March 8, 2022 • 26 mins
Jim Duncan's rare athleticism made him a star on the Maryland State College football team, where he played offense, defense and special teams. In 1968, he was a fourth-round draft pick by the Baltimore Colts, and soon became the leading kickoff return man in the NFL, enjoying a level of celebrity and status that friends and family back in Lancaster could hardly imagine. New episodes coming each Tuesday, through March 16. To continue supporting work like this, visit heraldonline.com/podcasts and consider a digital subscription.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Long Shot is a production of McClatchy Studios and I
Heart Radio. M previously on Return, Men went out came here.
It really was a big town. Just the ranks to
people black sometime I'm associated with each other, were poor,
but we didn't know poor Mama always Bread, which was
(00:24):
an outstanding athlete from a little boy. He was good football,
baseball and basketball. We probably could have won pol a
little ye strange control LANs. I mean everybody you knew
what to speak, so most men bolt and lankster game.
(00:52):
This is the Orange Bowl. It will be jammed eighty
tho fans today Super Bowl Day. It's harder to imagine
brighter lights than the Super Bowl in a place further
from a dirt lot in Lancaster, South Carolina than the
Orange Bowl in Miami. Just before game time, it is
already filled. And believe me, it's been a tough ticket
(01:14):
for this game. For Jim Duncan, who was once to
stand out at bar Street High and now a star
on the rise for the Baltimore Colts. Seventy was the
best year of his life. Hi, everybody, this is Kurd
Goudy along with Joe Namath. You're in Miami. You're today.
It's the Baltimore Colts champs of the American Conference, the
Dallas Cowboys champs of the National Conference. Jim had left
(01:39):
his southern milltown in the early nineteen sixties. Some might
say escaped if they're not part of the Godollo right,
But that's Sunday in Miami. He was an NFL Swiss
Army knife on the cusp of stardom. In the eyes
of sixty million people were upon him. And now we're
going to take a unique look at the starting lineup.
(02:01):
You duncan number thirty five, the top took off the
turned man in the American Copper. From the poorest side
of Lancaster's Main Street, Jim had arrived at perhaps the
biggest game in the world, culminating in a play that
would go down in Colts history, the high point in
a life that soon began crumbling around him. From the
(02:27):
Herald McClatchy Studios and I Heart Radio, this is return man.
I'm Brett McCormick, and this is part two. From the
cotton Fields to glory. They turned longest bridge in the world,
spanning Chesapeake Bay is ready for service. In nineteen sixty four,
(02:47):
Jim Duncan left Lancaster bound for Maryland's Eastern Shore. As
the cars began to roll over the brand new bridge.
Each motorist is saving a hundred and twenty five miles
from the eastern end of the western Shore of Maryland.
The year he graduated from bar Street, Jim's high school
head coach, Sandy Gilliam had been offered the head coaching
job at Maryland State College in rural Princess Anne. That
(03:09):
was very loyal to friends and family alike. Rosie Gilliam
is Sandy's sun. When he left South Carolina, I guess
it went to Meryland State College. He took some of
the players that he had coached in high school. Obviously
he knew their talent, and it was his first recruiting
I guess tests to convince them to come, and that
made them the success that I think they were. Maryland
(03:34):
State College is now known as Maryland Eastern Shore, located
about a hundred and thirty miles from Baltimore. It's a
historically black college and was a safe harbor in a
remote corner of Maryland stalked by racial tensions. At the time,
Princess Anne had been the location of the last recorded
lynching in the state of Maryland. How can you tell
black people to be non violently and at the same
(03:56):
time condone the sinning a white killers. The summer before
Duncan arrived at college nearby, Cambridge, Maryland was in flames
after a visit from h Rap Brown, then the chairman
of the student Non Violent Coordinating Committee. We built the
country up, we will burn it down. You can quote that.
I say violence is necessary. Violence is a part of
(04:17):
America's culture. It is as American as cherry pie. Rosie
Williams's father was Jim's coach at Maryland State, and gilliam
remembers his family's home there became an oasis for the
football players and in the process, Rosie's parents got some
free babysitting out of it. Our parents, would you know,
(04:39):
I think they had almost manufacture of reason for them
to go out and they would have several players over
in our house. You know, they hang out in our basement,
play records. They would make sandwiches and leave mean a refrigerator.
