30 Years Ago, They Were Baltimore's Colts

March 28, 1984 would be the last day for over 11 years that Baltimore would be represented in the National Football League.  It would be the last day of ther Baltimore Colts.  For that night, Mayflower moving vans with Indiana license plates would arrive under the cover of snow and darkness and take the team's belongings, history, and presence from its complex in Owings Mills, and move it to Indianapolis and the promise of the brand spanking new RCA Dome.  Which has since been demolished.

Here's a story Baltimore's Channel 2 ran on this a few years ago.  There are a lot of Baltimore sports and political icons in this story.

I recall the morning of March 29, 1984 very vividly.  My grandmother woke me up for school to tell me "that goddamnsonofabitch Irsay is moving that team.  And the Mayor is crying.  Bless his heart."  Almost 40 years after moving to Howard County, my family still considered themselves Baltimoreans and so William Donald Schaefer was the political leader we cared most about.  Hugh Nichols?  Who cares?

By 1984 the Colts were not a good team.  Baltimore's rabid football fan base was stilled.  In part because of the team's ineptitude, in part because of owner Bob Irsay's annual shopping sprees over the final few years of the Colts' tenure to move the team.  We became jaded of all the threats.  He won't move the team, like Al Davis had moved the Oakland Raiders a few years before.  That was Al Davis.  He's crazy.  Irsay is just a drunk.  He won't move the team.  He won't.

And on that snowy March night the city that had become accustomed to Ameche's and McCafferty's and Gino's and the Golden Arm and Colt Bowling Lanes, and The Big Wheel and Loudy and games that started at 2pm on Sundays, and that had become so accustomed to it's football team being part of its fiber, its identity-- that city learned that it could be removed.  And what a painful, civic soul-crushing extraction it was.

And like a lot of us do after losing a long-time love, we searched for awhile for our identity.  Baltimore tried to find a replacement.  For purposes of economic power and social prestige, to be considered a "major league city", for sure, but also, to reimplant football into the civic soul.  We tried alternatives, but the USFL Stars played in College Park and the CFL Stallions-- well, they captured the spirit and imagination quite well, but it wasn't the same.  We tried to go the NFL expansion route.  Start fresh.  Look at the uniforms of the would have been Baltimore Bombers!  Alas, the expansion teams became the Carolina Panthers and Jacksonville Jaguars.  The former franchise a great idea, the latter one, still a horrible one.  No worries, they will be in London or LA soon.

So ultimately what we had to do was play the game that was played on us-- coerce another team's owner to take a sweetheart deal and come to Charm City.  There were the Cardinals.  And the Bengals.  And the Jets.  Even, briefly, the Raiders and the Redskins.  And with every rejection Baltimore and Maryland sweeted the pot.  And eventually, Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell, suffering the same circumstances of lacksadaisical fan base, indifferent civic leadership, and financial distress, took the deal.  And the Ravens were born.

And let's not forget the first years of the Ravens' relationship with Baltimore weren't the best.  Why did we steal another city's team after another city stole ours?  What are we doing taking this lineman Ogden with our first pick?  And who's this Lewis kid from Miami?  Purple and black?  Vinny sucks.  Five years and a Super Bowl victory later, the love affair was on.

But one loves never quite like the first time and even though some of my all-time most hated football players have played for the Colts-- those being Peyton Manning, Marvin Harrison, Dwight Freeney, and the most overrated offensive lineman of all time, Jeff Saturday-- even though those first several seasons I wanted the damn dome to collapse with the team, the fans and the Irsays still in it, I started to see that the Colts had meaning to the Indianapolis community and I thought, "Good on ya!"  I started to not begrudge them their team. 

Still, the Ravens were one Lee Evans drop from a trip to Super Bowl 46 in Indianapolis, and I do think they would've beaten the New York Giants.  Hoisting the Lombardi on the 50 yard line of Lucas Oil Stadium would've been sweet.  But one year later in the Superdome was plenty fine too.

So I am bereft of anger and sadness for the royal blue and white.  I have moved on.  We have the Ravens and Orioles Opening Day is a few days away.  Let Indianapolis have their team.  In fact, this season the Colts ought to be pretty good.

But it wasn't lost on me that in Ray Lewis's final home game, the Ravens whacked the Colts in M&T Bank stadium.  There still exists a certain sweetness in beating that team, one that makes me think that a victory over them should somehow be worth one and a half wins.

Happy Something on a Stick Day!  My choice is toast!

Let's be careful out there.

Comments

[Josh Friedman]

On the one hand, I was always intrigued by Art Donovan's take on the move, that there were far greater tragedies in world than a football team leaving. On the other hand, a lot of parallels can be drawn between current events and the departure of the Colts. As an aside, research has shown that there are only two sports franchises in the United States where their host city would be financially justified in building a new stadium rather than allow them to relocate...the Green Bay Packers and the Boston Celtics. For Baltimore however, as you point out, the Colts departure struck a nerve. There was a natural instinct to take their departure personally, as though we were not loyal fans, than we couldn't support a football team. The notion that the region could only support the Washington Redskins inflamed our fear of being perceived as a second-rate city compared to Washington (Dan Snyder still owns the territory rights over Baltimore if the Arena League ever returns). The NFL was just starting to realize the potential of television revenue and was seeking to spread its franchises out to a US population that was moving south and west. The truth is the departure of the Baltimore Colts was the result of cascade of failures. Yes, Irsay was a jerk who deserved plenty of blame. But the city and state knew for more than a decade that Memorial Stadium was antiquated (was never really state of the art to begin with). Our elected leaders had been warned since 1972 that both the Orioles and Colts might depart if Memorial Stadium wasn't replaced (hence a proposal to build the Baltodome). But our elected leaders, save for Don Schaefer, were unwilling to commit public funds. Some were even unwilling to spend tax dollars for something as simple as fixing Memorial Stadium's plumbing. The General Assembly showed Baltimore little empathy when they were unwilling to build a stadium in Baltimore and even proposed relocating the Orioles to the Laurel-Bowie area. And of course, this all brings us back to Irsay, the terrible product he put on the field, and the Baltimore fans who reacted the same way fans in any city would, by not buying tickets. For that matter, if you look at the Colts attendance numbers, they really weren't that bad compared to other losing teams. Also note, the Colts departure happened on the heals of the NFL players strike.

When I read the story of the Colts departure from Baltimore (it was just slightly before my time), I instantly think the the dilemma facing Columbia over its village centers. There is an instinct to take it as a personal swipe when we are told our village "cannot support" a grocery store, or other retail, when all the income data proves we can. We resent the premise that we should accept poor quality stores the same way Baltimore football fans were expected to support a heinously performing team. We see retailers consolidating the same way the NFL wanted to. (BTW, we blame the internet for the demise of newspapers when a significant part of a newspaper's revenue decline is the consolidation of retailers who are buying less ads). The conversation then turns to a political debate about what role tax dollars and the government should play in it all. Except this time, we're no longer talking about how people spend their Sunday afternoons. This debate is about what kind of quality of life we will all have. Lets not repeat the mistakes of the past.

[Simon Najar]

Well said Josh! I remember Julian Lapides as the stick in the mud almost derailing the study for a downtown stadium after the Colts left.

And there wasn't much national outcry when the Colts left, unlike the Browns/Ravens move, and the crap the former NFL commissioner said about the losers in the expansion building a museum.

After paying second fiddle, Baltimore has champions in the Colts, Stars, Stallions and Ravens.

I do wish the Colts name, uniform, records and colors had been left behind or retired. The Colts and probably Cowboys have the best uniforms for past 50 years.