Look Back in Anger : Baltimore’s Bitterness Over Departure of the Colts Hasn’t Lessened

Nowhere’s Team wakes up some mornings and finds itself in the most unusual places.

Like last November, backed against their goal line in Buffalo’s Rich Stadium, facing an all-out Bill blitz, listening to this chant:

“Dee- fense! Dee- fense! Dee- fense!”

Trying desperately to hear the signals, the Indianapolis Colts turned toward the end zone stands to see who was making the racket.

They looked twice.

The loudmouths were nearly 200 fans holding musical instruments and decked out in blue, white and silver uniforms. They were wearing “Colts” on their backs, and horseshoes across their chests.

Their own marching band.

Cheering against them.

Amid the din, the ball was snapped. Quarterback Jeff George, unable to communicate the play, was hauled down in the end zone by Henry Jones for a safety.

The Colts’ band members embraced. The Bills gave them the thumbs-up sign.

Trudging from the field, several Colts turned to the musicians with their hands out as if to ask, “What happened?”

John Ziemann, band president and drummer, would have been glad to clue them in.

His is the Baltimore Colt band.

Those beaten football players belong to a team that was once the Baltimore Colts, but left town 10 years ago, in the middle of the night, for Indianapolis.

“Hey, we didn’t pull those guys out of Baltimore, it’s not our fault.” Ziemann said recently. “They did this to themselves. They’ve got to live with it.”

The franchise in Indianapolis should be spending the fall reveling in its 41-year history, its three NFL championships, its nine Hall of Famers.

Instead, it cannot even hold an old-timers’ day.

Because none of the old-timers would show up.

The old Colts, from Johnny Unitas to John Mackey to Tom Matte, openly despise the Indianapolis team.

The new Colts, with owner’s son Jim Irsay working on the bridges burned by his father, Robert, are tired of being asked to apologize.

During a time of celebration everywhere else in the league, nowhere do things seem quite so sad.

*

Nowhere’s Team won a Super Bowl once. But lost the trophy.

It now sits in a restaurant in suburban Baltimore, a steak and prime rib place once owned by the late Don McCafferty, who coached the Colts to their only Super Bowl victory.

“You’re darn right we got it back,” former running back Matte said. “Didn’t belong to them. It was the least they could do.”

Nowhere’s Team competed in what was called “the greatest game ever played.” But lost the ball.

It now sits in a brick building in downtown Baltimore, the site of the birthplace of Babe Ruth.

“Got that back, too,” Matte said. “Got almost everything back.”

Nowhere’s Team was delighted when Mackey, a tight end, was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame two years ago, the first player to be so honored since the Colts moved to Indianapolis.

But Mackey refused to adhere to tradition by accepting his ring at halftime of one of his old team’s games.

Instead, he accepted it at halftime of an exhibition between the Miami Dolphins and New Orleans Saints.

A game that was played in Baltimore.

“People at the Hall of Fame said, ‘John, you have to go to Indianapolis to accept this ring,’ ” Mackey said. “I told them, ‘I will do it in Baltimore. That is where I played.’ ”

Nowhere’s Team has a media guide filled with memorable records accompanied by memorable names; Berry, Marchetti, Ameche.

Unitas, a Hall of Fame quarterback, said he wants those names erased.

“We don’t want anything to do with them,” Unitas said. “I don’t even want my name in their record book. If they wanted to do the right thing, they would erase every mention of me and every other old Baltimore player.”

As part of the league’s 75th anniversary celebration, some teams are inviting former stars to return as honorary captains--Jim Otto for the Raiders, Dick Butkus for the Chicago Bears, Don Coryell for the San Diego Chargers, the entire 1964 and 1965 AFL championship teams for the Buffalo Bills.

For the moment, Nowhere’s Teams has no plans to honor anyone.

Officials of Nowhere’s Team say they have often reached out to their past, inviting old Colts to all sorts of functions, only to be rebuffed.

The old Colts say those officials are lying.

“You would love to honor those old teams . . . and maybe as time passes, we’ll be allowed to do that a little more,” said Jim Irsay, team vice president.

Countered Matte: “They have never asked us to do anything. We were the franchise that put the NFL on the map, and suddenly we don’t count for anything.”

The Colts offer proof of their attention to former players by way of the inordinate amount of space in their media guide--14 pages--that is devoted to club history and individual honors.

Yet Mackey said his wife, figuring the team was no longer using his number, was stunned last year when she watched a Colt wearing No. 88 streaking across their TV screen.

“She said, ‘Where is that guy going with your number? Why are they still using your number?’ ” Mackey recalled. “I told her, ‘It’s OK. I didn’t play for that team.’ ”

Mackey’s number never was officially retired and he was inducted into the Hall of Fame about the same time the league issued a rule prohibiting the retiring of jerseys because of a shortage of numbers.