These young men and women became my brother and I
babysitters and and at the same time they were quote
(05:00):
having fun. Rosie Gilliam rubbed elbows with some all time
grades at Maryland State. During the four years Duncan played
for the Hawks, twelve football players from the school went
on to the NFL. I'm sure on some levels we
were brandy, little kids kind of players because we're always
around them and there are heroes. I mean, we may
not appreciate that this player, that player was NFL player quality,
(05:22):
but if you're on the team, you were considered a
big person. And yeah, we'd hang out with them as
much as you know, a kid could hang out with
somebody ten or so years older than they were. Duncan
played offense, defense, and special teams for the Hawks. He
lined up at quarterback, safety, and return punts. He ran
(05:45):
two kicks back for touchdowns in a game against lock Haven,
the sixty seven and eighty seven yard returns. Outside of football,
he played on the school's basketball and baseball teams for
at least one season each and earned his way into
Maryland States Athletic Hall of Fame. You can still find
Maryland State yearbooks online. In one, Jim is pictured with
other multi sport athletes at the school, standing directly in
(06:07):
front of his football coach. Jim is beaming in the
front row, wearing snazzy white dress, shoes, dark sunglasses and
a giant grin darting was very very quiet, A really
nice pa, would you would say, make him? I going
to find particularly to play dam Upton Bell was the
Baltimore Colts director of player personnel from nineteen sixty six
(06:29):
to ninety one, and he was the first NFL scout
to see Jim's potential. Those days, friends were much tougher,
nights better, and you don't have to really be tough
to flight, And here's toughness to be light. It's really
almost sweet personality. In nineteen sixty seven, Bell urged the
Colts head coach, future Hall of Famer Don Shula, to
(06:52):
make the drive across the Chesapeake Bay and check on
Maryland States overlooked players. Johnny unit Us already such a
grip on the slippery bubble of sports immortality that one
expects red velvet ropes to go up around this dressing
cage on the day he retires into the record books
of pro football. The Colts were all set at quarterback,
(07:14):
as is evident from this episode of Woody's World on
CBS from that year. Woody Brune is profiling John Unitis,
one of the most mythologized quarterbacks in NFL history. As
a leader, Unitis belongs to the school of that other
great quarterback, the Duke of Wellington, a man whose coolness
only grew as Napoleon's old guards came close to breaking
(07:34):
the pocket at Waterloo. But Upton Bell was certain Jim
could help the Colts in other ways. He has such
great speed witness, and he was told by said Riscar
would be a great punt return. But remember himlike today
where there's no don't kick off for punt return. Then
we was much more for special teams, for if he
(07:55):
did nothing else, he could break one of a close
game and you win. The Colts picked Jim in the
fourth round of the seventeen round n NFL Draft held
that January. He signed a contract with the team three
months later, and six months after that, Jim bought a
wooded plot of land in his hometown of Lancaster for sevres. There,
(08:18):
he had a local contractor built a three bedroom house
for his mother and siblings. Everyone in the neighborhood felt
invested in Jim's success, including Floyd White oh Man. We
happen to be we have. I worked with my buddy,
he was in construction then he built. But it was
(08:40):
you know, it was nice. It was nice. It's kind
of like what you see to you now. White helped
pour the concrete foundation of Jim's new family home, and
once it was finished, County records showed the house at
Street was valued at twenty dollars about a hundred and
eighty thousand in today's money. The home was still on
(09:00):
the east side of Main Street, but in a safer
part of town, closer to the high school. The move
reflected the promise carried in Duncan's two pound frame and
offered a path out of poverty for his family. And
you can eight kids and the shotgun out when I said,
shot going straight through the front door like a long
narrow Yeah. You got people sleeping in one or two bays,
(09:23):
and you've got sleeping on the floor when there with
do what you got to do. As Floyd White said,
it was just a few blocks, but a whole world
away from that shotgun house in Newtown, so that the
Street house was many. It's a change in the environment.
So the chancy to bribe the side of life that
all the nigs we'll be back after the break. The
(09:49):
year Jim Duncan was drafted, the Colts were loaded with
veterans on defense and special teams. If the called offense
was efficient, it's defense was invincible, flawless and superb. NFL
films couldn't say enough about them. It was a defensive
swarming Blue jerseys that forced so many breaks. The offense
rarely had to take the ball more than half the field.
(10:12):
So Jim spent that nine eight season practicing in Baltimore
as a defensive back and kick returner during the week.
Then he headed to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on weekends to play
for Baltimore's farm team, the Capitol Colts. The players called
it the taxi squad. Yeah, yeah, they just wanted to
give us. It was probably good experience follows. Jeff Beaver
(10:35):
was the quarterback for the Capitol Colts team Jim played
on like the fans in the middle towns played for,
because that was the professional team. There were four Colts
rookies on that Harrisburg team, which was largely made up
of part time players with day jobs. On the team
were just extra money that you do for us. Yeah,
(11:01):
let's here, we were. They you know, they looked like
we were a hot shot, so we were trying to
make a living just like they were. Yeah, I was
playing for six months and we had a job of
the bank, and the other six months that we were
living large nice. Early in his time with the Colts,
Jim also had another job in the off season. He
(11:22):
worked in the mail room at Springs Mill back in Lancaster.
But they're on the field in Harrisburg. Jim clearly stood out.
After one of the team's wins, a local reporter wrote
that he quote looked like a record setting dash man
during the sixty five yard interception return for a touchdown.
You're the lanky, tough guy. Yeah, I had a great
(11:42):
small Baltimore fans remember that season mainly for the team's
historic loss in Super Bowl Three, when Colts quarterback Earl
Morrell had a lousy game in place of the injured
Johnny Unitis and Jets quarterback Joe Nay engineered one of
the greatest upsets in sports history. The Colts fans in
(12:04):
Harrisburg remember something different, the raw promise in that linky
rookie from South Carolina, and the next year, when the
Colts cleared out their aging defensive backfield Baltimore gave Jim
a chance. He quickly made the most of it, scoring
his first touchdown. In the third game of the sixty
nine season. The Colts trailed the Falcons fourteen to seven
(12:25):
with twenty four seconds left in the first half when
Jim Duncan took a kickoff and raised ninety two yards
to tie the game at half time. The Colts finished
eight five and one in nineteen sixty nine and just
missed the playoffs. But by early the next season in
nineteen seventy, Jim was at the peak of his football powers.
Six ft two and two pounds, he had become the
(12:46):
most feared kickoff return man in the league. We're just
about ready to get the second half underway. Easily recognizable
by his black pooma cleats with taped white laces, Jim
duncans against the Dolphins that November, Jim caught the second
half kickoff and knife towards the right sideline past the
teammate's block. Then he gallops yards for the score, but
(13:07):
we outside get the block. Miami tacklers were left in
the literal dust of the grassless Memorial Stadium in Baltimore.
