Boy do I miss my Raiders and NFL football. Seems everything in today's activities brought memories of Raiders Football to mind, both the good and the bad.
My ache for football sent me searching for Raiders gameday footage, leading me to a video recording of Raiders versus Jets 2012 in Oaktown. What a game! It was the Mark Sanchez black eye game.
No, better than that; it was the Darren McFadden show that saw a silver & black come from behind victory, and of course I was there.
The Raiders overcame a number of mistakes on that sunny Sunday in the Bay. D-Mac slicing and dicing his way to the endzone and wide receiver Denarius Moore looking just as impressive sluicing through the Jets secondary for a diving backstroke style touchdown.
2011 was a year of promise for the Oakland Raiders. It was then that coach Hugh Jackson had the team at the brink of breaking into the playoffs for the first time in nine years. Then injuries mounted up and you know the rest of the story.
After watching that great Raiders highlight game from 2011, I was immediately reminded of the disappointing 2012 season (4-12). It is the true price one must pay to be a real sports fan, loyal to one team per sport. The agony of defeat seems all too familiar for many of us. But then there's those thrilling days of victory that lift us up high and make every agonizing loss a forgotten moment in a cave of darkness. Winning, and/or memories of winning cures the pain and allows us to start over dreaming of a return to greatness., if only for a day. Thank my lucky stars for the victory day, because you really don't wanna hear what a losing day looks,sounds and feels like, do you?
A losing day in football feels like a bad medical condition that can only get worse. Its being found guilty of having a defect in your team and the hope is that your coach can correct it before the next game. Often I've felt watching a Raiders game of late compares somewhat, though not nearly as life threatening, with the feelings a condemned man walking to the gas chamber, electric chair or lethal injection table must feel; where all efforts for a reprieve have been exhausted yet as you take those last steps there's slim hope for a stay, very slim. Which brings me to the late great baroque composer Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni (8 June 1671 – 17 January 1751) of Italy.
Albinoni frequently used his basses for harmony. In Albinoni's famous "Adagio in G Minor" for strings, violin and organ, which I was coincidently subjected to while moping through thoughts of the Raiders losing 2012 season, the constant, agonizing pluck of a bass string marches the listener toward the emotional drama that must play out in the end. It is a musical piece that only one who has been through trials, appeals and pleadings, with little effect on the outcome, could ever know. Albinoni with his violin strings and organ keys knew so well the pain of a Raiders fan.
