It’s L.A.’s Latest Silver & Black Eye

Goodby, good luck, good riddance, get lost, get the NFL outta here, go jump in a bay, take a hike, so long, see ya, wouldn’t want to be ya, don’t let the door hit you, ta-ta, hasta la vista, drive safely, have a nice day and our regards to you and the horse you rode in on.

The Los Angeles Raiders (1982-95) died here Friday after a brief interest. Flowers may be sent care of Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, 7000 Coliseum Way, Oakland 94621-1918.

L.A. football sleeps with the fishes.

Gone are the men in silver and black, and with them their deep-coverage receivers, their deep-cleavage receivers, their half-empty grandstand, their half-full holding cells and their knight in white satin, Al Davis. He and the wicked witch of the South, the traitorous Georgia Frontiere, have left us sitting here by ourselves with stupid looks on our faces, like 10 million Forrest Gumps.

Yes, we have no pro football, we have no pro football today.

Davis, 11 days before his 66th birthday, put his John Hancock--no, make that his Benedict Arnold--on a sheet of paper that made it official, leaving Los Angeles, metropolitan population 9,840,200, with one fewer National Football League team than Jacksonville, Fla., metropolitan population 615,300, and one fewer than Green Bay, Wis., a village with fewer people than the Raiders’ summer training home of Oxnard.

Once upon a time, we, the people of Los Angeles, plunked down in our seats to watch Bo Jackson, Magic Johnson, Wayne Gretzky, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Fernando Valenzuela, Eric Dickerson, Marcus Allen, the finest jocks in the land. Now our only stars are on our sidewalks. The only superhero left in our comic book is Gretzky, who won’t be here long.

L.A. is turning into Peoria.

People would rather be in Oakland or St. Louis. They talk about those towns like paradise lost. Raiders ranging from Andrew Glover to Nolan Harrison have been doing everything in interviews but singing, “Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay, my oh my, what a wonderful day.” They talk about Oakland as though . . . well, as though they had played there.

They didn’t, of course. The old Oakland was the place where men were men and women and pets were nervous. It was a place where, as the mighty lineman Ben Davidson once said, the Raiders were so tough, they used each other’s toothbrushes. They were so tough--how tough were they?--in those days, they changed underwear once a day, Davidson said . . . into each other’s, the punch line went.

Because no water was permitted at practice, one was likely to see tackle Carleton Oats face first in the grass, licking a sprinkler head. When coaches put spies in the bushes trying to catch someone sneaking a drink, Gene Upshaw called the cops and reported a Peeping Tom. Women were lifted involuntarily onto the shoulders of John Matuszak, who barged into barrooms shouting, “Ken Stabler will arm-wrestle any sissy in here for $5!”

This was their idea of Camelot.

Still living on Memory Lane, Al Davis is so hooked on nostalgia that no statistic means more to him than the Raider record at the Oakland Coliseum--88-24-3.

And what of their life in L.A., where a 29-point triumph in Super Bowl XVII turned out to be the last time any AFC team won a championship? Well, it was a scrapbook of unpleasant keepsakes, of underqualified quarterbacks and Jackson’s career-snapping injury and Allen’s defection to the enemy and Art Shell’s joining him there after being canned with a winning record.

It was Green Bay 28, Raiders 0. San Diego 36, Raiders 14. New Orleans 27, Raiders 0. Houston 47, Raiders 17. Buffalo 51, Raiders 3. All of these scores occurring in the ‘90s. It was eight consecutive defeats from Dec. 8, 1991, to Sept. 28, 1992. It was an opening-night Monday last season in San Francisco in which the 49ers chewed up and spat out the Raiders like a child with a Happy Meal.

So much for a televised interview Davis gave in 1992, when, flushed with pride and promise, he said, “We will dominate the ‘90s. There’s no one out there yet who has shown that they can dominate the ‘90s, and we will, because we’re good.”

The good, however, never did become great.

That is why Al Davis, the Termi-Raider, is picking up his pigskins, pads and players and putting them back where they belong.

They missed Oakland.

Oakland missed them.

They deserve each other.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

RAIDERS IN L.A. (1982-1995)

HIGHLIGHTS

* Aug. 29, 1982--Raiders play first exhibition in the Coliseum, beating Green Bay, 24-3, before 40,906 fans.

* Nov. 22, 1982--Raiders play their first regular-season home game in Los Angeles, coming back from a 24-0 deficit to beat San Diego, 28-24, before 55,060 fans.

* Jan. 8, 1984--Raiders defeat Seattle, 30-14, to win AFC championship before 92,335.

* Jan. 22, 1984--Raiders win Super Bowl XVII at Tampa, Fla., beating Washington, 38-9.

* Dec. 3, 1989--Raiders beat Denver, 16-13, in overtime before 90,016 at the Coliseum, the largest ticket count in the NFL for 1989.

* Jan. 2, 1994--Raiders overcome a 17-point deficit to beat Denver, 33-30, in overtime to qualify for the playoffs.

* Division titles: 4 (1982, 1983, 1985, 1990)

* AFC championship: 1 (1983)

* Super Bowls: 1 (1984)

* Playoff record: 6-6

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LOWLIGHTS

* 1986--Raiders miss playoffs for first time since moving to Los Angeles, finishing in fourth place in the AFC West with an 8-8 record.

* 1987--Raiders finish with a 5-10 record, their worst since 1962.

* Dec. 18, 1988--Raiders lose final game of season to Seattle, eliminating them from the playoffs for the third consecutive season.

* 1989--Raiders finish 8-8, missing the playoffs for the fourth consecutive season.