(13:30):
It's not like Baltimore didn't have its own issues with
civil rights. This is the story of a street which
has been rejected by a large segment of society, Pennsylvania Avenue,
who became the bustling center of the black man's working
life and leisure hours because downtown was more or less
off limits to negroes. By the early nineteen seventies, Baltimore's
(13:50):
historic black cultural corridor Downtown, once home to theaters and
countless jazz clubs, had fallen onto hard times. But the
solens of Pennsylvania Avenue are not all musical. There is,
for example, the sound and fury of the spoken words
so vividly projected by the man known simply as X.
Whether you are a Christian, or a Muslim or a nationalist,
(14:13):
we all have the same problem. They don't hang you
because you're a Baptist. They hang you cause you're black.
The government has failed us. You can't deny that anytime
you're walking around here singing we shall overcome. The government
has failed. The year Jim was drafted by the Colts,
(14:34):
Baltimore too had been inflamed after the killing of Martin
Luther King Jr. CBS News reported from the front lines
of that uprising Pennsylvania Avenue in Baltimore's Western Negro district
where the severe trouble was last night, Maryland Governor Spiro
Agnew instituted a curfew and the army was sent into
control the city. At six eleven this evening, I requested
(14:56):
federal reinforcements. They should now be taking this Asians and
the critical areas great awfree. We know now as never before,
that violence is no friend to freedom, and that the
mob there's no ally of civil rights. Still, players from
(15:18):
the time remember the Colts as a unifier. At the
very least, white people had no problem with the black
players wearing Colts blue. And by nine seventy when the
Colts and their marching band took the field, there was
nothing but celebration among the fans. We didn't have to
pay for anything, hardly any place that we went. Throughout
(15:40):
my research on Jim's life, I spoke multiple times to
Bob Grant. He was drafted by the Colts the same
year as Jim. Sometimes they would ask to sign a
few ortographs. Even at the grocery store. Cash here would
ask you for the stock, wars would ask you for
that's the way that it was back then. We true
we were princes of the city at that time. So
(16:01):
Jim grew his hair out a little bit. I bought
a Lincoln Mark three luxury car in Canary yellow. He
told a reporter that year. He loved Burt Backer Acts music,
and Jim began teaching himself to play the piano. He
was an amazing dresser. Even back in Maryland State, Jim's
(16:22):
sense of style had stood out, and Bob Grant told
me a pro football player's salary only amplified it. All
of the clothes had to match, including the shoes and socks.
There would not be one single thing out of place
whenever we dressed to go out or when we were hopped.
It grow. Back in Lancaster, Jim's family and friends knew
(16:43):
him as butch, but they're in Baltimore. Teammates called him speedy.
According to Grant, it seemed as fitting off the field
as it did on it. There was lots of female
o companionship available, and it was pretty easy to meet
young ladies back then, especially if you were a ball
player or an entertainer, and we were ball players. I
(17:04):
spoke to Ernie of Corsi during my research. He was
the Colts public relations man during the nineteen seventies season.
He chose not to appear in this podcast, but of
course he told me. Jim's base salary that season was
probably about fifteen thousand dollars. That translates to roughly a
hundred thousand dollars a year in modern terms. It's a
far cry from today's half million dollar minimum contracts. Even then,
(17:26):
it was much less than what Colts stars like Johnny
Unitis or tight end John Mackie were paid, but of
course he said it was right in line with what
most other players earned. Outside the locker room. The black
Colts players had few equals in their socio economic class.
A solid middle and upper class for people of color
in this country was still largely absent during the Civil
(17:48):
Rights era. So even if fifteen thousand dollars might not
have been enough to live like a king, teammate Bob
Grant said it was enough to live like a prince,
especially there in Baltimore, where their money was no good
in the places they went. The two friends both rented
luxury apartments downtown in a building called Sutton Place. They
drank beer on Grant's twelfth floor balcony and watched the
(18:10):
sunset over the Inner Harbor. It was the first time
in Jim's life he could embrace financial comfort, even wastefulness.
We would talk and we would listen to music, and
he would drink half of a bottle and he would
open a new one. So when Speedy like you left,
there would always be somewhere between six and twelve half
bottles that were just left there. When we were on
(18:33):
the road or the restaurants in the city, Speedy always
ordered two meals. He would never eat the second meal.
And he told me that when he was a young man,
he had had a lot of days that he didn't
have enough food, and now that he had made it,
he was never going to have a day whereas he
did not have enough food in front of him. Grant
(18:58):
also said that Jim had planned to write a book.
I asked him once. I said, okay, well, what are
you gonna call this book? Speedy, and he says, from
the cotton Fields to Glory. Jimmy Duncan was a good man.
I think that he would have done some good things
in life. We'll be back after the break. Baltimore won
(19:24):
seven of its first eight games that v season, and
of the nine people I interviewed for this podcast who
worked with or played alongside Jim, all said he was
a fine guy to have in the locker room. The
first thing you noticed was that he had a great attitude.
He's cheerful up the Bill Curry was the Colts center
and team captain during Jim's time in Baltimore. The second
(19:47):
thing you noticed, and there's some good about it and
there's some real bad about it. In the NFL, this
is what accounts the most. But if you can really play,
if your hell of a player, you get instant credibility. Yeah,
he can find out playing Probably would have been a
great player, and he lived Jim Duncan. Where we see
(20:09):
this kick That nineteen seventy season, Jim led the league
in kickoff return yards with a thirty five point four
yard average. It is coming a Duncan, a real prep.
