As it happened, I was on the telephone with Mayor Libby Schaaf of Oakland on Monday when the N.F.L.’s chief pirate called to say that his fellow corsairs would steal away her city’s beloved Raiders.

It was early afternoon and the mayor had been describing her efforts to convince Commissioner Roger Goodell that a public gift of 55 acres, major improvements and private financing added up to a heck of a deal for his private enterprise crew.

“My argument,” she told me, “is yes, we cannot put the same kind of public dollars into this as Las Vegas. But ——”

Her phone rang and she checked her caller ID. It was Goodell. He told her that the N.F.L. owners, fantastically wealthy men all, just had voted to commit grand theft franchise and plop the Oakland Raiders in a patch of desert just south of Las Vegas.