by Jim Miller
“My father even painted our house silver and black when we were kids,” Carrie added with a laugh. And it didn’t stop there; Amanda smiled and explained, “We had the Raiders flag out on Memorial Day, and my parents had to have a black car.” When the Raiders played a game, it was stressful in the Donnelly household, in part because of their father’s superstition. As Amanda remembers it:When we were growing up—like the second through fourth grade—all of us would be watching the game, and one of us would have to go to the bathroom. We would come back into the room, and the Raiders would have done something, so my dad would pay attention to what everyone was doing, like where they were sitting, for example. He would say, “You need to move over a little bit. You need to go over there. You need to hold a soda. You need to go back to the bathroom.” And then, when the play was over or the penalty call was resolved, he would say, “Okay, you can come back now.” He would blame one of us if something bad happened because we had moved or held a soda in the wrong way. It was intense.
Carrie told us about the time they were at a game a couple of years ago and she lost her ticket on the way in. Not wanting to upset her father even more than he already was, Carrie ended up sneaking past the ticket-takers and jumping over the turnstile. After being chased by the Coliseum police, she was eventually apprehended, but because her father confronted the cops, he was the one who got taken off in handcuffs. He managed to finagle his release when he mentioned his family’s connections in the police department. Once everyone finally got to the seats, Carrie told us: “My father said, ‘It’s all right.’ He was so happy and proud of me because I had big balls.”
One might be tempted to think that Amanda and Carrie could not possibly be genuine Raiders fans in their own right because they were coerced into it by their father. On the contrary, both label themselves die-hard fans, who “always seem to date men who aren’t football fans at all. We have to explain football to them and they end up becoming fans, too.” As Carrie puts it, “To be a football fan [as a woman] is something different. At Raiders games there are always tons of women. The Raiders are known to be rebellious and masculine to a certain degree. So it’s fun as a woman to be a fan. I can act sexy, and guys get really into it when you tell them ‘I love football.’”
“Yeah,” Amanda added, “and look at the clothes. The Raiders have great t-shirts that are cut for a woman.”
“I have this shirt that says, ‘Real Women Wear Black,’ which I love. We got really lucky with the color.” Carrie smiled hugely, clearly pleased to flaunt her “inner bad girl.”
Thus, in Raider Nation, “real women” wear black, not feminine pastels. It is interesting to note that Carrie’s t-shirt is a spin-off from the older “Real Men Wear Black.” It is also one of the most popular designs in Raider Nation, judging by the numbers of chests we saw adorned with it. Even though this is a commercial product, brought to you by the Raiders and the NFL, women have nevertheless appropriated the spirit behind the shirt—and in some cases have gone beyond it in their own ways. Whether it’s Raider-Gloria, who legally changed her name to emphasize her allegiance to the Silver and Black, or Skull Lady and her elaborate costume, or the woman wearing a black thong emblazoned with the Raiders shield under her jeans, or the myriad other women fans wearing jerseys, waving black pom-poms, or watching their husbands cook extensive spreads for their tailgate parties in the parking lot, women have embraced the spirit that motivates many men to support their football team. The impulse on the part of women to support a football team wholeheartedly, and to root, dress up, and raise their children to be Raiders fans may seem puzzling on the face of it. Football is a fierce sport, masculine through and through. Yet it is precisely because football in general and the Raiders in particular embody such an aggressive ethos that these women are die-hard fans.
When women embrace Raiders fandom, though, they give it a unique spin. In the introduction to her collection of essays The Pirate’s Fiancée: Feminism, Reading, Postmodernism, Meaghan Morris discusses how Nelly Kaplan’s film The Pirate’s Fiancée uses as its inspiration the song “Pirate Jenny” from Brecht and Weill’s Three Penny Opera by transforming it into a feminist fable. Kaplan, according to Morris, performs a kind of piracy on the men’s text by creating a character who ultimately acts as and for herself rather than simply playacting something different. It’s not too much of a stretch to claim a similar agency for female Raiders fans. In pirating the pirate, women fans embody the cathartic aggression that is so alluring to male fans at the same time as they enter the community of Raider Nation with all of its conviviality.9
“Don’t Fuck With Us”
Twelve
Los Malosos
Daddy, I like the Raiders, too, but you shouldn’t have robbed a bank to see them.