It did the plan fifteen to the plenty and the
twenty five. But that's not all. Jim took over a
starting job as cornerback too, and what's now considered one
(20:30):
of the greatest defenses ever and him on a great
play by Jim Duncan. It's made two good tackles coming
up from the quarterback ression every day. You know, he
gave me the look of the opposing player that we
teams we're gonna play. Eddie Hinton was a receiver with Baltimore.
He remembers Jim as a lockdown defender on a Colts
team that only allowed fifteen and a half points per
(20:51):
game that season, and he just stayed on me. I
mean just sometimes I would defeat him, and sometimes he
defeat me. When he defeated me up with all my
man could not stand. So he got the best of you,
and you don't realize I'm thinking about how great that
The next day practiced. Hidden scored seven touchdowns for the
Colts that year, tied for the most on the team.
(21:12):
He told me that was partly thanks to Jim. When
that kind of battling all week, when I got to
play on Sunday on Monday night, I already played the
person maybe four or five times because Jim would give
me the look. And having that kind of teammate kept
your mage. You know, you never had time relaxed, and
he was always prepared for every game. The Colts finished
(21:33):
the nineteen seventy regular season eleven two and one, then
charged into the playoffs back to throw fires the Basses five.
The Colts are playing fine football and tapped out. The
Colts swept aside Cincinnati and then Oakland a Japan. Soon
(21:55):
they were headed to Miami for their second championship game
in three years. NBC Sports presents for the Championship of
Professional Football super Ballpie the American Conference Champions, the Bollimar Colt. First,
it was the National Conference champions, the Dallas Cowboy. On
(22:17):
January sev Jim suited up for the biggest game of
his life two years ago. We covered the Colts and
the Jeffs and saw far everything started going wrong for Bollimore,
almost like it was two years ago against New York.
Footage of the game shows Jim eager to throw himself
into pile ups. Though early on his impact was mostly
felt on special teams. There was the kick office yort one.
(22:41):
He returned four kicks in the Super Bowl for ninety
yards total and almost broke this one near the end
of the first quarter, running up on the Jim Duck
in a great kickoff. Rejoined Earth to the thirty brings
to that for the thirty six, who's average thirty five yards.
The kick returned, and he usually gives Baltimore good field
position after a kickoff. The Colts trailed thirteen to six
at the half, and in the locker room the news
(23:03):
got worse. The Colts learned before the second half that
their star quarterback was questionable at best after hit earlier
in the game fractured unituss ribs. Johnny Uniteds has not
come back out of the field. We understand from the
Baltimore bench he was having his ribs X ray. But
right now this ball game is in the hands of
Earl Morrow. Then, as if the Colts needed any more
adversity to overcome, Jim gave it to them at the
(23:25):
start of the second half. There's the kick back flier
Duncan feels it on the seventh that's twenty oh. He
bubbles and that's the fifth Baltimore turnover. It was one
of the only fumbles of Jim's career, and a series
of punishing runs by running back Dwayne Thomas pushed the
Cowboys toward the goal line. Then on the two yard line,
(23:47):
Dallas looked to go up twenty six and take control
of the game. The old standard t to give it
to Thomas trying to spending that goal line. But in
one of the most consequential plays in Colts history, Dwayne
tom It's plunged towards the goal line right into the
heart of Baltimore's defense, and a bubble and a Colts
every covers and it was Jimmy Duncans, and we covered
(24:10):
that bubble. Jim recovered the ball. Earl Morrell settled down
the Colts offense. With the score tide at thirteen. In
time running out, Colts kicker Jim O'Brien lined up for
a thirty two yard field goal. Nine. Your jobs, O'Brien,
He's been slightly a ratic good time and the chick
did toll but suck up the Collet sixteen. The thirty
(24:37):
moral was the focus of the postgame interviews, having avenged
that Super Bowl loss to the Jets two years earlier. Well,
we're here in the Colt slopper room, a guy in
the world champion Baltimore Colts, I should say Old Marl,
who came off the bench following the Andrew do Johnny united.
For a long time, you and John both have waited
for this. It's a great feeling to be on the side,
on the wedding side, and I hate to see anything
(24:57):
I have that, Johnny, I just check a faint about.
It's a great feeling. But Jim got his due as well.
Each player in the Colts was given a fifteen thousand
dollar bonus for the win. Jim was young, handsome, and
now a Super Bowl champion of the World Professional Football Chapel.
But no matter how fast he moved, Jim Duncan could
(25:19):
never outrun his demons. And on part three of Return Man,
look out Duncan. That's the Kansas City forty nine yard.
But I just thought us, you know, we all got
a lot. But as long as he did what he
needed to do in the field, that's all I was
interested in. Going deep touchdown. Docan is compliding it was
out of bounds. Duncan is complaining because he wasn't covering
(25:43):
NFL team. You don't have a bunch of really well
adjusted Sunday school guys. Jim had some problems, but I
didn't remember what they were, and I did not get involved.
I'm Brett McCormick. Return Man is a production of The
Herald McClatchy Studios, and I Heart Radio. It's produced by
Matt Walsh, Kara Tabor, Cotta, Stevens, Rachel Wise, and Davin Coburn.
(26:08):
The executive producer for I Heeart Radio is Sean Titone.
