If Monday night’s game was the last one the Raiders ever play at the Coliseum, at least their fans got a chance to say their proper goodbyes.

That wasn’t the case 37 years ago, when a federal court jury’s ruling in the off-season allowed the Raiders to move to Los Angeles, breaking a lot of hearts in the East Bay.

Including mine.

That’s because the first time the Raiders abandoned Oakland it cost me the most wonderfully unique $35-per-day job ever created for a kid.

The uncertainty surrounding the team’s fate while they were beating the Broncos 27-14 Monday was eerily similar to their last home game against the Bears in 1981, when I was one of the Raiders’ visiting team ballboys.

In each case, no one was sure if the Raiders would ever play in Oakland again.

Back when Al Davis was allowed to move the Raiders to Los Angeles five months after the season, I lost my game-day job and figured all I had to show for it were some T-shirts from teams I worked for like the Patriots, Chargers and Steelers.

As it turned out, the memories of that short-lived dream job were the real treasure.

Working the 1981 season for my friend Steve Holt’s dad, who was the Raiders visiting locker room manager, I was certain no one was luckier than me.

It was a quixotic notion to think Joe Montana would ask me for a football so he could play catch with Dwight Clark, or I’d be in the middle of a Steelers huddle giving water to Mean Joe Greene, or that Walter Payton would keep asking me to scrape mud off the bottom of his cleats.

But those truly were among the pinch-me moments I enjoyed that season.

(There’s even video proof of me in my Bears shirt walking back and forth behind Payton late in the last home game, ready to help clean his shoes one final time — starting at the 2:17:50 mark).

I still chuckle when thinking about some of the things I got to see and experienced on that job. I recall fondly seeing John Matuszak in his dark sunglasses bounding down the stairs each week on his way to the Raiders locker room, slowing down enough to point at one of us ballboys to ask, “What’s cookin’ good-lookin’?”

I’ll never forget being on the tarmac at the Oakland Airport, unloading the Seahawks gear from their plane and into a moving truck. I was then told I needed to drive it to the Coliseum, only to find out the truck had a manual transmission, which I had never driven. So I “learned” how to drive a stick shift while transporting the Seahawks’ uniforms and helmets down Hegenberger Road, grinding the gears before finding a steady 10 mph pace.

Being employed by the Raiders, on the other hand, also meant I got a first-hand look at how Al Davis was both feared and despised.

Like everyone else who worked for the team, the visiting team ballboys had one explicit rule: Don’t piss off Al. That meant we had to stay busy and we couldn’t goof around — easier said than done for teen-age boys. So we’d only play catch, kick footballs or otherwise act up if Al wasn’t on the field.

When we ate lunch before the games our bosses decided we had to do it out of Al’s sight. So we would take turns sneaking into a boiler room near the locker room to eat while sitting on one of the pipes.

We weren’t the only ones who believed Al saw and heard everything going on within the Coliseum’s walls.

After the Raiders pulled out an 18-16 win over the Buccaneers in 1981, I witnessed an emotional postgame outburst from an angry Tampa Bay coach John McKay in a closed locker room.

“We deserved this game!” a teary-eyed McKay shouted to his players before suddenly looking up at an overhead air vent and barking, “I know you’re probably listening to us right now Al, you (double expletive).”

One thing that was out in the open all season was the Raiders’ dubious future in Oakland past the ’81 season. It was even on the minds of the teams who came into Oakland, which actually proved beneficial one time.

Shortly before a Monday Night Football game against the Steelers, one of their equipment managers approached me with a plan. Since it could be the Raiders’ last season in Oakland, he was putting me in charge of carrying water bottles out to the Steelers’ huddle during timeouts. He then told me to call my parents and tell them to watch for me on TV.

The first time I took water out to their huddle that night my mind was in a fog. Was I really here on the field next to Mean Joe Greene, Jack Lambert, Jack Ham and Mel Blount? I quickly got my answer when I realized Mean Joe was asking me to give him water.

My next time out to their huddle was much more uncomfortable as a few Steelers were yelling at a woozy Lambert to get off the field, and have himself checked out. A defiant Lambert used a string of expletives to let his teammates know he was staying in the game.

There was also plenty of uneasiness at the final home game against the Bears. The passionate Raiders fans who showed up had to wonder if they were seeing their team for the last time. I certainly wondered if it would be my final day on the job.

I also remember being disappointed before the game that I wasn’t going to be fielding kicks from the Bears punter — helping catch punts during pre-game warmups was always my favorite part of the job. But the Bears rookie punt returner Jeff Fisher (who later went on to a long coaching career) wanted to handle those chores himself.

So I settled for doing some of the usual dirty work — mixing up powdered Gatorade and pouring enough cups to fill a table for the players, picking up used towels on the sideline and using a wire brush to clean off muddy cleats.

By the time the game was over and the Bears had beaten the Raiders 23-6, I had reconciled with my feelings.

As I was walking across the Coliseum field for the last time I literally had an uneasy, sinking feeling and I had to cover my head with a towel — yet it wasn’t the Raiders’ possible move out of town causing my angst. Related Articles Where does the NFL send money after fining 49ers’ Shanahan, Raiders’ Gruden over face masks?

How Raiders’ Tom Cable makes plug and play a reality on offensive line

Raiders face more challenges with Patriots’ Cam Newton than they did with Tom Brady

Inside the Raiders: How players, teams manage a laundry list of injuries in brutal sport

NFL Week 3 picks: 49ers star off-Broadway again; Raiders un-Tuck it

I kept slipping and sinking into the mushy, muddy turf as part of my final on-field duty of toting a heavy bag of the Bears footballs from the field to their locker room. The towel? As any Raiders fan would understand, it was just standard postgame garb for protection from the hundreds of dive-bombing seagulls.

While none of us will ever miss dodging the seagulls at Raiders games, it was still a reminder of an important lesson we all learned at the Coliseum over the years — you had to take the bad with the good.