Six-year-old daughter of the Raiders Bandit, 1991
I have tattooed the Raider logo on my arm and my wedding was in silver and black.... I am extremely proud to be a Raider fan and will die buried in my full Raider attire. My will states this and my wife has agreed to honor these wishes.
Chris Eaton, police officer and president of the
Imperial Valley Raiders Booster Club
Los maschingones, Aztlan Raiders, Malosos de Aztlan: No chinges con nosotros o te chingamos!
Los Malosos de Aztlan bootleg t-shirt
The news just kept getting worse in Raider Nation as fans learned that Rich Gannon was gone for the season along with a host of other players. If that was not bad enough, news came that Raiders Bill Romanowski, Barret Robbins, Dana Stubblefield, and Chris Cooper were reported to be linked to the BALCO steroids scandal. When Tyrone Wheatley came to testify before the grand jury investigating the nutritional supplements lab, he cursed and threatened a group of photographers before slapping one of them on the wrist. The sniping continued in the locker room as well, and speculation about head coach Bill Callahan’s job security kicked into high gear. After the loss to the Jets, the man in charge concluded, “We didn’t close the book when we had a chance to put a nail in the coffin.” The same could have been said about the whole season.1
Elsewhere soldiers continued to die in Iraq and California’s brand-new celebrity governor was rolling back the car registration tax, leaving the already resource-strapped city of Oakland pondering layoffs and cuts in services. News in the private sector was also bad for workers, with the Southern California grocery strike dragging on as employers insisted on cutting health care benefits and imposing a two-tier wage system that would mean poverty-level jobs for all future workers. East Bay workers picketed local Safeway stores urging customers to shop at other markets.2 Kelly and I had been on sympathy pickets with local strikers in San Diego, and we spotted a few Raiders fans on the line. In the midst of the strike, we interviewed Raiders fan Carlos Canal, a picket captain at an Albertson’s in Coronado, a pricey suburb across the bay from downtown San Diego. Carlos, who lives in Murrieta, a blue-collar suburb northeast of the city, grew up in Skyline Hills in the eastern part of San Diego with ex-Raider David Dunn. We asked him why he was a Raiders fan:I liked the colors, I think. I was always a Silver and Black–type person. I know they bug a lot of people, like the San Diego Chargers fans, they always think we’re the bad guys, that we’re all these gang members and thugs. That’s the sort of thing they have been projected as, like with NWA or up in L.A., but there are a lot of good Raiders fans out there. I never grew up listening to a whole lot of rap. I never got involved with gangs. Basically, I kept to myself. My friends were Caucasian. And I’m riding around in a hot rod, and I’m Hispanic, so I was really an oddball there. And [David Dunn], he was pretty cool. I remember he got beat up one day. He turned out to be a Raider. That is what surprises me.
Right now I’m a grocery clerk. We’re [locked out] and there’s no end in sight. It just brings you closer to your co-workers. It’s got its ups and downs. Sometimes you think, “Oh my God, they’re going to break us.” That gets you pretty down. It’s been long. A lot of people thought it w
ould be like a vacation, a week. A lot of people thought it would be three days [rather than months], you know? I didn’t think it was like that. I just hoped it would end soon, and fourteen weeks later, here we still are. I am a picket captain for $100 a week. That has been pretty tough. For $100 a week you can’t do anything. I live up in Murrieta and I’m doing the drive to Coronado to be with my guys, you know, my crew and we’re spending fourteen hours sometimes. Luckily, we had a real strong union come over and picket with us last week. And we had a lot of different people from San Diego when we did a rally last week. That was great. The rally really helped morale.
[Because we’re locked out] we can’t even cross if we wanted to. But there are people working for Vons who’ve crossed, and we’ve already heard horror stories. They’re being terminated. They were people they wanted to get rid of for years, and now they don’t have to pay them pensions or whatever, and that’s the way they want to get rid of them. [The central issue is] health care. Health care and people’s pensions. I believe in [the company] making a profit because a successful company gives you hours. It gives you a job—but not to the degree that they are trying to take this. They just want cheap health care. [What the company is offering] is not going to help you get by. Not if you have a mortgage. Working people should be able to keep up. We made the company successful. We haven’t had a big raise in years. It’s like 25 cents here, 35 cents there. With the economy here in San Diego—the high price of housing, the price of gas—it’s not enough to get by. A lot of people think that a lot of grocery store workers are making $17 an hour. They’re not. Let’s say there are a hundred people in the store. Maybe fifteen would be full time. Most of us are part-time, hoping to get over thirty hours to be able to make it. That’s what has been so hard about it. A lot of people are not getting the facts. Sometimes the union hasn’t done a good job, but I still believe in them.