For lots more on this story, go to Harold online
dot com Slash return Man. If you have any additional
information about Jim Duncan's life or death, email us at
return Man at Harold online dot com. To continue supporting
this kind of work, visit Harold online dot com slash
(26:29):
Podcasts and consider a digital subscription. And for more podcasts
from My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Long Shot is a production of McClatchy Studios and I
Heart Radio. M previously on Return, Men went out came here.
It really was a big town. Just the ranks to
people black sometime I'm associated with each other, were poor,
but we didn't know poor Mama always Bread, which was
(00:24):
an outstanding athlete from a little boy. He was good football,
baseball and basketball. We probably could have won pol a
little ye strange control LANs. I mean everybody you knew
what to speak, so most men bolt and lankster game.
(00:52):
This is the Orange Bowl. It will be jammed eighty
tho fans today Super Bowl Day. It's harder to imagine
brighter lights than the Super Bowl in a place further
from a dirt lot in Lancaster, South Carolina than the
Orange Bowl in Miami. Just before game time, it is
already filled. And believe me, it's been a tough ticket
(01:14):
for this game. For Jim Duncan, who was once to
stand out at bar Street High and now a star
on the rise for the Baltimore Colts. Seventy was the
best year of his life. Hi, everybody, this is Kurd
Goudy along with Joe Namath. You're in Miami. You're today.
It's the Baltimore Colts champs of the American Conference, the
Dallas Cowboys champs of the National Conference. Jim had left
(01:39):
his southern milltown in the early nineteen sixties. Some might
say escaped if they're not part of the Godollo right,
But that's Sunday in Miami. He was an NFL Swiss
Army knife on the cusp of stardom. In the eyes
of sixty million people were upon him. And now we're
going to take a unique look at the starting lineup.
(02:01):
You duncan number thirty five, the top took off the
turned man in the American Copper. From the poorest side
of Lancaster's Main Street, Jim had arrived at perhaps the
biggest game in the world, culminating in a play that
would go down in Colts history, the high point in
a life that soon began crumbling around him. From the
(02:27):
Herald McClatchy Studios and I Heart Radio, this is return man.
I'm Brett McCormick, and this is part two. From the
cotton Fields to glory. They turned longest bridge in the world,
spanning Chesapeake Bay is ready for service. In nineteen sixty four,
(02:47):
Jim Duncan left Lancaster bound for Maryland's Eastern Shore. As
the cars began to roll over the brand new bridge.
Each motorist is saving a hundred and twenty five miles
from the eastern end of the western Shore of Maryland.
The year he graduated from bar Street, Jim's high school
head coach, Sandy Gilliam had been offered the head coaching
job at Maryland State College in rural Princess Anne. That
(03:09):
was very loyal to friends and family alike. Rosie Gilliam
is Sandy's sun. When he left South Carolina, I guess
it went to Meryland State College. He took some of
the players that he had coached in high school. Obviously
he knew their talent, and it was his first recruiting
I guess tests to convince them to come, and that
made them the success that I think they were. Maryland
(03:34):
State College is now known as Maryland Eastern Shore, located
about a hundred and thirty miles from Baltimore. It's a
historically black college and was a safe harbor in a
remote corner of Maryland stalked by racial tensions. At the time,
Princess Anne had been the location of the last recorded
lynching in the state of Maryland. How can you tell
black people to be non violently and at the same
(03:56):
time condone the sinning a white killers. The summer before
Duncan arrived at college nearby, Cambridge, Maryland was in flames
after a visit from h Rap Brown, then the chairman
of the student Non Violent Coordinating Committee. We built the
country up, we will burn it down. You can quote that.
I say violence is necessary. Violence is a part of
(04:17):
America's culture. It is as American as cherry pie. Rosie
Williams's father was Jim's coach at Maryland State, and gilliam
remembers his family's home there became an oasis for the
football players and in the process, Rosie's parents got some
free babysitting out of it. Our parents, would you know,
(04:39):
I think they had almost manufacture of reason for them
to go out and they would have several players over
in our house. You know, they hang out in our basement,
play records. They would make sandwiches and leave mean a refrigerator.
