Baltimore Waiting for the ‘Whatevers’

A friend of mine who lives in Baltimore is eagerly anticipating the arrival of the Rams, Raiders, Redskins and that Canadian Football League expansion entry to his fair city and its suburbs.

“We expect to have at least five football teams here very soon,” my friend says. “We’re also talking to the Patriots, the Bengals and the Buccaneers. We’ll take any team. I mean, people here are excited about the Canadian league. We don’t have the team yet, but they’ve already hired a coach and named the team. The Colts. The Baltimore Colts of the Canadian Football League. We’re bringing back the Colts.”

The latest rumor making the rounds in Baltimore, according to my friend, “has us asking USC to move here. We’ve heard about the earthquake damage at the Coliseum. They’ve got to play somewhere.”

Baltimore needs these football teams, my friend says, because the city has been in a state of severe depression since the original Colts left in 1984 and has “a massive inferiority complex. People here actually think they have a superiority complex--they’re better than everyone else--but it’s just the opposite. They really won’t feel good about themselves until they have a football team called the ‘Baltimore’ whatevers.”

That is why Jack Kent Cooke’s plan to move the Redskins to Laurel, Md., a working-class burg 20 miles to the south of Baltimore, is regarded a half-baked solution at best. Cooke’s team will still be called the “Washington” Redskins. Baltimore wants the “Baltimore Redskins.” Or the “Baltimore Rams.” Or the “Baltimore Raiders.” Or all three.

Bring down the Patriots and Baltimore can have its own division. The NFC West, East, Central and Greater Baltimore-And-Vicinity.

Final standings, 1995:

Balt. Patriots 13-3

Balt. Raiders 11-5

Laurel Redskins 8-8

Balt. Rams 5-11 *

(* Rams go 0-6 within division. Jerome Bettis rushes for more than 1,200 yards again, triggering the automatic free-agency clause in his contract. Average attendance dips to 37,000. John Shaw contemplates move to St. Louis, Hartford, San Antonio or Amarillo, Tex., which is offering an unprecedented “sweetheart” deal: City plans to buy off Rams’ regular-season and playoff opponents, thereby enabling Chuck Knox to finally coach in a Super Bowl.)

Maryland-as-football-mecca will take some getting used to, considering its heritage. Once they took the Colts away, what is there?

John Hopkins University produces outstanding vascular surgeons and lacrosse players. The University of Maryland has placed many basketball teams in the NCAA tournament, many more on NCAA probation, but is fairly nondescript on the gridiron. Boomer Esiason played there. So did Frank Reich, my friend proudly notes. “Maryland’s known for its backup quarterbacks,” he says.

Baltimore itself is renowned as the birthplace of aluminum siding, which no doubt makes it appealing to Ram quarterbacks, and Bromo Seltzer, which makes it attractive to Ram coaches. Lately, though, Baltimore has become known as the city ready and willing to build a beautiful 60,000-seat football stadium across the street from Camden Yards, lease it to the first caller for $1 a year and, for a limited time only, throw in all the revenue from parking and concessions.

The Rams and the Raiders are lining up at the door, and it isn’t because of the blue crab at Bo Brooks.

“They’re offering to build them a new stadium for free,” says my friend, who begins to turn cynical at this point.

“Instead of saying, ‘Let’s spend $200 million on prisons in Maryland,’ they say, ‘Let’s spend $200 million on a new stadium so the criminals can terrorize the fans at football games.’ ”

I didn’t realize Baltimore had such a crime problem, I say to my friend.

“Well, Baltimore’s right next to D.C.,” he says, “so, by comparison, it seems like a garden spot. But we’ve broken the city record for most murders for two consecutive years now. Last year, there were close to 400 in the downtown area.”

My friend mentions Barry Levinson, who, in 10 years, has gone from directing warm, nostalgic glimpses of life in Baltimore during the 1950s (“Diner”) to producing a television series set in contemporary Baltimore titled “Homicide.” In one episode, a woman is shot while walking out of Camden Yards after an Oriole game.

Baltimore wants to feel good about itself again and, as Unitas once said, professional football is the opiate of the masses. So this is what Anaheim and Los Angeles are competing against--a city desperate enough to give Al Davis its key, a city desperate enough to want the Rams.

Robert Irsay did this to Baltimore. Robert Irsay and Paul Tagliabue. Irsay pirated the Colts away to Indianapolis while Baltimore was asleep, Tagliabue awarded the NFL’s last two expansion franchises to Charlotte and Jacksonville, thus depriving the world of “Boogie” Weinglass and the Baltimore Bombers.

“Actually,” my friend says, “the fans here voted and the name they came up with for the expansion team was the Ravens, because Edgar Allan Poe was born in Baltimore. But the team went with Bombers because ‘Boogie’ Weinglass makes bomber jackets.”

Just as well, my friend says.

“I just couldn’t see anyone rooting for a football team whose motto was ‘Nevermore.’ ”