It has changed the way people see their employer. A lot of people are going to end up leaving. I gave them my 110 percent. Now [when this is over], I’m going to come in and do my time. I’ll get done when I’m done. That is how much loyalty they’ll get from me. The bottom line is greed, you know? Walk into a Wal-Mart and you’ll see what you’re going to get. It will take ten years to make $15 an hour. How many people are going to stick around for that? You know, fifteen years? All those years, for what?
When we made our way back to football, I asked Carlos where he had watched the Super Bowl. He replied, “I couldn’t watch the Super Bowl. I mean, I’d rather work.” As the strike dragged on, we frequently thought of Carlos holding the line in his Tim Brown jersey, representing the beleaguered UFCW and the hated Raiders in ultraconservative Coronado. Long after the end of football season, the union settled, saving the benefits of the current employees in exchange for a two-tier wage scale. The race to the bottom was on in California’s service sector.
The Saturday before the Minnesota Vikings game Kelly and I went to the grand opening of Vella’s Locker Room in downtown Oakland, the latest expansion of the chain formerly known as Raiders Locker Room before legal wrangling forced a name change and removed the pirate’s face from the shield that accompanies the store’s moniker. As we walked down Broadway, we could see the silver-and-black balloons tied to the trees and lampposts outside the store along with the unmistakable visages of Señor Raider Man and Gorilla Rilla, who at one point was prancing about on the median for the amusement of passing motorists. Unlike the huge event at the Universal City Walk in L.A., this midseason affair had drawn a small crowd of about twenty people. We noticed a third celebrity fan whose spikes and makeup were undercut by his librarian-like glasses. He just didn’t measure up to Señor Raider Man’s psycho aura or Gorilla Rilla’s surreal absurdity. All three superfans were hawking signed cards for $1. Also present and signing 8-by-10-inch color glossies for fans for $10 was Raiders tight end Teyo Johnson. Kelly got us a couple of signed pictures and as we were heading into the store Gorilla Rilla led a homeless man in a Dodgers cap up to Teyo Johnson who, upon being hit up for change, searched his pockets. He sheepishly came up empty, then gave the man a free autographed picture instead. The homeless man shook Teyo’s hand gratefully and wandered off with a gorilla escort for about ten yards. Teyo looked like he wished he’d had a pocket full of quarters.
The next morning at the Fat Lady, a nice old man in his Sunday best came up to us at the bar after seeing our Raiders gear and told us he’d been at the famous Heidi game when the networks cut off their coverage before the Raiders’ dramatic comeback win in order to air the musical Heidi:I was at that Heidi game, the one they show the highlights of all the time. It was great. I was there back when they almost ended up being named the Señors. The colors were black and gold. I saw them at Youell Field. We’d walk down in those days. They used to sell tickets out of a garage painted blue and white. The guys in the stands in those days were like tree trunks, standing all game. We’d laugh and yell, “Sit down!” Fans in the old days were different. Now, I just don’t go to games, I watch them on TV. I went to L.A. a couple of times and have gone since they came back here, but it’s not the same. People get so drunk, what’s the point? It’s not like it was.
We shook hands and he headed out the door. I ordered another Bloody Mary and Kelly went over to talk with a pair of old-time fans sitting farther down the bar. Rocky had a Rollie Fingers moustache and was wearing a seventies-style Raiders jacket, as was his friend Don, who looked a bit like Ted Hendricks. Rocky had not missed a kickoff in thirty-two years, including the Raiders’ L.A. stay. Don flies in from Las Vegas for the games. When I got up to go to the restroom, I met a guy who told me that he played golf with Barry Sims and that Sims had told him that Gannon had been seeing a sports psychologist since the Super Bowl and had never gotten over the debacle. With that bit of Raiders gossip, we left to experience a slice of the Rick Mirer era.
