Colts’ Marching Band Refuses to Give Up Although Team Is Gone

The Baltimore Colts Marching Band refuses to disband, even though its team belongs to another city.

They still strike up the Colts’ fight song, and last Sunday the 160-member troupe entertained the crowd at the NFL game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Browns at Cleveland.

“They’re coming on one condition,” Browns’ General Manager Ernie Accorsi said before the appearance. “I told them they have to play the song, ‘Let’s Go, You Baltimore Colts’, and not the ‘Ohio State Buckeye Battle Cry.’ ”

The Colts’ band was left Coltless in March 1984 when owner Robert Irsay, in a middle-of-the-night move, spirited the team to Indianapolis.

“We want to show the NFL that Irsay was wrong. . . . that the spirit and enthusiasm for NFL football is very much alive in the city,” said John Ziemann, the band’s bass drummer and public relations director.

After the Irsay move, the band had to be selective about playing the fight song because it sometimes drew hisses, director Art Schmersal said.

Colts fans still boo trucks from the moving company that hauled the team’s belongings to Indianapolis. But for the Cleveland trip, another local moving firm has donated a van and two drivers to transport the band’s equipment and luggage.

“They thought it would be a public service and help their image,” Ziemann said. “I just hope they bring our stuff back, and don’t head for Indianapolis by mistake after the game.”

There was never any question that the volunteer group would continue a tradition that began in 1947 when the original Colts were in the All-America Conference.

Members marched and played long after that franchise folded in 1951, and even before the moving vans reached Indianapolis two years ago, Ziemann said he knew the band would go on.

“They told me we were staying together,” Ziemann said. “They weren’t asking, they were telling. We felt like orphans, but we had each other.”

Almost immediately, the band was offered financial aid from WMAR-TV, where Ziemann is employed as a studio technician. Band uniforms were stored after a postseason cleaning, and were not at the Colt complex when the moving vans arrived.

Though there was fear the Colts would claim the uniforms and instruments, which were assigned to individual members, Irsay’s now-estranged wife, Harriet, intervened.

“We signed an agreement under which the Colts relinquished title to the uniforms and instruments,” Ziemann said.

Since being left on its own, the band has increased its size by 30 members. The current total of 160 includes musicians, cheerleaders, color guard, flag line, and staff members.

A $5,000 debt has been paid off with receipts from booking dates and raffles.

The trip to Cleveland, the band’s first overnight foray since 1968, was financed in part by the Browns, and a one-time grant from the Maryland Department of Economic and Community Development.

The next major project will be to replace the old uniforms, which band director Art Schmersal says are “held together by safety pins and Elmer’s glue.”

The band, meantime, is held together by the spirit and determination of members like Lou Graber, 56, the captain of the color guard.

Graber has emphysema and was told in 1984 that he had a 10% chance of living until this year.