by Jim Miller
When I asked Chuck what one of his best experiences as a Raiders fans was, he told me the story of heading up to Oakland for the AFC Championship game in 2003:Being a diehard fan, I obviously took the first plane out at 6:15 in the morning to Oakland. Why did I need to get there seven hours before the game? It was probably because I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep the night before so I might as well get to the airport. The airport bar wasn’t even open, much to the chagrin of the passengers of that particular plane [who were all Raiders fans]. It was an amazing sight. We were all standing outside the gate before they opened the airport before 6:00 a.m. on Sunday. There was nobody else there. The security line looked pretty strange because it was full of people with black shirts on—and the funniest thing was the reaction of the people who just happened to be on that flight and didn’t know what was going on. They were just flying to Oakland maybe to connect to somewhere else and the looks on their faces, you know, looks of unease. There was a gentle muttering behind newspapers, “What is occurring?” You know, “Who are these people? Are we safe? Can we be safe? Should I take the next flight instead? Today could be a bad day.”
I just remember going to the back of the plane, which I always do, and I made the mistake of sitting next to the problem trio who were demanding beer before the plane even taxied away from the gate. And what was shocking about it was that the flight attendant, using her best judgment, felt it was better to placate them rather than enforce the rules. You know, no alcoholic beverages before the plane takes off. And not only did she give them one beer, she gave them two beers each as she felt this would take care of the situation. Unfortunately, it only gave way to boisterous behavior, to say the least, to the point where there were complaints by the other passengers. As a Raiders fan, you are dressed in the colors and I felt excited [about the game] yet disappointed that this was occurring on the plane, because I was worried that we might not even get away from the gate. We might have had to return to the gate. At this point, most of the plane was chanting “Raiders!” and the plane just took off and going up, the pilot even greeted us, “Good morning, Raiders fans! Happy to have you aboard.” The whole plane was chanting, “Raiders! Raiders!” That’s something that sticks in your mind.
Getting from the airport to the Coliseum was an amazing experience. As soon as we left the airport you started seeing people waiting to get into the stadium, but they didn’t open the gate for a while. Some people were there for a full week from the end of the prior game and the police were actually allowing them to park in the street. One lane was given to people to park in. [The drive to the Coliseum on the BART bus] was one of the most amazing sights I’ve ever seen. Fans had staked out their territory and were tailgating and partying and had created a mini tent city. It went for more than a mile. There were people set up in gas stations where the owners had let them park and put up their tents and the mini-malls were filled with people. There was just a sea of black-and-silver people. It was barbeques with all the smoke and the smells and music booming and excited, happy, happy people. Some of the other people on the bus obviously had no idea what was going on and it was really something else for them. I mean it said something for true Raiders fans, and it made me proud to be wearing the colors that day, without a question because everything was civil and yet people were having the time of their lives. And knowing what the city and the fans have gone through over the years, it was like a culmination of everything they had been waiting for.
There was a downside to being a Raiders fan as well:
Every year now [for over a decade] I’ve been going to the Raiders–Chargers game in San Diego. I always get there early to park and we just have our party. We don’t get out of hand or do anything crazy, just a few beers. This one Sunday I had my Smoky Joe [grill] out and I needed some newspaper so I see this one couple, maybe in their fifties, reading the Sunday paper. And I walk over to them and say, “Hi, I forgot to bring a newspaper to start the chimney for my barbeque. Is there any way I can have a piece of newspaper from you, a part you don’t want?” And the woman looks at me and said, “I’m sorry, you’re a Raiders fan. I can’t help you.” And I said, “Really?” And that was it. That let me know where I stood in some people’s eyes, you know? There was a feeling of disrespect and it let you know what’s going on in [other fans’] heads when it comes to Raiders fans. It was just one of those things that you chuckle about. You try to make peace. I find myself constantly telling people, “We’re okay.” You keep on trying to justify yourself. It’s like, “You don’t need to be scared of us. I know there is an element out there, but . . .”
The crackdown in security is incredible now compared to what it used to be. A couple of years ago it was out of control because the Chargers fans were still the majority, but you were getting that hard-core L.A. fan base who were acting out. I still remember leaving the stadium one year after the Chargers had won a close game, and as we were exiting the stadium these two women got into a huge brawl and they were rolling on the ground and creating a storm. People started engaging in fisticuffs and a little one-on-one female brawling ignited this major spread of violence. I remember the fights at that game. It was just dominated by fights in the stands. People were paying attention to what was going on in the stands more that what was happening on the field. The game was almost secondary after awhile. It was just rows of people moving when a fight erupted, waves of people moving. It was clearly out of control. Everybody loves going to the game and seeing good-natured battling between the fans, verbally and whatnot. But when it turns physical, it’s just no fun for anybody.
It was probably one of the scarier things I’ve seen. It was violent to the point where you just wanted to run the other way, get out of there as fast as possible and not get caught up into it because you are wearing the colors. [The cops] would just throw you in with the rest of them. That evening was like shades of Apocalypse Now with police helicopters hovering above the parking lot informing us that we had a certain amount of time to leave or be arrested. We were told to get in our cars and leave immediately. It felt like a police state. It had gone beyond the bounds of football. People had gone to the game to have fun and had ended up in a police state.
