Move Is Clearly the Work of Art : NFL: League may be stampeding toward a world in which teams no longer are beholden to their cities.

Those who believe two wrongs make a right should be thrilled by the signed contract pledging the transfer of the Browns from Cleveland to Baltimore. Citizens old enough to recall the former identity of the baseball team Baltimore now embraces may consider the latest move entirely appropriate, if not the fulfillment of some perverse destiny. All others not residing in the vicinity of Chesapeake Bay are invited to bemoan another step in the decline of civilization as we know it.

Although the governor of Maryland joined team owner Art Modell in expressing condolences to the jilted Ohio city during the official announcement Monday, Cleveland was not the sole victim of what some may identify as financial progress. Every other community in the country that boasts a club in the National Football League, and a stadium not configured to maximize profits, has been placed on notice that it could be next. Although blackmail long has been an economic weapon for professional sports franchises, the clandestine deal between the Browns and the Maryland Stadium Authority revealed over the weekend raises the stakes even as it invalidates the emotional response between a team and its fans.

Cleveland isn’t just a good football town, it is one of the best. The massive municipal stadium on the lakefront was one of the building blocks of the modern National Football League. Ernie Accorsi, the assistant general manager of the Giants and a man who previously worked as a top-level executive of both the Browns and the Baltimore Colts, credited the exhibition doubleheaders that drew crowds in excess of 80,000 to Cleveland Stadium over the course of 10 summers with enhancing the image of pro football throughout the country.

Of course, it was the Colts’ victory over the New York Giants in sudden-death overtime at Yankee Stadium in 1958 that many cite as the most significant step in the sport’s emergence as a national attraction. “If (Pat Summerall) doesn’t kick that field goal (through the snow),” Accorsi noted Monday, “the Browns play the Colts in the championship game.” If nothing else, that would have provided another twist to Monday’s development.

Eventually, the teams met in two title games. The Colts won the second in 1968, earning the right to represent the NFL in Super Bowl III, where they were embarrassed by the American Football League’s New York Jets. Four years earlier, the Browns crushed Baltimore, 27-0, in Cleveland.

“I got to Cleveland in 1984, just in time for the 20th anniversary celebration of the Browns’ last title,” Accorsi recalled. “They introduced the players in the ballroom of the Sheraton-Cleveland and I was thinking, ‘I hate these guys.’ But the passion of both towns for football was so similar. I was in Cleveland for five consecutive playoff appearances and then a 3-13 season and I can tell you there was never apathy.”

In retrospect, it was more understandable when the Colts departed Baltimore in the middle of the night for Indianapolis because the owner, Bob Irsay, was an irrational tyrant who offended the entire city and virtually destroyed the organization before he succumbed to the lure of a better deal in the Midwest. Al Davis was considered a rogue operator when he pulled the Raiders out of Oakland, where the support was tremendous. Bill Bidwill removed his Cardinals from one devastated market to open another in Phoenix. And the Rams were sabotaged by Georgia Frontiere’s mismanagement in Anaheim, making her relocation in St. Louis almost inevitable.

But Modell has been a pillar of the community in Cleveland and a major establishment figure for most of his 35 years in the league, even a key negotiator in past television contracts. A native New Yorker, he owned season tickets to the Giants back when there was no waiting list. For all the comforts of Giants Stadium, he frequently commented during his team’s trips to the Meadowlands how much he missed Yankee Stadium.

For someone with a romantic attachment to the game, for someone who counted himself among those who acted in the best interest of the league, the decision is a particularly damaging blow to credibility. If Modell is willing to abandon an NFL stronghold in order to keep up with the Jerry Joneses and other new money managers, then where does it end? Unlike its major professional rivals, football does not suffer from labor unrest. But now it may have a more insidious problem.

Consider that poor befuddled baseball has acted more responsibly. The Indians remained in Cleveland through almost four decades of bad management, dreadful attendance and dismal results only to rise from the ashes in conjunction with the opening of a splendid new ballpark, Jacobs Field. The rejuvenated city recently celebrated its first World Series appearance in 41 years and, while basking in the national spotlight, called attention to the new arena next door and the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, which opened on the lakefront in September.

Apparently, that was more than Modell could bear. Browns fans historically may have supported the team in great numbers, but he still had a decrepit stadium with little of the corporate revenue available to other franchises. And the kind of improvements on which the citizens were scheduled to vote Tuesday would be mostly cosmetic. In short, he suffered from an edifice complex.

Accorsi previously served as a special adviser on a committee formed to attract an NFL expansion franchise to Baltimore. In that capacity, he was responsible for selling all 100 sky suites and all 7,500 club seats in the proposed stadium, the revenue from which will be turned over to the Browns. That income alone, Accorsi said, is enough to cover the nut of operating a team. “Everything else,” he said, “is gravy.” In the context of the future, the infamous Dawg Pound not only seems quaint but largely irrelevant.

There was a time when pro football was perceived as a blue-collar sport that thrived in blue-collar towns. No longer, not with the advent of luxury suites and seat licenses. Even in prehistoric Green Bay, the stadium is ringed with sky boxes. Accorsi said that 25 years ago he paid $2.50 to watch the contending Bullets play at the Civic Arena. After joining the Giants last year, he went to Madison Square Garden and spent $65 for similar proximity to the Knicks.

“I guess baseball and football were the last to go [corporate],” he said. But now football appears to be stampeding toward a brave new world in which teams no longer are beholden to their cities but to their custom-designed stadiums and with such breathtaking speed that the NFL may soon see the wisdom in designating an official moving company.