Post by TheShadow on Oct 14, 2007 6:53:23 GMT -5
www.signonsandiego.com
By Jerry Magee
They sat side by side on a platform set up in a room in the San Diego Hall of Champions, two former Chargers and three former Raiders, together and at peace.
“If I had known I was going to be on a stage, I would have worn socks,” said Walt Sweeney.
Formality is not a Sweeney strength. Sobriety once also was not among his strengths, but he was clear of eye and trim of limb when he joined Earl Faison in representing the Chargers at this luncheon function put together by the hall.
Faison, it can be noted, looks very much as he did when he chose to pursue a future in football as a young man growing up in Newport News, Va.
“I had a coach who told me three fields were open to me – cotton, tobacco and football,” remembered Faison, who selected football, excelled in it at Indiana and with the Chargers and later became a prominent San Diego educator. He currently resides in Prescott, Ariz.
With Sweeney and Faison on the luncheon's program were former Raiders Ben Davidson (he of the luxuriant mustache, which he still has, only now it is gray), David Grayson Sr. and Art Powell. One waited for the war stories to begin, of classic battles between the Chargers and Raiders, of combat of the most savage sort, of blows taken and delivered.
Nothing. As Davidson recalled, when he joined the Raiders in 1964, the team's rivalry was with the Kansas City Chiefs, not the Chargers. Big Ben had played a season with the Green Bay Packers and two seasons with the Washington Redskins before he showed up in the East Bay. Arriving in Oakland, Davidson said Al Davis asked him how much he had been making.
“Davis offered me $500 less,” said Davidson, for years an East San Diego apartment owner.
I have attended at least 60 of these Chargers/Raiders games, and I can't recall the players on one side expressing animosity toward the players on the other. Well, there was that time when John Hadl in a moment of pique fired a football at Davidson following a play's conclusion. Ben could not remember what he might have done. His eyes were twinkling when he said this.
Any ill feelings the games in this series have wrought always have had their origins in places other than between the chalked lines. The gold and blue of the Chargers seems to incite those in sympathy with the silver and black of the Raiders. Let us trust that those present at Qualcomm Stadium today conduct themselves as properly as the athletes on the field.
Before they assembled for the hall's luncheon, Sweeney, Faison, Davidson, Grayson and Powell had come padding up a flight of stairs to the office of San Diego Hall of Fame founder Bob Breitbard. They are lions grown old in winter, those five.
“You don't start feeling football injuries until you're about 50,” said Powell.
“What they told us was that we were supposed to be dead by 50,” said Faison. He is 68. Powell is 70, Sweeney 66, Davidson 67.
I remember the first time I saw Powell. He was a sleek 6-foot-3 receiver playing for San Jose State in a game against San Diego State at Balboa Stadium. Powell scored five touchdowns, if my memory serves. How he could move!
Powell was thinking of his contemporaries. “Half of the guys can't walk,” he said. “If you see a guy take a step or two to a chair, it's a real effort.”
Grayson, 68, said many former players experience dementia as a consequence of having incurred repeated concussions. He cited the late Mike Webster, a distinguished offensive lineman during his time with the Pittsburgh Steelers. “Webster committed suicide because he got tired of his mental condition draining the family resources,” said Grayson. “That's what is happening.”
“When you had a concussion in those days, you played,” said Powell. “They always told you, 'You're OK. Go back in.'
Grayson remembered one time when he came to the Raiders' bench after he had been shaken up. Trainer George Anderson said to him, by Grayson's account, “What's your name?”
“You know my name. Dave Grayson.”
“Go back in.”
A Lincoln High School alumnus, Grayson was an all-AFL pass defender who once had three interceptions in a game while policing Lance Alworth. The Grayson family's links to the Raiders are deep ones. The senior Grayson has a son, also named David, who served the Raiders as a linebacker.
What these former players were saying is that they believe the NFL has forsaken them through a pension program that affords them too little security in the later years of their lives. They aren't delighted, either, with the course the current game is taking. Faison said it disgusts him that a form of holding by offensive linemen is tolerated and that offensive forwards have become so ponderous that they cannot pull or execute trap blocks.
One individual in the NFL's current hierarchy who is looked upon favorably by the former Raiders is Davis. “The best,” said Powell. “There is nobody like him. I know the image they project of him is not who he is. He has done a lot for former players. When you hear everybody talking about older players trying to get a better pension, he is the only owner who came out and said, 'We've got to take care of our own.' ”