Ricky's in the news |
Ricky's in the NewsJust Move, Babyby Austin Murphy and Michael Silver(Sports Illustrated: July 3, 1995)
"We were always the second-class citizens of the Bay Area--you know, East Bay grease," Ricardo was shouting last Friday afternoon. "The Raiders gave us credibility and toughness we're proud of." He had to raise his voice to be heard over the whooping of his patrons. Three hours earlier Al Davis, the autocratic managing general partner of the Raiders, had signed a letter of intent with the board of directors of the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum (OACC), promising, in effect, to return his team to the city of its 1960 birth. Pending approval from the Oakland City Council and Alameda County Board of Supervisors--a pair of slam dunks, according to insiders--and the NFL, the Silver and Black was coming back. Earlier that morning 18 trucks had rumbled out of an Anaheim parking lot, heading for St. Louis, the new home of the Rams, who until three months ago had been based in Orange County. Just like that, the NFL found itself without representation in the second-largest U.S. media market, the entertainment capital of the world. It seemed that Davis, whose successful antitrust suit against the NFL cleared the way for him to move to Los Angeles and cost the league $50 million in the early 1980s, had once again left the NFL with a black eye. But, with the notable exception of certain individuals in the San Francisco 49er organization (which, after all, must once again share the Bay Area with the Raiders), league officials did not seem terribly distressed by Friday's news. Though the return to Oakland will cause some temporary discomfort, it is likely to help the NFL over the long haul. With the troublemaking Davis tucked away in a market where he may finally find lasting happiness, the league can now map out a SoCal strategy to include two new teams and possibly two new stadiums by the end of the century. "You could make a case that this will be better for the league," said an official at NFL headquarters. The Raiders' departure, said the source, gives the league "a chance to stabilize the L.A. situation. It didn't work out for Al in L.A. But if it's like it was [the first time around] in Oakland, he'll be in good shape." One of the two main (the other, of course, being cold cash) that Davis repledged himself to Oakland was the knowledge that the Raiders would be playing in front of sellout crowds composed unconditionally loyal lunatics, such as those who began pouring into Ricky's on Friday afternoon. "Deep in my heart, always believed Al wanted this to happen," said Ricardo, in whose black ensemble and shoulder-length tresses one could discern the sartorial and tonsorial influence of a certain maverick NFL owner. "He just had to wait for the pieces to come together." Behind Ricardo, on the bar's 8-by-10-foot television, a replay of the Oakland Raiders' 27-10 Super Bowl XV spanking of the Philadelphia Eagles was coming to an end. Now, on the big screen, Davis was accepting the Vince Lombardi Trophy from commissioner Pete Rozelle as the two men, bitter rivals since the AFL-NFL feuds of the '6Os, barely attempted to conceal their distaste for each other. Looking into the camera while holdiing the trophy, Davis said, referring to those who had recently been released after a long captivity in Iran, "l'd like to welcome back da hostages ta United States." In addition to revealing a softer side and a grasp of current events, Davis's reference to the Iranian hostage crisis pre-figured a hostage crisis of his own. The longer his team played at the Los Memorial Coliseum, the more Davis grew to loathe the ancient, crumbling structure, to feel like its prisoner. He was reportedly convinced that playing in the 67,8OO- seat coliseum (where the Raiders averaged 52,280 seemingly somnambulant fans a game in '94) cost his team four to six points per game. For at least eight years he had been trying escape. In 1987 the Raiders conducted relocation flirtations with the city of Carson, 12 miles south of L.A., with the Rose Bowl in Pasadena and with the town of Irwindale, 22 miles east of the coliseum, which offered an abandoned quarry as a stadium site and presented Davis with a nonrefundable $10 million check. But when the deal for a "state of the art" stadium fell through, Davis kept the loot, leaving Irwindale (pop. 1,161) with a yawning pit and an eight-digit hole in its budget. In September 1989, Sacramento approved a $5O million payment to induce the Raiders to come north; Davis said thanks but