Raider Otto Battles Cancer

Jim Otto, the Pro Football Hall of Fame center who has been a Raider fixture since the 1960s, is battling advanced prostate cancer and has lost 35 pounds in three months.

“A couple years ago, with readings like mine, you would have had six months to live,” said Otto, 64. “[But] we’ve got a way of fighting it, and we’re going to kick its butt.”

Otto, pale and slender after weeks of radiation treatments, attended an exhibition game Saturday between the Raiders and 49ers, assuming his usual seat in the luxury suite of Raider owner Al Davis.

After the game, the two men visited the locker room as they normally do.

“I wouldn’t miss a game against the 49ers,” said Otto, who started in a franchise-record 210 games in a Raider career that stretched from 1960 though ’74. “When I was a young guy, this was a game I very much looked forward to. I never did like the 49ers when I was a kid.”

Otto stood and spoke for several minutes--interrupted only when gigantic tackle Lincoln Kennedy gave him a smothering hug--and finally Davis wandered over to remind him not to get overtired.

“It’s a terrible thing,” Davis said of Otto’s illness.

Davis and Otto are close friends, inseparable at Raider games at home and on the road. The two have been close since Otto’s playing days, when he participated in nine AFL All-Star games and the first three AFC-NFC Pro Bowls. Last month, Otto accompanied Davis to the Hall of Fame induction ceremony at Canton, Ohio.

“I think Jim is an even greater person than he was a football player or leader,” former Raider safety Jack Tatum said. “All of us younger players looked up to him. We thought, if this old guy can go out and never loaf or never dog it, we’ve got to put out, so we can be at his level.”

Legendary for his toughness, Otto has undergone 40 surgeries since he began playing football, including 30 on his knees. He is on his sixth artificial right knee and his second artificial left knee. Both his shoulders are artificial.

He survived two major infections in the last five years that nearly killed him, complications that arose when his artificial knees were removed. Once, his temperature hovered around 105 degrees for eight consecutive days.

“I can take any type of surgery in the world, except something that’s internal,” he said. “Cosmetic--fixing your nose, fixing your knee, fixing your elbow--that’s nothing.”

Otto said his doctors have known for five years his prostate has been enlarged but did not want to do a biopsy on it because he is predisposed to infections. Finally, in April, they performed the biopsy and discovered the malignancy.

He has been undergoing radiation and hormone treatments at a UC Davis hospital and has altered his diet, which accounts for part of his weight loss. He’s down to 222 pounds.

“I’m not afraid of anything,” he said. “There’s nothing to be scared of. I’m a Christian man, so that gives me a lot of strength and a lot of faith. I’ve got a lot of great doctors working on me.

“I’m not going to die. Well, someday I will.”