RAIDER LOYALIST : Football: As owner of a Bay Area sports merchandise shop, former Notre Dame High and USC lineman John Vella finds his old team still sells in Oakland.

Business is booming at the Raider Locker Room sports shop in Castro Valley, a few miles south of Oakland. Boom, there goes a Raider cap. Boom, ring up a sale on a Raider T-shirt.

You can almost hear broadcaster John Madden, Oakland’s former coach, providing the color commentary. Boom, how about a Raider warmup jacket?

For store owner John Vella, a former Raider lineman who played at Notre Dame High in Sherman Oaks, it’s Christmas in August.

“Business has been great,” Vella said this week by phone. “The Raider fans in the East Bay, they never left. They’re ready to embrace the team.”

Ever since the Raiders announced this summer their return to the Bay Area after a 13-year stay in Los Angeles, Vella, who opened his store eight years ago, has assumed the mantle of clairvoyant businessman.

“No one was crazy enough to open a Raider shop when the team was in L.A.,” he said. “Business has been great for eight years. I guess it’s my way to hang on to the Raiders and keep the torch burning.”

Raider memories still burn bright for Vella, 15 years after his playing career ended. The 45-year-old former offensive tackle who played on one of the greatest lines in NFL history has remained a loyal Raider, even when Oakland played in Los Angeles.

Vella, a second-round draft pick out of USC, was a Raider during the team’s glory years in Oakland. In his eight seasons from 1972-’79, the Raiders won nearly 80% of their games, advanced to the playoffs six times and won the franchise’s first Super Bowl.

They also forged a special kinship with the Oakland community. The renegade Raiders were a perfect match for a maligned city that lived in the shadow of the more sophisticated San Francisco. If San Francisco was champagne and caviar, Oakland was a six-pack and beer nuts.

Fans were nutty for the Raiders, adopting the NFL’s outlaws as their own. Every East Bay community seemed to have its own booster club, and players rarely went a day during the season without attending some kind of civic luncheon. You couldn’t walk two blocks in Oakland without bumping into a Raider.

Fans and Raiders rubbed--and bent--elbows together after home games at Oakland Coliseum. Tailgating fans often were joined by players for a drink and a sandwich in the stadium parking lot, further cementing bonds between team and town.

“It was an excellent time, my field of dreams,” Vella said. “It wasn’t unusual to see 10 or 15 players mixing with fans after a game in the parking lot. We were Raiders 24 hours a day. If the team won or lost, it was important to the community. The Bay Area is a big place, but the East Bay seemed small. It still does.”

Madden, the television commentator who coached the team from 1969-’78, shares those memories, relishing the underdog role that came with the Oakland territory.

“That whole thing was bigger than football,” he said from his home in Carmel. “San Francisco was the fairway and Oakland was the rough. It always used to make me mad when the Monday Night [Football] TV crew would stay in San Francisco for a Raider game. Like, ‘You’re good enough for us to cover the game, but we’re not going to stay in Oakland.’ ”

But Vella stayed. A three-sport standout at Notre Dame High in the 1960s, he chose USC to remain close to his family, but once he landed with the Raiders, the Bay Area became home to Vella, wife Patti and their four children. Once a Raider, always a Raider.

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Oakland memories flow freely from Vella, but the final score that sticks with him comes from the 1967 season when he was a senior at Notre Dame High. With Vella playing on both sides of the ball, the Knights thrashed Loyola, a perennial power in the 1960s, to win the Catholic League title.

“If I still can remember the score, 42-12, you know it was a big deal. I don’t think I could repeat the Super Bowl score,” he said.

Vella was part of a memorable class at Notre Dame. He joined with Tim Foli, the former No. 1 draft choice of the New York Mets, to help the Knights sweep the Catholic League championships in football, basketball and baseball without losing a league game. The 6-foot-4, 245-pound Vella was an All-Southern Section pick as a basketball forward and was an all-league first baseman, but he made his biggest mark in football.

Classmate Lou Smaldino, who works for a pharmaceutical company in Marin County, was a halfback at Notre Dame who spent his high school career following Vella’s blocks. He remembers one series in which the team ran the same play four straight times. The first three were called back because of penalties but all four times, Smaldino ran into the end zone.

“John could blow holes like nobody else,” Smaldino said. “He was very intimidating with his size and deep baritone.”

Vella was a high school All-American in 1967 and one of USC’s easiest recruits. The Trojans already had established a tradition for producing All-American offensive linemen, and Vella’s host on his recruiting trip was Outland Trophy winner Ron Yary.

“In the late ‘60s, SC was the school to go to,” Vella said. “It was the place everyone looked up to and talked about. When they recruited me, I was a pretty quick yes.”

Vella cracked the Trojan starting lineup as a sophomore in 1969, playing offensive tackle for the Rose Bowl champions whose only blemish in 11 games was a tie with Notre Dame. Vella helped deliver upsets of the Irish in the next two seasons despite flipping sides on the line of scrimmage.

As a junior, Vella was a preseason All-American candidate, but when Coach John McKay summoned him to his office before the start of fall practice, Vella assumed he had done something wrong.

“He was small-talking, smoking a cigar, being really friendly and I knew he was going to get to it soon,” Vella said. “Finally, he asked me if I wanted to play defense. I was speechless. Finally, I told him I’d rather play offense.”