These young men and women became my brother and I
babysitters and and at the same time they were quote
(05:00):
having fun. Rosie Gilliam rubbed elbows with some all time
grades at Maryland State. During the four years Duncan played
for the Hawks, twelve football players from the school went
on to the NFL. I'm sure on some levels we
were brandy, little kids kind of players because we're always
around them and there are heroes. I mean, we may
not appreciate that this player, that player was NFL player quality,
(05:22):
but if you're on the team, you were considered a
big person. And yeah, we'd hang out with them as
much as you know, a kid could hang out with
somebody ten or so years older than they were. Duncan
played offense, defense, and special teams for the Hawks. He
lined up at quarterback, safety, and return punts. He ran
(05:45):
two kicks back for touchdowns in a game against lock Haven,
the sixty seven and eighty seven yard returns. Outside of football,
he played on the school's basketball and baseball teams for
at least one season each and earned his way into
Maryland States Athletic Hall of Fame. You can still find
Maryland State yearbooks online. In one, Jim is pictured with
other multi sport athletes at the school, standing directly in
(06:07):
front of his football coach. Jim is beaming in the
front row, wearing snazzy white dress, shoes, dark sunglasses and
a giant grin darting was very very quiet, A really
nice pa, would you would say, make him? I going
to find particularly to play dam Upton Bell was the
Baltimore Colts director of player personnel from nineteen sixty six
(06:29):
to ninety one, and he was the first NFL scout
to see Jim's potential. Those days, friends were much tougher,
nights better, and you don't have to really be tough
to flight, And here's toughness to be light. It's really
almost sweet personality. In nineteen sixty seven, Bell urged the
Colts head coach, future Hall of Famer Don Shula, to
(06:52):
make the drive across the Chesapeake Bay and check on
Maryland States overlooked players. Johnny unit Us already such a
grip on the slippery bubble of sports immortality that one
expects red velvet ropes to go up around this dressing
cage on the day he retires into the record books
of pro football. The Colts were all set at quarterback,
(07:14):
as is evident from this episode of Woody's World on
CBS from that year. Woody Brune is profiling John Unitis,
one of the most mythologized quarterbacks in NFL history. As
a leader, Unitis belongs to the school of that other
great quarterback, the Duke of Wellington, a man whose coolness
only grew as Napoleon's old guards came close to breaking
(07:34):
the pocket at Waterloo. But Upton Bell was certain Jim
could help the Colts in other ways. He has such
great speed witness, and he was told by said Riscar
would be a great punt return. But remember himlike today
where there's no don't kick off for punt return. Then
we was much more for special teams, for if he
(07:55):
did nothing else, he could break one of a close
game and you win. The Colts picked Jim in the
fourth round of the seventeen round n NFL Draft held
that January. He signed a contract with the team three
months later, and six months after that, Jim bought a
wooded plot of land in his hometown of Lancaster for sevres. There,
(08:18):
he had a local contractor built a three bedroom house
for his mother and siblings. Everyone in the neighborhood felt
invested in Jim's success, including Floyd White oh Man. We
happen to be we have. I worked with my buddy,
he was in construction then he built. But it was
(08:40):
you know, it was nice. It was nice. It's kind
of like what you see to you now. White helped
pour the concrete foundation of Jim's new family home, and
once it was finished, County records showed the house at
Street was valued at twenty dollars about a hundred and
eighty thousand in today's money. The home was still on
(09:00):
the east side of Main Street, but in a safer
part of town, closer to the high school. The move
reflected the promise carried in Duncan's two pound frame and
offered a path out of poverty for his family. And
you can eight kids and the shotgun out when I said,
shot going straight through the front door like a long
narrow Yeah. You got people sleeping in one or two bays,
(09:23):
and you've got sleeping on the floor when there with
do what you got to do. As Floyd White said,
it was just a few blocks, but a whole world
away from that shotgun house in Newtown, so that the
Street house was many. It's a change in the environment.
So the chancy to bribe the side of life that
all the nigs we'll be back after the break. The
(09:49):
year Jim Duncan was drafted, the Colts were loaded with
veterans on defense and special teams. If the called offense
was efficient, it's defense was invincible, flawless and superb. NFL
films couldn't say enough about them. It was a defensive
swarming Blue jerseys that forced so many breaks. The offense
rarely had to take the ball more than half the field.
(10:12):
So Jim spent that nine eight season practicing in Baltimore
as a defensive back and kick returner during the week.
Then he headed to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on weekends to play
for Baltimore's farm team, the Capitol Colts. The players called
it the taxi squad. Yeah, yeah, they just wanted to
give us. It was probably good experience follows. Jeff Beaver
(10:35):
was the quarterback for the Capitol Colts team Jim played
on like the fans in the middle towns played for,
because that was the professional team. There were four Colts
rookies on that Harrisburg team, which was largely made up
of part time players with day jobs. On the team
were just extra money that you do for us. Yeah,
(11:01):
let's here, we were. They you know, they looked like
we were a hot shot, so we were trying to
make a living just like they were. Yeah, I was
playing for six months and we had a job of
the bank, and the other six months that we were
living large nice. Early in his time with the Colts,
Jim also had another job in the off season. He
(11:22):
worked in the mail room at Springs Mill back in Lancaster.
But they're on the field in Harrisburg. Jim clearly stood out.
After one of the team's wins, a local reporter wrote
that he quote looked like a record setting dash man
during the sixty five yard interception return for a touchdown.
You're the lanky, tough guy. Yeah, I had a great
(11:42):
small Baltimore fans remember that season mainly for the team's
historic loss in Super Bowl Three, when Colts quarterback Earl
Morrell had a lousy game in place of the injured
Johnny Unitis and Jets quarterback Joe Nay engineered one of
the greatest upsets in sports history. The Colts fans in
(12:04):
Harrisburg remember something different, the raw promise in that linky
rookie from South Carolina, and the next year, when the
Colts cleared out their aging defensive backfield Baltimore gave Jim
a chance. He quickly made the most of it, scoring
his first touchdown. In the third game of the sixty
nine season. The Colts trailed the Falcons fourteen to seven
(12:25):
with twenty four seconds left in the first half when
Jim Duncan took a kickoff and raised ninety two yards
to tie the game at half time. The Colts finished
eight five and one in nineteen sixty nine and just
missed the playoffs. But by early the next season in
nineteen seventy, Jim was at the peak of his football powers.
Six ft two and two pounds, he had become the
(12:46):
most feared kickoff return man in the league. We're just
about ready to get the second half underway. Easily recognizable
by his black pooma cleats with taped white laces, Jim
duncans against the Dolphins that November, Jim caught the second
half kickoff and knife towards the right sideline past the
teammate's block. Then he gallops yards for the score, but
(13:07):
we outside get the block. Miami tacklers were left in
the literal dust of the grassless Memorial Stadium in Baltimore.