Nonetheless, “They just haven’t reached out to us,” Mackey said of Colts’ management.

The result has been an Indianapolis Colt team that in 10 years has had only three winning records during that time. Only one playoff appearance, and that during the 1987 strike season. Faceless coaches, nameless players, drifters and schemers.

Imagine the Dodgers without their Brooklyn connections, without all those years of watching the late Roy Campanella coaching from his wheelchair in spring training.

Wonder how many recent players helped by Campanella appreciated that he never played in Los Angeles?

Or imagine the Raiders without the living memories of Oakland heroes Ken Stabler and Fred Biletnikoff, who also never played in Los Angeles.

“Tradition is such an important part of football . . . it’s a real shame that so many bridges have been burned with the Colts,” said William Hudnut, former Indianapolis mayor. “How wonderful it would be for them to have just one old-timers’ day.”

*

Of course, none of this is really about numbers or rings or media.

This is about moving vans.

“It’s not so much that they left Baltimore, but how they left,” Mackey said. “That’s something people will never forget.”

Indianapolis city and club officials say the operation was whisked away in moving vans on the night of March 28, 1984, because the state of Maryland was prepared to take control of the franchise the next day.

“We had to move quickly or we would have never gotten out,” said Hudnut, mayor at the time.

If the Colts had stayed, team officials say, they would have had to endure a bleak future before dwindling crowds at outdated Memorial Stadium.

Three years before they left town, the Colts drew 16,941 to a home game, a franchise low.

In their final year in Baltimore, they drew more than 40,000 fans only three times in eight games.

They have topped that figure in all but one of 81 home games since then. And the exception was a 1987 strike game involving replacement players.

“They talk about all that passion--you get 20,000 in a stadium, and that’s passion?” Hudnut asked. “We didn’t steal the Colts. The city of Baltimore lost them.”

Former Colts say Irsay moved the team because he wasn’t committed to making it work.

“He promised the governor he wouldn’t do anything, then look what he did,” Unitas said. “And to the No. 1 franchise in the league!”

“Do you know how Unitas and I found out about the move?” Matte asked. “We heard it on the radio! They should call that team the Indianapolis Hoosiers. Because the Colts belongs here.”

In some ways, the Colts never left.

The Colts Marching Band, active since 1947, still practices once a week. There are still active Colt fan clubs.

Even though a lawsuit filed by the NFL prevents use of the Colts’ nickname, a successful Canadian Football League franchise has made its debut in Baltimore this year, attracting about 38,000 fans for five regular-season home games at Memorial Stadium.

Rather than adopt another nickname, the CFL team simply has none. Instead, during games the public address announcer pauses after saying, “The Baltimore CFL . . . .”

That allows the fans to fill in the blank with a burst of, “Colts!”

Against the wishes of NFL officials, who say Baltimore’s proximity to Washington--40 miles away--precludes the rebirth of a successful franchise there, state and local officials are trying to bring back the real thing by wooing the Rams.

Until, or if, the Rams decide to move, the old Colts prefer to look on the bright side.

“God bless Indianapolis,” said Matte, who then referred to Bob Irsay. “At least we got rid of the bastard.”

*

As for the Indianapolis Colts, well, they have finally decided to get on with their lives.

During the off-season, they rid themselves of 24 players who had competed in the final game last season and hired a new general manager, Bill Tobin, an architect of the great Chicago Bear teams of the mid-1980s.

Tobin’s first move was to make Marshall Faulk the No. 2 pick in the spring draft.

His second was to deride ESPN television draft “expert” Mel Kiper Jr. on the air after Kiper had criticized him for taking Faulk and linebacker Trev Alberts in the first round instead of one of the hot rookie quarterbacks.

That feisty attitude has rubbed off on the team. The Colts beat the Houston Oilers in the season opener, 45-21, before losing consecutive games at Tampa Bay and Pittsburgh.

They will probably not make the playoffs this season. But Faulk will probably be rookie of the year, and in November defensive lineman Steve Emtman is expected to make a comeback from two knee operations, and a .500 finish seems likely.

For once, Nowhere’s Team is openly not worried about where it has been, and what it has left behind.

“We’re here to stay, we’re here to play . . . and we are going to change the image of this organization and this ballclub,” Tobin said. “If people are going to take a swing at us, we’ll take a swing back.”

Even, perhaps, if those taking swings are named Unitas and Matte.

“We’ll just create our own history,” Tobin said.

That is probably what they were saying in Baltimore on Jan. 23, 1953.

That was the day the city excitedly welcomed the moving vans of a franchise that had come up from Dallas.

A franchise that had been called the Texans, but was renamed the Colts.