No ghosts here.
We cannot, in good faith, trot out Lester Hayes today as inspiration for the return of Oakland Raider glory.
It is not fair, or righteous, to portray this cheating, cackling former Raider as a spirit that will descend upon his former team in their AFC championship battle against the Baltimore Ravens.
"I'm a changed man," Lester Hayes says. "I have been released from the darkness of hate."
He was baptized last Sunday. He spends his days either signing autographs for a charity organization or watching vein-popping pastors on the television.
He met his new girlfriend in a Wal-Mart. In Modesto. He lives there. He drives her daughter to Girl Scouts and dance class there.
Sorry, but these Raiders are going to have do it on their own.
"'Well . . . " Hayes says softly.
OK, OK, there is this one thing.
It's a 10-ounce jar. It's located in a storage box in the deepest, darkest part of Lester Hayes' home.
A jar of stickum.
"The last jar of stickum on earth," Hayes says solemnly.
You remember stickum. It was the gooey substance that Hayes lathered on his arms and hands, helping him intercept passes and steer receivers during his 10-year Raider career.
Stickum gave the Raiders such an advantage, it was outlawed after their 1981 Super Bowl victory.
One remaining jar. In the hands of a changed man.
"I never look at it, I never touch it," Hayes says. "That was my past. I'm beyond that now."
Fine. But just for argument's sake, what if Al Davis asks you for that jar before today's game?
"What?" he says.
What if your Raider godfather asks for one last favor, just a little one, 10 ounces that could help his defense stop the Ravens.
"I don't think he would ask," Hayes says.
But what if he does? What if he decides that to ensure safe passage into a new era, his team must first drag its toes through a delicious bit of its past.
Well?
Hayes pauses. And pauses.
Amid the silence, you can almost hear it. The rustling of a silver-and-black shirt. The snapping of an eye-patched helmet. A thwap of a forearm shiver.
You interrupt the pause by repeating the question.
Would you give Al Davis that stickum?
"Well, mmmm . . . yes, of course I would give it to him," Lester Hayes says. "Remember, there are no rules if you don't get caught. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha."
*
So there are ghosts here.
Lester Hayes, 45, will be on the Raider sideline today, admiring an image he helped create, a culture he once symbolized.
"My team will be running around out there like Bruce Lee's fist and fury," he says. "Watching them will be pure ambrosia."
And won't he be proud.
Joining with Mike Haynes to form one of the best cornerback duos in football history, Hayes made five Pro Bowls, helped win two Super Bowls, earned defensive player of the year honors in 1980 for an amazing 13 interceptions.
No, he didn't popularize stickum, that would be Fred Biletnikoff. But he became its most popular disciple.
No, he didn't invent the craziness of the Lyle Alzado and Ted Hendricks. But he put it into words.
This, despite one of the worst stutters in the history of sports.
"Guys in the locker room used to ride me about all sorts of things, even mean things and hateful things," he remembers. "But nobody ever said a word about my stuttering."
That was those Raiders. Characters, but with character. Cursed, yet blessed.
In a way, that is also these Raiders.
Junk mail quarterback Rick Gannon. Failed running back Tyrone Wheatley. Renegade receiver Andre Rison. A defense filled with guys from somewhere else.
Most expect them to beat the happy-to-be-here Ravens today at Network Associates Coliseum because of loud fans and dark moods.
Of course, there are other reasons.
"They'll win because they play for a coach, Jon Gruden, who could lead his troops through a gantlet of pit bulls wearing pork chop underwear," Hayes said.
He is still a great quote despite still having the serious stutter. The only difference is, he now also has trouble breathing.
He had laser surgery, a procedure he hoped would help his stuttering, and says that he hasn't been able to breathe easily since.
"Sometimes I feel like I'm on Mount Everest base camp number two," he says.
He will undergo another operation soon to help the breathing. The stuttering, he continues to battle.
"But you know, I've never felt more free," he says.
During two hours of conversation recently, he talked about that freedom, from a Raider reputation that became a burden, from life in Southern California that ended when his San Fernando Valley home was damaged by the 1994 earthquake.
He walked away from the house, hasn't been back, hasn't rented it, hasn't sold it, just walked away.
"I have studied Confucius, I have read Freud, I have studied Darwinism," he said. "I have come out of the darkness."
He says in that darkness, he belonged to two clubs.
The first was called Ludie Phi Doty, which referred to the drugs he and friends ingested to fight their football pain.
"It was a sharing club," he says. "You drank something, you smoked something, you snorted something."
