You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.™
Raiders fans.
Commitment to crazy.
I was watching the Raiders vs. the Chargers on Sunday.
It’s week 17, the last week of the season. Many teams are all ready in the big dance. Many games are irrelevant. But not the Raiders’ game. This one is for all the marbles.
Raiders win and they are basically in. They lose and they basically join the Dallas Cowboys as the most pathetic football team in the NFL.
Raiders lose and they might as well be an old guy in Tia Juana shopping for black market Viagra.
Raiders Win and dare I think it? Raiders win and they ride the donkey of life with a sombrero on their heads and a golden wind at their backs full of colorful ink.
Raiders fans are known for many things. They dress up in Darth Vader gear and wear spikes on their face and prison tattoos on their scrotums.
To say a Raiders fans is crazy is like saying Farah Fawcett was pretty. It doesn’t even begin to encompass the full breath of the statement.
Raiders fans come in many shapes and colors. Certainly the L.A. County prison institution is well represented by the Silver and Black.
COMMITMENT TO EXCELLENCE.
Say it loud. Say it Proud. We are Raiders. Watch us gut your sister after a loss at 101st and Wilmington.
You know you are crazy if if you go to the Oakland Coliseum and dare wear the other teams jersey. Walk around cheering for anyone other than the silver and black and prepare to be beheaded as if you are one of Henry the 8th’s wives.
My best buddy is a Raiders fan. How much of a Raiders fan?
I was with him once in Manhattan Beach, California and the Raiders lost.
Most of us cuss and then go home and cut the grass after a loss.
Not my best buddy. He wears his silver and black on his sleeve. It courses through his veins like Irish whiskey through a St. Patricks day bar keeper.
So the Raiders lose. My buddy goes into a zombie trance. He throws something angrily and then walks in disgust into the Pacific Ocean.
WITH HIS CLOTHES ON.
“should we call 911?” people ask.
“nah, he’ll be OK,” I say. “His team just lost. he needs to think things through.”
“Oh,” they respond blankly.
I watch my best friend while scanning for random shark fins near the pier.
He stops about waist deep and stairs at the setting sun. I can only imagine he and God are having a discourse on life, liberty and the pursuit of wins in the AFC West.
So it is with no surprise that his black and silver seed does not fall far from the fanatical tree.
Fast forward 20 years and I find myself in his living room. His oldest son is there with us. This kid is an excellent young man. He is compassionate and literate and a poet at heart. He is about to graduate with an English degree and ultimately he will teach children. He all ready coaches young athletes, getting them to give more of themselves than they ever thought they could. He is why America’s future is in safe hands.
But when the Raiders play, this young man is count Dracula in search of blood. He is a pit bull that someone burned with a lighter. He is a die hard Raider fan who has gone to Charger games, wearing a Darren McFadden jersey.
When 50,000 chargers fans offered to fight him he stood his ground.
His younger brother is another wonderful kid. Good grades, Catholic School sports star, chicks dig him and his new Christmas car. But like big brother, he was bitten by the Raider gone crazy bug.
If there was a crazy draft for crazy Raider fans, this kid would be high on Mel Kipper’s draft board.
So I am coming out of the shower upstairs in a good sized home and suddenly I hear screaming. It sounds like a group of zombies have broken into the house and are tearing apart human flesh.
NO WAY. CHARGERS SUCK. WHERE’S THE DEFENSE!
The house is shaking with fury.
I come downstairs.
“What the hell happened?” I ask, wondering if I need to watch this game wearing an athletic cup.
Younger son throws the remote at the couch in a fit of rage.
“Raiders got called for holding that brought back a huge play.”
And so it goes.
Every play is life and death. Every day is an ocean to walk into.
Every play is Dante’s inferno, a battle of good versus evil.
At one point, after another terrible Raider play, Number one son, screams at his dog; “Scout if you don’t get out of here I will punch your face.”
It’s so absurd I laugh out loud. The little cute dog looks at his owner with a bewildered, almost calm stare as if he has seen this Raider craziness before.
I love the intensity in this house. It is surreal, it is real, it is electrically fanatical.
Though I am in a living room, it’s as if I am at the stadium. Every play is important. I half way expect someone to pour a full beer on my head from the upper deck.
After a game in which the Raiders commit an NFL season record for penalties, in a game that sees the Raiders play defense like they are going to Julia child’s cooking school, on a day that sees emotions teeter wildly, the Raiders lose.
It’s the scene where all the Whos in Who-villewake up and find that the Grinch has stolen all their Christmas presents.
The father and his 2 sons leave the tv room. They are silent, they are mad, they want to break something but know their mother will kick all their asses.
The Raiders could have won. They should have won. Had they played like the Raiders of John Madden’s era when Snake Stabler partied till 3 am and then vomited in the huddle before throwing a game winner to Freddie Blitnekoff, they would have won.
Instead these Raiders are the new NFL where a team wins and loses and then wins and then loses in a 17 week dance of mediocrity.
At least teams that really really suck like Indianapolis get the first pick in the draft. Teams like the Raiders and the Chargers and the Cowboys that suck an average suck, just exit the playoffs and dream of what might have been.
On this day of Raiders despair, there is no ocean to wallow in. There is only the sun setting on this beautiful season and the hope that next year, the Silver and Black will play for Al like Al would have wanted them to play.
If not, the family dog better get the Humane Shelter 9 1 1 hot line on his speed dial.
And that is crazy.