On the way into the stadium, we walked past a guy whose t-shirt proclaimed “Win or Lose, Raiders Fans Know How to Booze: Just Get Hammered, Baby” and featured an angry, red-eyed, cigar-smoking skull. We made our way through a small cloud of pot smoke in the tunnel and weaved through the crowd to our seats, where the people around us all happily commented on Kelly’s expanding girth and wished her luck with the baby after this, her last game before late-pregnancy lockdown. It was a good-sized crowd of 56,653 marred only by the presence of a small gang of Vikings fanatics in purple jerseys and goofy horned helmets right in the middle of the Black Hole. Fortunately for them, Phillip Buchanon started everything off right for the Raiders by picking off a Daunte Culpepper pass and taking it 64 yards for a touchdown just 49 seconds into the game, and their Silver and Black counterparts were satisfied merely to pelt them with pistachio nuts and hot dog wrappers. The Vikings fans tested their luck by cheering “One, Two, Three, First Down!” to mark every Minnesota advance and were answered with a resounding “One, Two, Three, Fuck You!” by the Hole.3
At one point the invaders were greeted by a crazy drunk in a Raiders poncho who stood on his chair in front of them and proceeded to flip them off and give them lip for about half a quarter. Still, peace endured. This was helped, of course, by the Raiders, who led 14–3 at halftime and held on to win 28–18, aided by a masterful performance by Charles Woodson covering Vikings superstar Randy Moss, a 100-yard running game by Tyrone Wheatley, a gritty performance by third-string quarterback Rick Mirer, and a key interception by Rod Woodson. The massive police escort that the Vikings fans received once the game was over didn’t hurt either. Nonetheless, it was a happy crowd that left the stadium that day with the verses of “Oaktown” still ringing in their heads. It had not been “the blah hole,” as one media wag had dubbed it earlier that week. As Raiders wide receiver Jerry Porter put it, “We’re not really out of it. Kansas City lost. The moon is aligned right. If Jupiter is full, we might make the playoffs.” On the BART on the way back to our hotel, Kelly sat next to a sweet woman and her little girl who asked about her due date and then said abo
ut the game, “We picked a good one. I hate it when they lose and those 49ers people get after you. We picked a good one, honey.” The little girl smiled and buried her head in her mother’s side as the train rolled on toward downtown.4
Later that night, the airport was jammed with Raiders fans waiting for the late flights back to Los Angeles and San Diego. While we were waiting in the bar, a call-and-response broke out as a big jolly guy in a Marcus Allen jersey and several strings of Mardi Gras beads shouted, “Who’d we come to see?”
“Ray-duz!” the bar answered.
“Who won tonight?” our man continued.
“Ray-duz!” came the reply.
“Who’s always in the house?” came the question as the guy in the Allen jersey put his hand to his ear in a playfully dramatic fashion.
“Ray-duz!” said the bar once again.
“Who’s three and seven?” asked the big guy, breaking into a funny little dance.
“Ray-duz!” yelled the crowd.
“Who sucks this year?” the cheerleader continued as he hopped on top of his barstool preening and clowning.
“Ray-duz!” yelled the bar, laughing and clowning along. A handful of business travelers in the corner exchanged astounded looks. It was as if they had walked into some surreal postmodern mead hall. You had to love it.
The Raider Bandit and Other Sad and Sordid Tales
Later that week we read in the paper that a couple from Clovis had been viciously assaulted in the Coliseum parking lot before the Vikings game. The man had been inside one of the portable toilets when he heard someone push over the neighboring one. When he stepped outside, he glanced at one of the men who had upended the adjacent toilet that a woman had been using. The assailant asked the Clovis man what he was looking at. He replied that he wasn’t looking at anything and was punched in the face several times. As he tried to fight back, five more men jumped in and he was struck in the head several times with Corona bottles. His girlfriend tried to help him and was beaten as well with fists and bottles and had her sweater partially ripped off. After this brutal assault, Nash Rodriguez of Union City, Jorge Perales of Newark, and their buddies went to the game, only to be apprehended afterward once the police had found the battered, bleeding, and weeping couple by the roadway and staked out the attackers’ cars. Only Rodriguez and Perales could be identified: they pleaded guilty to felony assault and received six months in jail and five months’ probation with orders to stay away from both the couple and the Coliseum. The couple from Clovis had apparently done nothing to provoke the attack.5
