RAIDERS RETURN TO OAKLAND : On the Day Raiders Announce Move, the Rams Actually Do

It wasn’t as dramatic as Baltimore, public-relations director Rick Smith said of the Rams’ move to St. Louis.

He was right. Nobody left in the middle of the night for Missouri as the Colts did when they sneaked out of Baltimore and moved to Indianapolis 11 years ago.

Friday was moving day for the Rams, who had 18 vehicles scheduled to leave Anaheim for St. Louis, where the team will play for the first time in 1995.

Coincidentally, just a few hours after the first vehicles left at daybreak, the Raiders announced they were moving to Oakland.

Most of the Ram employees are making the 1,800-mile move with the team, Smith said. But some will remain in California for an undetermined amount of time.

“We’ll still have an office out here on the West Coast with some personnel in it,” Smith said.

He said he wasn’t surprised most Rams employees opted to move with the team rather than remain in California. “These are career jobs, they’re very special,” he said. “People are in this essentially for the love of the game.”

Smith said about 250,000 pounds of equipment, furniture and the like was being moved. The vehicles are expected to arrive in St. Louis on Monday. The Rams begin training camp July 16 in St. Louis.