Hater of the Week, Literary Allusion Edition: Tom Weir

This blog item started well enough, discussing Rickey Henderson's having his number retired by the A's. Then, Tom Weir goes on to muse about other franchises, like the Celtics and Yankees, that have retired so many numbers (because they have had so many great players) that they're running out of them. Then, we get this:

Mathematically speaking, the teams in the best shape are the Dallas Cowboys and the Oakland Raiders. Both have great traditions (Or at least the Raiders did, until Al Davis started imitating Captain Queeg), but neither has ever retired a number.

Captain Queeg? Are you kidding me? Sure, he's weird, and his men hated him, but he wasn't exactly a great Captain. The U.S.S. Caine was his first command, and he fucked it up. Al Davis, when he took over the Franchise, Dominated for parts of three decades. Loyal CLOAK readers (both of them!) will know that if Al can be compared to a figure in literature, it's to Simon Bolivar in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel, The General in His Labyrinth. Just read that description of the General and tell me that doesn't sound like Al, other than the premature aging.

The (Managing) General (Partner) in his Labyrinth

Lance called Kawakami to apologize for Herrera's meltdown. He also answered some questions, said he's still the coach, and that he thought they "were trying to have a professional news conference."

Ouch.

Elsewhere, Lowell Cohn sticks up for TK, and calls out Raiders fans who show up on their blogs and call them "girls" and "bitches" in the comments. I used to participated pretty heavily in the comments section of Jerry Mac's blog. But it got boring: either you're an Al Davis apologist who is too blind to see that he should be in a nursing home, wearing depends, and has no business whatsoever running a team, or you're a hater who doesn't recognize that the greatness of the Raiders is in it's Future, and that includes Al Davis, who already wears THE CLOAK OF IMMORTALITY.

I've spent time in both camps, actually. I kind of lean towards the "Al Must Go" variety now, but I also feel sorry for him. It's like reading The General in his Labyrinth, Gabriel García Márquez's novel about Simon Bolivar's last trip down the river, still fighting his old battles, paranoid, feverish, constipated. The "labyrinth" of the title is his own dementia. Can't you just see Mr. Davis roaming the halls of the Harbor Parkway with his walker, shouting at Pete Rozelle and Marcus Allen, or cursing Wayne Valley?