December 31, 2025 • 20 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, one snowy night in 1984, a fleet of moving trucks pulled away from Baltimore carrying the Colts, their gear, and decades of history. The team was gone just like that. For fans who grew up idolizing Johnny Unitas and wearing the horseshoe with pride, it felt like a piece of the city had been ripped out. We look back at the legacy the Colts built in Baltimore.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is our American Stories, and we love bringing you
stories about history and about sports, and today we bring
you a combination of the two. Here's Mike Gibbons, director
Emeritus and historian at the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum,
also located in Baltimore, to tell us more about the
legendary Baltimore football team that helped the NFL become what
(00:33):
it is today.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Today we're going to be talking about the Baltimore Cults,
one of the NFL's storied franchises, a team that helped
put the NFL on the map for a variety of reasons,
but also helped to give Baltimore a new identity. During
World War II, Baltimore was one of the industrial centers
of the United States, producing ships and air craft for
(01:00):
the war effort. But at the conclusion of World War
Two in nineteen forty five, the industries really lost their market.
They didn't have to produce ships and aircraft in the
numbers that they did during World War II, and so
many of the plants in and around this area closed
down and Baltimore lost its manufacturing capability. The town gradually
(01:26):
slipped and declined and became known really as nothing more
than a pit stop between Philadelphia and Washington, d C.
The Baltimore Cults arrived on the scene in nineteen fifty three,
and though in the beginning they were not very good
at all, it gave Baltimoreans and Marylanders something to look
(01:47):
forward to on Sunday afternoons in the fall. The team
in nineteen fifty six had started to get a little
bit better under head coach we Buwbank, and he started
a core by the name of George Shaw. In the
fourth game of nineteen fifty six, Shaw was injured and
(02:08):
to replace him came a rookie quarterback by the name
of Johnny Unitas. Johnny went to the University of Louisville,
where he was a star quarterback, and he was drafted
in nineteen fifty five by the Pittsburgh Steelers, but he
lost out in a competition for quarterback to a fellow who
(02:29):
would later show up on the Baltimore landscape, a guy
by the name of Ted Marsher brodo So. Unitas played
semi pro ball in his hometown of Pittsburgh and waited
for a phone call that ultimately came before the start
of training camp in nineteen fifty six, and that call
came from Colts general manager Don Kellett. For the price
(02:53):
of a ninety cent long distance phone call, Kellett was
able to secure Unitis and bring him to Baltimore. He
played well enough in training camp and in exhibition games
to make the roster and was George Shaw's back up.
So now we go forward to Game four. The Colts
(03:15):
did not play well under their rookie quarterback, who threw
an interception for a touchdown return, and the Colts fumbled
four times, losing badly to the Chicago Bears that day.
But over the last eight games in nineteen fifty six,
with Unitis at the helm the team went four and
four and there was hope for a brighter future. I
(03:39):
went to my first game in nineteen fifty seven, the
home opener against the Detroit Lions. I was, let's say
eleven ten years old at the time, and what a
spectacle it was to go out there on a Sunday afternoon,
beautiful day. And I remember squinting my eyes because the
Colts wore white helmets and could see the sun glittered
(04:01):
off of those helmets. The team the Colts faced in
that home opener Unitas's first home opener, by the way
as a starter were the world champion Detroit Lions, while
the Colts, under Unitas's leadership and strong arm, put Alecknomen
Detroit that day, winning the game and propelling to a
pretty good season for the Colts. They finished with a
(04:22):
record of seven and five with a lot of burgeoning stars,
guys like Gino Marquetti, Lenny Moore, Raymond Berry, Unitas, Larready Donovan,
all future Hall of famers. There they were in Baltimore,
and we knew that we had something special. In nineteen
fifty eight, the Colts went nine to three and captured
(04:44):
the Western Conference crown. That took them to the championship
game at Yankee Stadium in New York, where the Colts
would face the Giants. Webuwbank in the visitor's locker room
at Yankee s Stadium that day, gave a pregame speech
to his team, referencing every one of them, walking around
(05:07):
to all thirty three players, addressing them and saying, you
wouldn't be in the NFL if it wasn't for your
Baltimore Colts. You really never had it together until you
got here. So go out there, play your best and
give it all You've got. The nineteen fifty eight game
(05:32):
is often referred to as the greatest game ever played,
and the reason is Johnny Andidas and what he was
able to do to pull out the game in what
turned out to be the NFL's first sudden death overtime.