(13:30):
It's not like Baltimore didn't have its own issues with
civil rights. This is the story of a street which
has been rejected by a large segment of society, Pennsylvania Avenue,
who became the bustling center of the black man's working
life and leisure hours because downtown was more or less
off limits to negroes. By the early nineteen seventies, Baltimore's
(13:50):
historic black cultural corridor Downtown, once home to theaters and
countless jazz clubs, had fallen onto hard times. But the
solens of Pennsylvania Avenue are not all musical. There is,
for example, the sound and fury of the spoken words
so vividly projected by the man known simply as X.
Whether you are a Christian, or a Muslim or a nationalist,
(14:13):
we all have the same problem. They don't hang you
because you're a Baptist. They hang you cause you're black.
The government has failed us. You can't deny that anytime
you're walking around here singing we shall overcome. The government
has failed. The year Jim was drafted by the Colts,
(14:34):
Baltimore too had been inflamed after the killing of Martin
Luther King Jr. CBS News reported from the front lines
of that uprising Pennsylvania Avenue in Baltimore's Western Negro district
where the severe trouble was last night, Maryland Governor Spiro
Agnew instituted a curfew and the army was sent into
control the city. At six eleven this evening, I requested
(14:56):
federal reinforcements. They should now be taking this Asians and
the critical areas great awfree. We know now as never before,
that violence is no friend to freedom, and that the
mob there's no ally of civil rights. Still, players from
(15:18):
the time remember the Colts as a unifier. At the
very least, white people had no problem with the black
players wearing Colts blue. And by nine seventy when the
Colts and their marching band took the field, there was
nothing but celebration among the fans. We didn't have to
pay for anything, hardly any place that we went. Throughout
(15:40):
my research on Jim's life, I spoke multiple times to
Bob Grant. He was drafted by the Colts the same
year as Jim. Sometimes they would ask to sign a
few ortographs. Even at the grocery store. Cash here would
ask you for the stock, wars would ask you for
that's the way that it was back then. We true
we were princes of the city at that time. So
(16:01):
Jim grew his hair out a little bit. I bought
a Lincoln Mark three luxury car in Canary yellow. He
told a reporter that year. He loved Burt Backer Acts music,
and Jim began teaching himself to play the piano. He
was an amazing dresser. Even back in Maryland State, Jim's
(16:22):
sense of style had stood out, and Bob Grant told
me a pro football player's salary only amplified it. All
of the clothes had to match, including the shoes and socks.
There would not be one single thing out of place
whenever we dressed to go out or when we were hopped.
It grow. Back in Lancaster, Jim's family and friends knew
(16:43):
him as butch, but they're in Baltimore. Teammates called him speedy.
According to Grant, it seemed as fitting off the field
as it did on it. There was lots of female
o companionship available, and it was pretty easy to meet
young ladies back then, especially if you were a ball
player or an entertainer, and we were ball players. I
(17:04):
spoke to Ernie of Corsi during my research. He was
the Colts public relations man during the nineteen seventies season.
He chose not to appear in this podcast, but of
course he told me. Jim's base salary that season was
probably about fifteen thousand dollars. That translates to roughly a
hundred thousand dollars a year in modern terms. It's a
far cry from today's half million dollar minimum contracts. Even then,
(17:26):
it was much less than what Colts stars like Johnny
Unitis or tight end John Mackie were paid, but of
course he said it was right in line with what
most other players earned. Outside the locker room. The black
Colts players had few equals in their socio economic class.
A solid middle and upper class for people of color
in this country was still largely absent during the Civil
(17:48):
Rights era. So even if fifteen thousand dollars might not
have been enough to live like a king, teammate Bob
Grant said it was enough to live like a prince,
especially there in Baltimore, where their money was no good
in the places they went. The two friends both rented
luxury apartments downtown in a building called Sutton Place. They
drank beer on Grant's twelfth floor balcony and watched the
(18:10):
sunset over the Inner Harbor. It was the first time
in Jim's life he could embrace financial comfort, even wastefulness.
We would talk and we would listen to music, and
he would drink half of a bottle and he would
open a new one. So when Speedy like you left,
there would always be somewhere between six and twelve half
bottles that were just left there. When we were on
(18:33):
the road or the restaurants in the city, Speedy always
ordered two meals. He would never eat the second meal.
And he told me that when he was a young man,
he had had a lot of days that he didn't
have enough food, and now that he had made it,
he was never going to have a day whereas he
did not have enough food in front of him. Grant
(18:58):
also said that Jim had planned to write a book.
I asked him once. I said, okay, well, what are
you gonna call this book? Speedy, and he says, from
the cotton Fields to Glory. Jimmy Duncan was a good man.
I think that he would have done some good things
in life. We'll be back after the break. Baltimore won
(19:24):
seven of its first eight games that v season, and
of the nine people I interviewed for this podcast who
worked with or played alongside Jim, all said he was
a fine guy to have in the locker room. The
first thing you noticed was that he had a great attitude.
He's cheerful up the Bill Curry was the Colts center
and team captain during Jim's time in Baltimore. The second
(19:47):
thing you noticed, and there's some good about it and
there's some real bad about it. In the NFL, this
is what accounts the most. But if you can really play,
if your hell of a player, you get instant credibility. Yeah,
he can find out playing Probably would have been a
great player, and he lived Jim Duncan. Where we see
(20:09):
this kick That nineteen seventy season, Jim led the league
in kickoff return yards with a thirty five point four
yard average. It is coming a Duncan, a real prep.