no thanks. Then the following spring Davis announced with great fanfare that he was bound for Oakland, whose lavish $602 million proposal to the Raiders; was predicated on projections of a decade of sellouts. If the crowds didn't materialize, taxpayers would have gotten stuck with the tab. When these terms became public and a voter referendum was threatened, the deal was torpedoed. It was then resurrected, only to again be deep-sixed -- literally-by Oakland Coliseum engineering problems: In order to squeeze 13,500 more seats into the 54,616-seat stadium, Davis had requested that the field be lowered. When workers started digging, they hit water. Stung by that threatened referendum, Davis became leery of Oakland's overtures. But after the Los Angeles Coliseum was damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake, Oakland officials offered Davis the use of their coliseum for the season. The Raiders were able to play on their home field, but Davis appreciated the gesture. Discussions with Oakland began anew. In addition to bestowing on Davis a $31.9 million "relocation loan," the OACC will give the Raiders as much as $10 million to build the team a training facility. (This season the Raiders will continue to practice in El Segundo, which is near L.A. International Airport, and then fly to Oakland for home games.) The OACC also agreed to spend $85 million to gussy up the coliseum, which is 29 years old and showing its age. The number of luxury boxes--of which there were zero at the L.A. Coliseum--will go from 53 to 175. For the duration of their tenancy, the Raiders will get 100% of the revenue from those suites, whose annual rental prices have not yet been set. Even given those inducements, smart money had the Raiders relocating across town rather than upstate. Fortified by pledges of funding from the NFL, officials at Hollywood Park, a racetrack near L.A.'s Great Western Forum, had planned construction of a $250 million stadium for the Raiders. Ed De Silva, the Oakland Coliseum board member who negotiated with Davis, says that the terms dangled before the Raiders by Hollywood Park were "financially superior to anything Oakland could offer. In the end, however, the refusal of Hollywood Park chairman R.D. Hubbard to guarantee that his stadium would be completed by the 1997 season proved a deal killer. In his jubilant and at times gloating press conference remarks Friday, Oakland mayor Elihu Harris praised city and county officials for "singing in the key of we." The mayor noted that, unlike in the 1990 proposal, this time no tax dollars had been" pledged to recover the costs of bringing home the prodigal franchise. (The financing will come from bond issues and from fans, who will pay up to :1 $4,000 apiece for l0-year "seat licenses.") Sermonized Harris, "There is no reason for anyone to be anything other than positive about the return of the Raiders." Failing to hit the "key of we was 49er president Carmen Policy, whose bellicose remarks in a Thursday interview with San Francisco radio station KGO-AM brought to mind a lion marking his territory. Policy accused Davis of "putting the league in jeopardy" by leaving the NFL without a team in the L.A. market and suggested that Davis was "afraid to accept the challenge of the L.A. market." Indeed, it was widely speculated around the league that by returning to Oakland, with its sweet stadium deal and built-in fan base, Davis was taking the easy way out. Had he stayed in Southern California, sooner or later he would have had to beef up his marketing staff and otherwise drag his operation into the latter half of the 20th century. He would have had to--and this concept is anathema to Davis--delegate. But Policy was off base when he fumed, "If Al Davis . . . attempts to move without a vote, he will be sued." League sources say hat's not likely. When they meet in mid-July to consider the matter, the NFL owners almost certainly will approve the Raiders' northward migration. After having their heads handed to them by Davis in civil court in 1982, league officials do not relish another legal battle with him. A more likely scenario is that the owners will ask Davis for a relocation fee--perhaps a cut from the cash he will make on the personal seat licenses. This was the concession - that owner Georgia Frontiere made to secure approval for her Rams' escape to the Show Me State. Expect the current NFL vacuum in Los Angeles to be filled quickly. Expansion is just around the corner, and the Walt Disney Company is lusting to erect a football-only facility next to Anaheim Stadium and