FORT LAUDERDALE — To plumb the depths of emotional attachments to the Colts franchise, you have to understand the story of the Baltimore Colts Marching Band.
The band was founded in September of 1947, along with the Colts original franchise. When that team dissolved in financial disarray in 1950, the band played on.
Two years later, one of the NFL’s original franchises, a nomadic outfit that began as the Dayton Triangles, with stops in Boston, Brooklyn, New York and Dallas, resettled in Baltimore. The Colts name was revived and the band welcomed them home.
For the next 30 years, the Baltimore Colts were one of the cornerstone franchises of a growing NFL. They won an NFL Championship, beating the New York Giants 23-17 in 1958 in what was dubbed The Greatest Game Ever Played, after the legendary quarterback Johnny Unitas engineered an 80-yard drive in overtime, capped by an Alan Ameche one-yard plunge.
The Colts of the ’50s, ’60s and into the ’70s, were a powerhouse and as much a sporting institution in Baltimore as the Maple Leafs in Toronto, the Canadiens in Montreal or the Red Sox in Boston. But there was trouble on the horizon.
Just a few months after the Colts defeated the Dallas Cowboys in Super Bowl V on a last-play field goal by Jim O’Brien, the team’s original owner Carroll Rosenbloom was fed up. He was feuding with the city and the local press over the issue of a new stadium to replace the decrepit Memorial Stadium, shared by the Colts and baseball Orioles.
Rosenbloom sold the football team to Bob Irsay and fled to the west coast where he would own the Los Angeles Rams. Irsay spent the rest of the 1970s battling government over the stadium issue.
Irsay was a bully and a drunk whose own parents and siblings found him repulsive. His mother claimed, on her death bed, that Bob Irsay had bilked she and her husband of their life savings. “He’s a devil on earth, that one,” she said in a Sports Illustrated article.
Then, on March 29, 1984, Irsay did the unthinkable. In the middle of the night, a fleet of Mayflower moving trucks rolled out of the Memorial Stadium parking lot, headed for Indianapolis, not just with the Colts equipment, but the hearts of Baltimore’s grief-stricken fans.
The Baltimore Colts were dead and the Indianapolis Colts were born.
Still, the Baltimore Colts Marching Band played on through pain and anger.
Film-maker and Colts fan Barry Levinson was moved to make a documentary on the band, The Band That Wouldn’t Die.
“When I came across the story of the Baltimore Colts Marching Band, and how it continued to march despite the loss of its team, I found something uniquely Baltimorian about it,” says Levinson in a personal statement on the ESPN website.
“Here was a band that played on without a team, marching at civic events, Thanksgiving Day parades, and half-time shows for other NFL teams, keeping football alive in Baltimore. None of them were paid, yet the band held a membership of 150 strong for the 12 years Baltimore didn’t have an NFL team.”
The Colts, meanwhile, were not an immediate smash hit in Indianapolis. They were received with open arms and the Hoosier Dome was filled to capacity but when the team didn’t win consistently, crowds dropped off through the late 1980s. Following a 4-12 season in 1993, they opened the 1994 season to an all-time low crowd of 43,000.
By 1996, Bob Irsay had been incapacitated by a stroke and his son, Jim, the team’s general manager, battled his step-mother for ownership of the team. He eventually won that battle in 1997 and the seeds for the dynasty to follow were sown.
Jim Irsay, it must be added, is as unlike his father as he could be: football-savvy, good-hearted, patient and generous.
Irsay hired Bill Polian as general manager in 1998. Polian’s first order of business was to draft Peyton Manning.
In the first decade of the millennium, no team in football has won more regular season games and, today, Irsay hopes to claim his second Super Bowl.
Even with their recent success, though, the Colts are a very different tale of two cities. A website run by former Baltimore Colts fans (coltsheritage.com) is lobbying the Pro Football Hall of Fame to separate the historical records of the Baltimore Colts from the Indianapolis Colts. Their reasoning? “What does Johnny Unitas mean to Indianapolis? No more than Peyton Manning means to Baltimore.”
And what of the marching band? They remain the Energizer bunny of marching bands.
For two years after the Ravens came to Baltimore, they kept the Colts name but in 1998, they became the Baltimore Ravens Marching Band.
Still making beautiful music after 53 tumultuous years.
ken.fidlin@sunmedia.ca