Didn’t matter. Vella became a defensive lineman in 1970, which put him in position to score his only career touchdown. In the rain at the Coliseum, the underdog Trojans stunned the undefeated Irish, 38-28. Notre Dame quarterback Joe Theismann passed for 526 yards, but when Willie Hall sacked him in the Irish end zone, Theismann fumbled and Vella recovered.

Back on offense in 1971, Vella had an All-American season that included another upset of Notre Dame, a 28-14 victory in South Bend. In the spring of ‘72, Vella was drafted in the second round by the Raiders but asked for first-round money, thanks to Madden.

“When we took him in the second round, I said in the newspaper he was like a first-round pick,” Madden said. “And that’s the first thing his agent said to [Raider owner] Al Davis.”

Said Vella: “Madden has asked me for a commission on that a few times.”

Vella’s Raider career was off and running as the franchise’s reputation for winning with a team of castoffs, misfits and wild men became part of the national sports landscape. The Raiders’ cast of characters included such renegade NFL stars as hard-drinking quarterback Ken Stabler and vicious defensive back Jack Tatum, author of a book titled “They Call Me Assassin.”

And the team had a killer offensive line. After the Raiders dominated the Vikings to win the Super Bowl in the 1976 season, NFL Films ranked the line of center Dave Dalby, guards Gene Upshaw and George Buehler and tackles Art Shell and Vella as the NFL’s best ever. Upshaw and Shell are Hall of Famers.

The Raiders’ battles with the Pittsburgh Steelers in the ‘70s were loaded with Hall of Fame players and memorable showdowns. Vella’s first playoff game ended with the Immaculate Reception, when Franco Harris scored on a deflected pass to beat the Raiders, 13-7.

Vella’s highest--and lowest--moments revolve around the Steelers. The lowlight came in 1974, the week after the Raiders beat the Miami Dolphins in the playoffs, 28-26, on a last-second pass from Stabler to Clarence Davis. The Raiders felt invincible--for one week. The Steelers came to town and won, 24-13, en route to the first of their four Super Bowl victories.

“It was complete elation [after the Miami victory],” Vella said. “To lose to Pittsburgh after that--we thought it was our year--was the biggest disappointment.”

It took two seasons to make amends, but the Raiders swept to the Super Bowl in 1976, beating Pittsburgh in the AFC championship game, 24-7. But Vella’s best memory from that season came three weeks earlier in a Monday night game in Oakland against Cincinnati. The Raiders already had clinched the home-field advantage in the playoffs, and a Bengal victory would all but eliminate the Steelers. Some expected the Raiders to lie down for Cincinnati.

“We killed Cincinnati. Played one of our best games of the season,” Vella said. “We didn’t say anything before the game but we weren’t going to avoid Pittsburgh. We weren’t afraid of them. It was a pride thing.”

Actually, it was more like a hate thing. Vella loved playing against the Steel Curtain and its defensive line of Joe Greene, L.C. Greenwood, Dwight White and Ernie Holmes because he hated them so much.

“That was something I needed to compete in the NFL,” he said. “Because I had that attitude, I played my best against the Steelers. My thing was that my guy would never get the last shove on me. It may have been petty, kind of juvenile, but I would always retaliate.”

Vella is bewildered when he sees current players shaking hands after a game.

“The way the battle was so fierce, the name-calling and physical intimidation, the last thing I was going to do was shake hands with these guys,” he said. “In one of the Steeler games, I was in an obvious position to help Joe Greene up and I said, ‘You got to be kidding.’ He was quoted in the paper after the game saying, ‘I guess I was dreaming to ask a Raider to help me up after a play.’ ”

Madden misses those days too, remembering Vella as a tough guy--a typical Raider. Vella wore a big beard and followed the unofficial Raider dress code--wear whatever you want. He didn’t realize how much he was a Raider until he joined the Vikings in 1980 for his ninth and final NFL season.

He had been cut by the Raiders after suffering a chest injury and was picked up by the Vikings. Vella spent a miserable year in Minnesota, distracted by the team’s straitjacket discipline code, like Coach Bud Grant’s dictum that players wear ties on the road.

“On my first trip, I had on a golf shirt and sports coat,” Vella said. “An assistant coach told me I had to go into the gift shop and get a tie. There I was like a dufus with a tie around my neck. All of a sudden I’m pissed off, thinking more about the stupid rule than the Bears.”

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Madden still asserts that many coaches misunderstand the nature of discipline.

“You can dress in a coat and tie and drink milk and cookies, but if you jump offside on third and one, that’s not disciplined,” he said. “Our guys were perceived as not being disciplined, but they were very, very disciplined on the football field.”

Even if their coach didn’t appear to be. Madden cut an unforgettable figure on the sidelines, waving his arms in the air and screaming at officials. He put on the same kind of show during practice, Vella said.

“He was very entertaining,” Vella said. “He’d be doing his X’s and O’s and waving his hands. Sometimes he would get so wound up, we’d whisper to ourselves, ‘Here’s Johnny.’ We knew he was putting on a show for us.”

In 1981, the show stopped in Oakland. Vella retired after the 1980 season but like many former Raiders, he remained in the Bay Area and kept a light on in the window.

Even though the Raiders are back in town and his business is booming, Vella knows it will never be the same. Madden agrees.

“With the money and the lawyers and agents, I don’t know that it will ever be the same,” he said.

But Vella will settle for a close facsimile.

“It will be different but if some of the Raiders reach out to the community, they’ll be rewarded 10 times over,” he said. “The public will love it. Even if it’s only half as good as how we had it, it’ll be great.”