Pride and poise, plus a little
noise
 This is the 10th in a series of postcards Sports
Illustrated's Peter King will e-mail from his annual
training-camp tour.
Posted: Fri August 14,
1998
Aug. 13: Napa,
Calif.
TEAM: Oakland
Raiders.
SITE: Napa Marriott Hotel, on the main road in wine country,
situated among evergreens and vineyards and lots of
traffic. Two football fields and a
locker-room/weight-training facility were built basically
in the backyard of this hotel, making it the best
possible stop for all NFL writers: Beautiful place, beautiful
weather and beautiful Marriott
points.
FOOD: Sorry to disappoint you. Ate a barbecued chicken sandwich
off-site.
Dear NFL
Junkie:
Of all the camps I've seen, this is the place where the
players seem to make the most fun out of drudgery. New
coach
Jon
Gruden has told his players to have fun, to celebrate when they
score or do something great. Love the game, he's told them.
And so when quarterback
Jeff
George fired an M-16 touchdown shot to wide receiver
Tim
Brown in a seven-on-seven drill Thursday morning, Brown
exultantly spiked the ball. Then George ran to the end
zone, picked up the ball, and spiked it in front of the
collective secondary's face. Then the offensive players, in
unison, began wailing like a
fire siren. Then
Albert
Lewis, the ancient defensive back, picked up the ball and fired
it at George. Lewis was
laughing.
"The cameraderie here is unlike any camp I've been
in," Lewis told me later, "Jon's done a good job
of getting everyone
together."
Two other observations: Rookie offensive tackle
Mo
Collins is an absolute house. I wouldn't be surprised to see him
beat out
Pat
Harlow, who has been plagued with back trouble for
three years, for the LT job sometime this year. And who is that
stud at fullback? It's rookie third-rounder
Jon
Ritchie, who wasn't even a fulltime starter at Stanford. At
6'1" and 245 pounds, the selfless tank of a blocker
could win the fullback job over Joe
Aska.
Ritchie is also the strangest-looking man in an NFL camp
this summer. He's got an auburn goatee, a long one, with
hair that sticks up in the air. Looking for a nickname,
Raiders? Here's one for Ritchie:
Don
King.
Talk to you after the Denver-New Orleans exhibition game at
Mile High Stadium on Friday night. That's where I'm headed
next.
—P.K.
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