to plunk down beside it an entertainment complex with an NFL theme. Sources say this expansion franchise could emerge as early as the start of the 1997 season. Meanwhile the NFL continues to encourage Holllywood Park to forge ahead with its stadium, Raiders or no Raiders. Several disgruntled owners of existing NFL teams--the Cleveland Browns, the Seattle Seahawks and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers--would consider moving or have already threatened to move to the 310 area code. Player agent Leigh Steinberg, who has been involved in trying to fill the L.A. void, jokingly predicts "the biggest western migration since the Dust Bowl." Excuse Raider defensive tackle Nolan Harrison if he can't summon much enthusiasm for the concept of the Los Angeles Buccaneers. "If people in L.A. wouldn't support us or the Rams," says Harrison, "what makes you think they're going to support some team that comes in from another city and isn't as good? They won't. People here never understood the importance of the 12th man, that you don't just show up for playoff games," says Harrison. "When people murmuring." In truth, the 1994 Raiders rated more murmurs than shouts. The Pride and Poise Boys didn't show much of either. They finished with a 9-7 record and failed to make the playoffs. Meanwhile, the best action took place off the field. On Oct. 16 then coach Art Shell and quarterback Jeff Hostetler got into a shouting match on the sideline at Miami's Joe Robbie Stadium, with Shell, who is black, allegedly hurling a racist epithet at Hostetler, who is white (a charge both men later denied). Shell briefly benched Hoss, and the Raiders lost to the Dolphins 20-17. The spat summed up a season. "We were in serious disarray," concedes Harrison. "As many problems as the public saw, there were a lot more that went on in private." On Feb. 2 Davis fired Shell and replaced him with offensive line coach Mike White. Along with White, only one assistant, defensive coordinator John Fox, remained. The next day, from the Pro Bowl in Honolulu, wide receiver Tim Brown blasted Davis for his refusal to let his coaches coach, going so far as to suggest that Davis fire himself. "If Al is directing the ship, he should accept the responsibility," Brown told the L.A. Times. Rather than punish his outspoken wideout, Davis seems to have listened and learned. In May minicamp in El Segundo White and new offensive coordinator Jim Fassel installed a high-tech, un-Davislike offense. They scrapped the antiquated, bomb-reliant passing attack so beloved by Davis and replaced it with a scheme based on shorter quarterback drops and timing patterns. Also in Fassel's valise: a no-huddle offense. Coming out of minicamp the Raiders were, to borrow from Elihu Harris, singing in the key of we. "I no longer feel how I felt in February," Brown said last month. "There's been a great change already. We look like a real team, with real coaches. It's amazing how much things have changed in a short time." "Morale is high." says Harrison, "We believe Mike's going to take control." Even before Davis's bombshell last week Harrison had made no secret of his desire to play in a city like Oakland, where fan support is unconditional. "Thirteen years, and these people still love their team," he says. "They're driving down to L.A. for our home games, screaming, 'Nolan, when are you coming home?' That's got to be some kind of miracle."
"Keep 'em burning," said Davis. Oakland did, and now the marquee at Ricky's reads: THE BOYS ARE BACK. This story appeared in the July 3, 1995 issue of Sports Illustrated Magazine.
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RICKY RICARDO could teach motel pitchman Tom Bodette a thing or two about leaving the light on. Ricardo owns Ricky's Sports Lounge & Restaurant, a working-class joint a few miles south of the Oakland Coliseum in San Leandro, Calif. Even after the Raiders blew town in 1982 for Los Angeles, Ricky's stayed with its silver and black motif. For 13 years the bar has televised every Raider game. Why the attachment?
After Friday's lunch rush, two of the waitresses at Ricky's celebrated the miracle by having their legs painted silver with OAKLAND and RAIDERS written down them in black letters. Ricardo, meanwhile, recounted a 1990 conversation with Davis. Having flown to London for a Raider exhibition game against the New Orleans Saints. he spotted Davis in a hotel lobby. After introducing himself and identifying himself as hailing from the East Bay, he said, "I just wanted to let you know, we're keeping the torches burning for you."