This Raider Makes Commitments

I already miss Anthony Smith, although he hasn’t gone away. Anthony plays football for Oakland now. But he still has his 6,000-square-foot, French chateau-style house here with the Salvador Dali surrealist art on the walls. He has his black-bottom swimming pool with the panoramic view. He has a new position with the Raiders, who have moved him from defensive end to tackle.

And now, he has Denise. He has the actress formerly known as Vanity who was once a protege of the singer formerly known as Prince. She came to his door holding a bouquet of purple flowers, having become an evangelist for the Jesus Christ For All Nations nondenominational church and hopeful that her benevolent interests and Anthony’s might be one and the same. That was Feb. 24. Two days later, Anthony was baptized at her church. They were married March 26.

Anthony Smith sounds happy at last. He was so lonely before, so discontented, and so remarkably candid about it that it could be said this Raider wore two things on his sleeve, the numeral 94 and his heart. But now he says, “I have a partner in life. She’s writing a book. She’s working on a gospel album. She’s painting. She’s a gourmet cook. I have an in-house expert on everything.

“I encountered so many petty jealousies and so many untrustworthy people out here in this dog-eat-dog world. Finally, I have someone with whom I want to carry on my life.”

And now, so does Denise. Her life is also guided by a new light. She has known disillusionment of her own. The drugs and partying she did during her Hollywood hedonism have done more than leave her with regret. Ten years of cocaine use did the devil’s work to one of her kidneys, so that now Denise Matthews Smith must undergo dialysis three days a week, three hours a day. The role of Vanity is gone, but its scars remain.

The last time I had heard that name spoken publicly, it was during an early stage of the O.J. Simpson trial, when it was reported that Detective Mark Fuhrman of the L.A. police had challenged allegations of racism by revealing that he had once tried to date Vanity, the young African American actress. Denise’s version is that she was stopped speeding “in my little red Corvette” by an officer with whom she flirted, to get out of a ticket. Fuhrman, she says, asked for her phone number.

Kismet brought Anthony and Denise together. He was a roisterous, 267-pound Raider best known for rushing the passer, but off the field he was pensive and almost melancholy, determined to be charitable but disgusted with the friends and strangers who took constant advantage of his largess.

He invited people into his Playa del Rey home and they stole from him. He loaned money to people who never again spoke to him. Women, he had said last fall, adored his money and fame, but, “If a woman could love me as much for what I don’t have as what I do have, I will know I’ve found a good woman. But I have not met that creature yet.”

Anthony searched for peace of mind. He traveled last summer to Casablanca and Marrakech, where cousins live. There in Africa, he says, “I found myself in the birthplace of all nations, among people who all respect one another.”

He wanted this back home. But life in Los Angeles was becoming less and less fulfilling. Anthony, 26, threw himself into philanthropic work, serving as “mentor ambassador” to more than 350 children in an L.A. City Housing Authority’s youth program and launching his own Youth Education Services that takes kids to amusement parks and museums. Anthony has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to various charities. He used to pick up stray kids on street corners, take them to Raider functions or home for a meal. He wanted to feel wanted.

I have a friend whose son had a birthday party. Anthony asked when and where it was, showed up at the restaurant, ate with the kids and tried to pick up the check. I was quite taken with Anthony Smith apart from his skills as a football player. He is uncommonly polite and deferential, someone who rarely says “Yes” without the next syllable being “sir.” Maybe this is the way kids are brought up in Elizabeth City, N.C. Maybe people respect one another there.

It interested me that on the Raider defensive front, Anthony played alongside Nolan Harrison, an athlete who grew up in my neck of the woods. Nolan attended a classy high school and came to the Raiders with a calm dignity, but of late has turned as demonstrative and colorful as Dennis Rodman. Whereas Anthony once seized life by the throat, he in time turned introspective and sophisticated, a man whose idea of a good time is taking his bride to California’s wine country for picnics and peaceful strolls. Tranquillity appealed to him.

“I was never one of those guys who went out to have drinks with anyone for a good time, never someone who drove under the influence or partied too hard,” Anthony told me the other day, discussing his new life. “I had a few speeding tickets and I’m not proud of that. But the wild life is not for me.”

He would like to be an actor, and this is the town for it, not Oakland. Football players make great heavies, natural villains, yes? No, says Anthony Smith, whose idea of an actor is Sidney Poitier or David Niven, whose idea of a good part is Michael Caine’s charming con man in “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” not someone who flexes his muscles. Anthony has an acting coach, Sandy Marshall, and recently taped a UPN network show called “The Watcher.”

Football is his profession and it was jarring when the Raiders announced their move to Oakland, and equally jarring when Coach Mike White made him a tackle. The move north, that’s just business, though Anthony says, “Other people knock L.A.’s fans, but you’ll never hear that from my mouth. Those people were there for us every Sunday and I feel for them.”

The position switch, however, when camp opened last week was unsettling. Not until White explained that Anthony would be accommodating Pat Swilling was he appeased, because of the regard he has for the Raiders’ newly acquired veteran. Had it been anyone other than Swilling, he says, “I’d have died if they’d done this to me.”

So, with a new city, new position, new wife, new life, Anthony presses on. The wedding was held at his house, with harp music and lilacs and decorations in his favorite colors, purple and white. Ten years his senior, Denise was once the lead singer for a Prince-discovered group called Vanity 6. Today she is a born-again evangelist from a church in Sunnyvale who says that the Lord told her to come visit this football player in Los Angeles who was doing so many good deeds. Neither imagined they would be married in a month.

I told Anthony Smith that I would miss him in Los Angeles, not seeing him play here anymore.

“Come see me if we win the Super Bowl,” he replied. “We’ll pour champagne on one another.”

Yes, sir, I said.