It was only a three days before Christmas and the sellout Monday Night Football crowd at the Coliseum was sprinkled with a myriad of black Santa’s hats as well as a number of Green Bay cheeseheads playfully wrapped in silver tinfoil. Before the game we learned that Packers quarterback Brett Favre’s father had died and that Brett had dedicated the game to his memory. As if in deference, the Raiders’ defense handed Favre and the Packers an early Christmas present by allowing pass after pass to drift by the outstretched hands of a host of defenders into the grateful clutches of Green Bay receivers. The 41–7 Packers’ trashing of the Raiders in front of a nationwide audience was the worst debacle I have ever witnessed in person. Merry Christmas to all, I said to myself, and to all a good night. After awhile, those of us who stayed developed a sense of humor about the ugly proceedings and noted that if we had to be slaughtered, why not by the Packers, the most Raiders-like team in the NFC with their own pack of rowdy, blue-collar fans who like to dress up and consume large quantities of Milwaukee’s finest? Still, the relentless punishing stung. We stayed to the bitter end even as large portions of the Black Hole fled in horror. As we walked to BART after the game, Chuck asked, “Did that really just happen or was it a bad dream?”
Brawling Alone
Three days after the Green Bay massacre, our son was born on Christmas Day, putting all the petty mental anguish the Raiders had inflicted on us in proper perspective. After seeing my sweet little boy, Walter Henry Mayhew Miller, enter the world, I just couldn’t get too worked up over the fact that Raiders punter Shane Lechler had been snubbed and left out of the Pro Bowl. Even the Raiders’ record-setting worst season after playing in the Super Bowl couldn’t get me down. In the big picture, not much of what people get exercised about in their daily lives really matters. The prospe
ct of heading to the Raiders game after a week of nearly sleepless nights in the hospital brought to mind a quote from the other great American transcendentalist I named my son after, Henry David Thoreau:The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.1
Nonetheless, on Sunday, I would go to the game with the hospital bracelet still on my wrist.
The headlines going into the annual Raiders–Chargers contest were traditionally fearful stuff like “Wary San Diego Hopes This Raid Is Peaceful,” “San Diego Hopes to Keep Order,” and “They Can’t Stem the Silver and Black Tide.” This year the San Diego Union-Tribune was more staid, announcing plainly, “Security Tightens for Chargers–Raiders.” The report detailed the greatest hits of high arrest totals and reminded readers that last year even a San Diego sheriff’s deputy had been nabbed on suspicion of assaulting a security guard. Still, there had been no murders like the one at a recent Padres game, the paper assured its readers. This year, fans would be subject to hour-long lines, increased monitoring, and pat-down searches all in the service of “a safer family environment for fans and employees.”2
King Stahlman Bail Bonds got into the act as well, rerunning its famous local Emmy Award–winning “The Raiders Are Coming” ad that had received considerable coverage during the previous Super Bowl. When we called King Stahlman to ask if the game really did help their business, his son-in-law, Mike Hardwick, told us that the ad was intended to be a joke. “We were playing on the perception of Raiders fans,” he told us, “That they’re nuts.” The ad was shot the day after the Raiders made the 2003 Super Bowl, and they were surprised when some people took it seriously. Ironically, Hardwick told us, his business did not see an uptick in business as a result of arrests during Raiders week. At first, Mr. Stahlman didn’t like the commercial, we learned, fearing an onslaught of angry Raiders fans—but that never happened. The office did, however, receive a visit from The Best Damn Sports Show Period after the commercial ran.
When we checked back in with the staff of Rock Bottom Brewery, we learned that, after a season of cursing, groping, and brawling, the local Raiders fan club had not renewed its arrangement with the establishment. “I hate having negative feelings about any group. I resist feeling prejudiced,” said Rock Bottom waitress Bethany, “but the Raiders fans bring it out in me.” Interestingly, I had thought the new Raiders fan club digs were pretty gentrified compared with the place they used to hang out in. Back in the eighties, when I watched every game with the Silver and Black legions at College Billiards, a rowdy polyglot of bikers, blue-collar types, street denizens, and pool hustlers used to gather to watch the Raiders on a single fuzzy big screen. I remember enjoying the wildly diverse crowd of whites, blacks, Samoans, Vietnamese, Latinos, and Raiders nuts of all sorts happily mingling amid the sea of covered pool tables. The same bunch would show up every week, and there was a rough, warm camaraderie that brought together people who might normally never speak to one another. My old friend and Raider Nation expatriate Jon Cariveau of Guayaquil, Ecuador, was my companion in those days. When we looked him up recently he recalled:Starting in the early eighties, the College Billiards Center on El Cajon and 54th was the headquarters of the San Diego Raiders Fan Club. It was always a good crowd at the Billiards Hall, with Raider fans of all stripes, everyone in silver and black. The standard game fare was the half-pound extra-greasy cheeseburger and fries plate and, of course, pitcher after pitcher of beer. Everybody got along and we would all get progressively louder as the beer flowed, but generally a reasonable amount of order was maintained. After a Raiders victory, people would usually hang out for a while and celebrate, drinking and talking about the game. But after a loss, the place tended to clear out pretty quickly. I remember after one particularly tough loss, things got a little scary. There was this very big guy who used to wear a Raiders hat with black tape streaming down from under it. He looked like an NFL lineman, that kind of size. After this loss, he was a little wasted, pissed off, yelling and screaming until the staff managed to get him to leave. My buddies and I were leaving, and I remember seeing him on the way out, walking down El Cajon Boulevard, smashing out windows of parked cars with his bare, bloodied fist. Then he went around behind the pool hall and started slamming into the trash Dumpster in the parking lot. He was slamming into this huge metal Dumpster like it was a tackling dummy on a practice field. We got out of there pretty quick. Obviously, this guy was very passionate about the team.
