Out of Sight, but Not Out of Mind : Pro football: Mosebar stays close to the Raiders while he tries to overcome an injury that has impaired his vision.

Don Mosebar always knew that a career-threatening injury could be only a play away.

In his 13 seasons at center for the Raiders--he had started 93 consecutive games--after eight as an offensive lineman in high school and college, Mosebar had seen plenty of injuries that put players out of football.

On Aug. 3, in a morning scrimmage against the Dallas Cowboys at Austin, Tex., it was his turn. Whether football has ended for him is still up in the air.

Mosebar suffered a ruptured eye globe, an injury one doctor said is far more common in severe auto accidents than on a football field.

Mosebar was blocking Dallas’ Chad Hennings on an inside running play. Mosebar was not poked, nor was he scratched, but he dropped to his knees clutching his eye, blood pouring down his face.

“All I remember is a big thud,” said Mosebar, 34. “I just felt the whole area of my face get smashed. It was probably the most amount of pain that I’ve ever experienced from an injury.”

Hennings told the Contra Costa Times, “He was on me, but I really don’t know what happened. I didn’t think I got a finger in there, which was verified when I looked at the film. I can’t tell you exactly what it was. He pulled back and then he was bleeding.”

Said Raider Coach Mike White: “In all of my [37] years coaching, I have never seen an injury like that.”

Mosebar was quickly driven off the field on a golf cart and within an hour was in emergency surgery to repair a two-inch tear in the back of his eye.

“I’ve never seen a sports injury this severe,” said retina specialist Armitage Harper, the lead surgeon. “We usually see this with car accidents. That’s how forcible the blow was.”

Raider quarterback Jeff Hostetler, who was on the field at the time, said that he knew immediately Mosebar was seriously hurt.

“Donnie’s as tough as they come, and I knew that he was in a lot of pain because he didn’t get up and was groaning,” Hostetler said. “He never took his hand away from his eye, even as they put him on the cart.”

Steve Wisniewski, who has played alongside Mosebar at left guard for the last six seasons, was unnerved by the injury.

“It’s so shocking because injuries happen all of the time, but they’re usually a knee, ankle or shoulder,” Wisniewski said. “Just to see it happen in a regular practice play is still a shock.”

Twelve days after the emergency surgery, Mosebar underwent a 12-hour operation at Doheny Eye Institute in Los Angeles, basically to put the eye back together.

“The injury he suffered often results in the total loss of the eye and blindness,” said Doheny surgeon Pedro F. Lopez. “When the intactness of the eye is broken, it is like squeezing a grape.”

Mosebar said the seriousness of the injury didn’t immediately occur to him.

“The only time I really got scared was the next day after the injury, and I thought about not getting the vision back in the left eye and then losing sight in my right eye and not being able to see my family,” he said.

He has had two more eye operations, with perhaps two more ahead, and is spending his time at home with his wife and four children in Manhattan Beach.

“My kids just see me hanging around more now,” he said. “They know that I’m hurt and not playing. They probably think that it’s neat that I’m around more. My wife now has to take care of five kids and not just four.”

Mosebar has had plenty of time for reflection.

“I still don’t know exactly how it happened, but the blow must have been from a perfect angle,” he said, “because the hole to get through my facemask is not that big.”

He said he has no ill feelings toward Henning.

“Those things happen,” he said. “You can’t hold any bitterness. It would eat you up.”

But for Mosebar, who has played in 176 NFL games and been to the Pro Bowl three times since he was the Raiders’ first-round selection from USC in 1983, having a football season off is not an easy adjustment.

“I’m sort of bummed about not getting a chance to play in Oakland because my rookie year was the Raiders’ first season playing in Los Angeles,” he said. “It’s not that I didn’t like playing here in Los Angeles [where the Raiders played for 13 seasons], but we didn’t always play in front of a full house. There are just excellent fans up there.”

Mosebar keeps in regular touch with his teammates, who still practice at El Segundo. He has accompanied the team to home games in Oakland and even made the trip to Kansas City two weeks ago.

“I guess, I have to enjoy football through them now,” he said.

And for now, he is not even thinking about playing football again. The most important thing is regaining complete vision.

“Right now, I can count the fingers on my hand when I place it in front of my face,” he said. “I couldn’t even do that before. All I could see was black.”

He has lost 18 pounds since the injury and said, “I have such a long rehabilitation ahead of me, I can’t think about if I will ever play football again. There are so many variables and healing time ahead. It’s going to be a long process.

“I’ve always evaluated my career one year at a time in the off-season. I never really thought about what I would do after football because I made a commitment to myself that as long as I was playing, I would give the most to my family and prepare myself for the sport. I figured that I would decide what I’ll do whenever I was done playing.”

Lopez is pleased with Mosebar’s recovery so far and does not rule out a comeback by the Raider center.

“In the next three or four months, maybe sooner, we will have a better idea,” he said. “But so far, the eye is going much better than we had hoped for. There is a possibility now that he will be able to go back and play again next season.”