with the San Francisco 49ers. The Raiders played in San Francisco’s Candlestick Park in their second season before moving across the bay to Oakland’s Frank Youell Field, where they were for four seasons before moving to the Oakland Coliseum.

The Raiders also played one game at Memorial Stadium in Berkeley in 1973 because of a scheduling conflict with the Oakland A’s at the Coliseum.

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Trivia time: It was 13 years ago today that Cal Ripken Jr. last did not start in a Baltimore Oriole game. Who took his place?

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We are family: NBA Commissioner David Stern went to San Antonio to present David Robinson with his MVP trophy and found himself asked mostly about--who else?--Dennis Rodman.

“We like to think of the NBA as one big family,” Stern said. “Everyone who has a family knows that you have different kinds of members in a family, and we have them all.”

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A natural: A 12-year-old Little Leaguer with a batting average of .800 hit a homer that traveled at least 275 feet, going out of the ballpark and onto a freeway in Los Gatos, Calif.

Two California Highway Patrol officers retrieved the ball hit off the bat of Tim Wilson last Monday night. “When he first hit it, nobody moved,” said Bill Hubbard, coach of the Los Gatos Reds. “It left the bat on a trajectory like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

The homer cleared a wire fence 185 feet away in left-center field, 50-foot redwood trees, a 25-foot-long parking lot and a 21-foot-wide street.

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Trivia answer: Floyd Rayford started in Ripken’s place at third base in the second game of a doubleheader at Memorial Stadium against Toronto.

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Quotebook: Al Davis, asked if he was looking forward to finally getting out of limbo and moving into a permanent home: “If I was going to be in limbo forever, but could win a Super Bowl, I’d take that.”