Tag: John Facenda

A’s play final game at Oakland Coliseum, watch John Facenda narrate Raiders early days there

As the A’s end their final game at Oakland Coliseum, watch John Facenda narrate Raiders early days there

It’s an end of an era in Oakland…again. Nearly five years after the Raiders played their final game at Oakland Coliseum, the A’s have now done the same.

With the A’s planning to also pull up stakes and head for Vegas, they wrapped up their time in Oakland Coliseum Thursday with a win over the Texas Rangers.

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And with this final game in this iconic stadium, let’s take a little trip back to the early days in the A’s first season in Oakland and the Raiders entering their third season at the Coliseum, just after taking the team to Super Bowl II.

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The plan is for the A’s to play in Sacramento for the next few years until a new stadium is built for them. Plan being the operative word.

Fans in Oakland have been urging owner John Fisher to sell the team in the hopes of a new ownership engaging in actual negotiations to build a new stadium in Oakland.

But Fisher’s intentions were always to take the team away so he could cash in the same way the Raiders did — by landing billions in public money with a move to Las Vegas.

Voice of ‘Autumn Wind’ John Facenda wins Hall of Fame Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award

Voice of ‘Autumn Wind’ John Facenda wins Hall of Fame Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award

“The Autumn Wind is a Pirate
Blustering in from sea
With a rollicking song
He sweeps along
Swaggering boisterously…”

If you’re a Raider fan, you hear those words in one iconic voice. That voice is that of the late John Facenda. It was a poem written by the late Steve Sabol and produced in 1974. The poem accompanied what became the Raiders theme song.

Now, in the same year that Steve Sabol enters the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Facenda will join him as the recipient of the Hall of Fame’s Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award.

Facenda voiced many of the NFL Films’ work. He became known as the voice of the NFL over 20 years from 1965 until his death in 1984 at the age of 71. But no single piece of NFL Films footage is more iconic than his reading of The Autumn Wind.

He lived to see all three Raiders Super Bowl wins, so it’s also fitting that Tom Flores — who coached the Raiders to two of those Super Bowl wins — gets inducted this year via the Senior Committee.

Raiders great Charles Woodson gets in this year on his first ballot. Others to be inducted this year are Alan Faneca, Calvin Johnson, John Lynch, Peyton Manning, Bill Nunn, and Drew Pearson. They will be enshrined at 7 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 8 at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton Ohio.

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