Remembering Philly's Al LoCasale, longtime Raiders exec
He went to Penn, coached Olney High and was Al Davis' righthand man for years. He was 82 when he died over the weekend.
ON THE COVER of the Feb. 2, 1981 issue of Sports Illustrated, there is a picture of Oakland Raiders linebacker Rod Martin. He is beaming - and why wouldn't he be, seeing as how he was the star of Super Bowl XV after intercepting the Eagles' Ron Jaworski three times.
Inside the magazine is a story about Al LoCasale, who was the right hand of Raiders owner Al Davis for decades. The Raiders announced yesterday that LoCasale died over the weekend at the age of 82. He had been gone from the East Coast for long enough that few people likely remember that LoCasale was from Philadelphia.
From the SI story:
LoCasale, who's about 5-4, is himself a little person, at least vertically. He was, therefore, not much of a football player in his youth, but he was a football fanatic who began coaching sandlot teams in Philadelphia when he was still in his teens. And as an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, he helped coach the Olney High School varsity squad he couldn't quite make. In fact, he first met Davis at a coaching clinic in Atlantic City in 1952, when LoCasale was 18 and Davis was 22 and coaching a small-college team. They so impressed each other that they adjourned for the evening to watch films and scribble X's and O's. LoCasale first worked with Davis at USC in 1959. Together they moved to the Chargers in 1960. Except for a 6 1/2-year stint in the '60s, LoCasale has been with Davis ever since.
My greatest personal memory of LoCasale came from a couple of weeks before that story, when he threw me and the Evening Bulletin's Jack McCallum out of a Raiders practice on the day after they won the AFC Championship Game that put them in the Super Bowl against the Eagles. Back then, practices were open to pretty much all reporters - but not the Raiders.
"Out," LoCasale ordered, after identifying the two Philadelphia infidels. I think he called us "enemy reporters," but that might be my imagination. I do know that it got my name in the New York Times story the next day, which thrilled my parents. Thanks, Al.