It did the plan fifteen to the plenty and the
twenty five. But that's not all. Jim took over a
starting job as cornerback too, and what's now considered one
(20:30):
of the greatest defenses ever and him on a great
play by Jim Duncan. It's made two good tackles coming
up from the quarterback ression every day. You know, he
gave me the look of the opposing player that we
teams we're gonna play. Eddie Hinton was a receiver with Baltimore.
He remembers Jim as a lockdown defender on a Colts
team that only allowed fifteen and a half points per
(20:51):
game that season, and he just stayed on me. I
mean just sometimes I would defeat him, and sometimes he
defeat me. When he defeated me up with all my
man could not stand. So he got the best of you,
and you don't realize I'm thinking about how great that
The next day practiced. Hidden scored seven touchdowns for the
Colts that year, tied for the most on the team.
(21:12):
He told me that was partly thanks to Jim. When
that kind of battling all week, when I got to
play on Sunday on Monday night, I already played the
person maybe four or five times because Jim would give
me the look. And having that kind of teammate kept
your mage. You know, you never had time relaxed, and
he was always prepared for every game. The Colts finished
(21:33):
the nineteen seventy regular season eleven two and one, then
charged into the playoffs back to throw fires the Basses five.
The Colts are playing fine football and tapped out. The
Colts swept aside Cincinnati and then Oakland a Japan. Soon
(21:55):
they were headed to Miami for their second championship game
in three years. NBC Sports presents for the Championship of
Professional Football super Ballpie the American Conference Champions, the Bollimar Colt. First,
it was the National Conference champions, the Dallas Cowboy. On
(22:17):
January sev Jim suited up for the biggest game of
his life two years ago. We covered the Colts and
the Jeffs and saw far everything started going wrong for Bollimore,
almost like it was two years ago against New York.
Footage of the game shows Jim eager to throw himself
into pile ups. Though early on his impact was mostly
felt on special teams. There was the kick office yort one.
(22:41):
He returned four kicks in the Super Bowl for ninety
yards total and almost broke this one near the end
of the first quarter, running up on the Jim Duck
in a great kickoff. Rejoined Earth to the thirty brings
to that for the thirty six, who's average thirty five yards.
The kick returned, and he usually gives Baltimore good field
position after a kickoff. The Colts trailed thirteen to six
at the half, and in the locker room the news
(23:03):
got worse. The Colts learned before the second half that
their star quarterback was questionable at best after hit earlier
in the game fractured unituss ribs. Johnny Uniteds has not
come back out of the field. We understand from the
Baltimore bench he was having his ribs X ray. But
right now this ball game is in the hands of
Earl Morrow. Then, as if the Colts needed any more
adversity to overcome, Jim gave it to them at the
(23:25):
start of the second half. There's the kick back flier
Duncan feels it on the seventh that's twenty oh. He
bubbles and that's the fifth Baltimore turnover. It was one
of the only fumbles of Jim's career, and a series
of punishing runs by running back Dwayne Thomas pushed the
Cowboys toward the goal line. Then on the two yard line,
(23:47):
Dallas looked to go up twenty six and take control
of the game. The old standard t to give it
to Thomas trying to spending that goal line. But in
one of the most consequential plays in Colts history, Dwayne
tom It's plunged towards the goal line right into the
heart of Baltimore's defense, and a bubble and a Colts
every covers and it was Jimmy Duncans, and we covered
(24:10):
that bubble. Jim recovered the ball. Earl Morrell settled down
the Colts offense. With the score tide at thirteen. In
time running out, Colts kicker Jim O'Brien lined up for
a thirty two yard field goal. Nine. Your jobs, O'Brien,
He's been slightly a ratic good time and the chick
did toll but suck up the Collet sixteen. The thirty
(24:37):
moral was the focus of the postgame interviews, having avenged
that Super Bowl loss to the Jets two years earlier. Well,
we're here in the Colt slopper room, a guy in
the world champion Baltimore Colts, I should say Old Marl,
who came off the bench following the Andrew do Johnny united.
For a long time, you and John both have waited
for this. It's a great feeling to be on the side,
on the wedding side, and I hate to see anything
(24:57):
I have that, Johnny, I just check a faint about.
It's a great feeling. But Jim got his due as well.
Each player in the Colts was given a fifteen thousand
dollar bonus for the win. Jim was young, handsome, and
now a Super Bowl champion of the World Professional Football Chapel.
But no matter how fast he moved, Jim Duncan could
(25:19):
never outrun his demons. And on part three of Return Man,
look out Duncan. That's the Kansas City forty nine yard.
But I just thought us, you know, we all got
a lot. But as long as he did what he
needed to do in the field, that's all I was
interested in. Going deep touchdown. Docan is compliding it was
out of bounds. Duncan is complaining because he wasn't covering
(25:43):
NFL team. You don't have a bunch of really well
adjusted Sunday school guys. Jim had some problems, but I
didn't remember what they were, and I did not get involved.
I'm Brett McCormick. Return Man is a production of The
Herald McClatchy Studios, and I Heart Radio. It's produced by
Matt Walsh, Kara Tabor, Cotta, Stevens, Rachel Wise, and Davin Coburn.
(26:08):
The executive producer for I Heeart Radio is Sean Titone.
For lots more on this story, go to Harold online
dot com Slash return Man. If you have any additional
information about Jim Duncan's life or death, email us at
return Man at Harold online dot com. To continue supporting
this kind of work, visit Harold online dot com slash
(26:29):
Podcasts and consider a digital subscription. And for more podcasts
from My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
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