‘Profoundly sad’: Longtime fans lament lack of loyalty in Raiders deal

By Gary Peterson, Mercury News (TNS)

Thursday, Oct. 20, 2016 | 2 a.m.

My 1975 Christmas list had an unusual entry: $8 million to buy the San Francisco Giants. It was a joke, of course. What I really wanted was a puka shell necklace.

But the joke underscored a troubling concern of mine. The Giants, my first love as a sports fan, had been sold in principal to a group intent on relocating the franchise to Toronto. The deal was hours from being consummated when a couple of civic-minded millionaires, Bob Lurie and Bud Herseth, saved the team for San Francisco.

Four decades later, I still recall vividly that feeling of angst and helplessness as the short-term future of the Giants was decided. So I get what Jim Zelinski is going through. A longtime Raiders fan and charter member of Save Oakland Sports, Zelinski began attending Raiders games when he was in elementary school and eventually inherited his father's season tickets — which were rendered instantly moot when the team moved to Los Angeles in 1982.

Zelinski shelled out thousands of dollars for personal seat licenses when the Raiders returned to Oakland in 1995. Now team owner Mark Davis is making every effort to move the franchise to a proposed $1.9 billion stadium in Las Vegas. Davis was scheduled Wednesday to brief NFL owners on the proposed move at a league meeting in Houston.

"One of the consistent themes among fans," Zelinski said, "is we cannot believe the Raiders would do this again knowing the tremendous negative impact the first move had on the community. Does the individual fan matter anymore, or are we obsolete?"

Good question. Save Oakland Sports, an apolitical grassroots organization advocating for the city to retain all three of its professional sports tenants, was formed almost five years ago when the A's, salivating over the prospect of a new stadium in the South Bay, seemed most likely to blow town. Now the A's seem the safest bet to stay, as the Warriors plan their escape to San Francisco and Raiders owner Mark Davis declares his undying love for Las Vegas.

"The autumn wind is an air conditioner," Zelinski scoffed. "What kind of mystique is that?"

Ongoing coverage has addressed the proposed relocations from the perspective of the cities, the teams and the leagues. The anguished fans, sad to say, are not part of the equation.

SOS, Zelinski said, meets "every couple of weeks. Thousands have signed an online petition and pledge cards. We go to events like the Art and Soul Festival, to the Pleasanton fair, First Fridays. We've talked to politicians periodically. They're certainly aware of us. We've got blue-collar people, white-collar people, East Bay, South Bay."

Back to the question at hand: Does the individual fan matter? No less than he or she historically has. That's the good news and the bad.

Raiders fans protested in the months leading up to the team's move to L.A. (remember the Monday Night blackout?). It had no effect. After the 1995 season, the Browns bolted Cleveland for Baltimore, which 12 years earlier had lost the Colts to Indianapolis. Typically robust fan bases were left in the dust on both occasions. Way back when, the Giants, the team I despaired of losing in 1975, left New York in tandem with the Dodgers. Not only did the Giants almost leave the Bay Area after the 1975 season, they nearly bailed after the 1992 season. The A's nearly moved to Denver in the late 1970s.

In every one of the above-mentioned cases, and a handful of others you could cite, the determining forces that led teams to stay or go were bigger than the paying customers. Quite understandably, this is not what people like Jim Zelinski want to hear.

"Maybe I'm naïve at the age of 58," he said, "but I really do believe there should be some loyalty to people who supported this franchise for more than 40 years (in Oakland). From the fans' perspective, that is the most disappointing thing of all. There is something profoundly sad about this."

Finally something on which we can all agree.