Sometimes stuff like this can give Raiders fans a bad name, but my experience is that this is the exception to the rule. Raiders fans care about the team and do get pissed off at times, but we generally don’t get out of control. There’s a lot more goodwill than obnoxious behavior. I remember one time I had shared a table with a guy named Terry a couple of times. Got to know him a little. One game we were at a table with him and I was putting down a lot of beer. The game ended and we took off before him. I was working graveyard at the time at a supermarket, so I went home and crashed out, and when I got up to go to work at midnight, somewhere between still buzzed and hungover, I realized I didn’t have my wallet. I figured I must have left it on the table at the bar, so it was probably long gone. Then I remembered Terry had mentioned he worked at a post office branch up near College and El Cajon Boulevard. I figured maybe he found my wallet at the table after we left. I didn’t really know him too well, but after work in the morning, I took a flier and went up to the P.O. branch he said he worked at. Sure enough, there he was, looking about as hungover as I felt. As soon as he saw me come in, he pulled my wallet out of his pocket and handed it to me. I thought that was pretty damn cool. I offered him ten bucks for helping me out, but he wouldn’t take it. That’s more like the Raider fan brotherhood I’m used to.
Throughout the eighties, the San Diego Raiders Fan Club once or twice a year would organize a bus trip up to the L.A. Coliseum to see a game. There was a woman at the Billiard Center who was in charge of things and would always remind everyone to sign up for the trips. It was a great deal. For twenty-five bucks you would get round-trip bus fare, a tailgate party with food and beer before the game, and a decent ticket. These things were a blast. The bus rides were party central. Everyone brought their favorite beverages for the ride. The one problem I remember is that you had to be at a shopping center parking lot in Clairemont at 5:30 in the morning to catch the bus. That could be a little early for a Sunday morning, so I remember that in the true Raiders fan spirit, we usually decided it was easier to just stay up partying Saturday night than to get up that early. Occasionally this may have required some minor chemical assistance to pull off, which made for some long, interesting game-day experiences.
One year on the trip I went with two friends. The bus was full, so they sat together and I sat a few rows away next to a Latino guy I’d never met before. We both had small coolers full of beer for the ride and we soon found out we had both brought pint bottles of Bacardi to smuggle in for the game. We had a good time on the way up, drinking beer and nips of straight rum, talking about the team. A big black woman I knew a little from the pool hall was sitting across the aisle from us and heard us talking about sneaking in the pint bottles. She told us we were doing it the wrong way. She said, “Check out my binoculars” and handed me her big, clunky old-style binocs. They felt a little too heavy. Then she reached over and started unscrewing the focus button. Immediately I smelled wine. “Go ahead,” she told me, and I took a sip out of the binocs. “This is the way to get stuff into the stadium,” she told us.
The Raiders lost that day, so everyone was pretty quiet getting back on the bus. We all took the same seats because we’d left our coolers on
the bus during the game. I got there first and took the window seat. Soon my new buddy came in. He was totally ripped, could hardly walk but somehow managed to stumble into the seat next to me. I said something about it being a tough game, too bad they lost, and he couldn’t even talk, just sort of mumbled back to me. The bus got rolling, and my new friend kept sort of mumbling and leaning his head onto my shoulder and sort of drooling. I kept trying to kind of push him away and get him to sit up straight. After a little while, he suddenly reached down for his cooler on the floor and got it partly open before belching out a veritable waterfall of foul-smelling puke. He got most of it into his cooler, but some of it got onto the floor, my shoes, and my pants. When he finished, he pretty much passed out and kept on leaning into me, puke dribbling down his chin with me trying to make him sit up straight. This was a little hard to take, especially being that I was in a pretty intoxicated state myself. I wanted to get the hell out of there but I was pretty much stuck.
I tried at least standing up a little to get away from the smell. My woman friend across the aisle was talking, saying how gross it was and so on. After awhile she stood up and told me I needed some more wine, offering me her binocs again. I said no, but thanks anyway, and I clearly remember her standing there in the aisle and saying to me “You havin’ a weird experience. You got a cooler full of puke at your feet, this guy keeps leanin’ on you and I’m standin’ here drinkin’ wine outta binoculars. You ain’t never gonna forget this bus ride.” I had to laugh—and it turns out she was right.