Late in the fourth quarter, with the Colts trailing by
three points, Unitis gets the ball back on his own
fourteen yard line, eighty six yards from the Giant's goal line,
(05:58):
and Johnny at that moment, invented the two minute drill.
He took his team down to the thirteen yard line
with about ten seconds left on the clock. Steve Meyer,
the placekicker, came in kicked a nineteen yard field goal
to tie the game and send the game into overtime.
In overtime, the Colts stopped the Giants on a contested,
(06:20):
controversial placement of the ball. The Giants swear that they
got a first down on Frank Giffert's third down run,
but the referees said, nope, you didn't make it, and
they punted to the Colts, and the Colts, under Johnny Andiitis,
took the team down the field and into the end zone,
Alan Amici scoring the game winning TD for a twenty
(06:42):
three to seventeen victory. So that game was witnessed by
the largest audience ever to see an NFL game on television.
TV was still pretty new at that time, and the
high drama that played out that afternoon was never forgotten
by the fans who watched it. The game is often
(07:03):
said to be responsible for putting the NFL on the map.
It certainly put Johnny Unitis and his Baltimore Colts on
the map. They went on to become one of the
premier franchises in the history of the league. In Unitis's
sixteen seasons as a starting quarterback from nineteen fifty seven
(07:24):
through nineteen seventy two, they suffered only one losing season,
and that was their last season nineteen seventy two, John's
last season in Baltimore. But up to them, they had
the best record in the NFL for fifteen years under Unitis,
and they were tied with the Cleveland Browns for most
wins over that period in the NFL. So a pretty
(07:47):
successful team. Now. Other things to think about when we're
talking Baltimore Colts football is a series of firsts that
took place at Baltimore's more Memorial Stadium, better known as
the largest outdoor insane asylum. I remember going to my
(08:09):
third game in nineteen sixty. My father and I got
season tickets and we sat in the end zone where
the Colts came out for pregame introductions. And I'll tell
you when Unitis took the field and was introduced to
the crowd in the closed end of this horseshoe shaped stadium,
it was the loudest sound I've ever heard to this day,
(08:32):
the biggest noise I've ever heard that stadium, just by
its architecture and by the enthusiasm of the fans. Six
two hundred and thirty eight every weekend that they played
just was almost unimaginable to comprehend.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
And we've been listening to Mike Gibbons tell the story
not just of the Baltimore cults, but in the end
a story of Baltimore itself, especially post World War Two.
And by the way, Mike Gibbons is the director Emeritus
and historian at the Babe Bruth Birthplace and Museum, which
is in Baltimore. Wherever they are go when we come back,
(09:10):
more of the story of the Baltimore Colts of Johnny
Unitas and more with the sports historian of the city
of Baltimore here on our American Story and we're back
(09:39):
with our American Stories and the story of the Baltimore Colts.
Here's Mike Gibbons again to tell us about this historic
team and the presence that they had in the world
of professional football.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Vince Lombardi, from the Green Bay Packers, legendary Hall of
Fame coach, said that he hated coming to Memorial Stadium,
the worst on the road for his team to visit.
And it wasn't just the sound. The Colts had cheerleaders.
They were the first team in the NFL to have cheerleaders,
they were the second to have a marching band, and
they had a great fight song which the town just loved,
(10:15):
and every time the band played it, we all stood
as though it was our national anthem. The Colts had
a mascot, a live horse, Dixie, who with Dixie's rider,
would go around the outside of the playing field every
time the team scored, and this really pretty much unnerved
the opposing teams as they came to Baltimore and contested
(10:38):
the Colts. And that's one of the reasons we think
that the Colts had such a great record over all
the years. Another profound memory for me was nineteen fifty nine.
So the year after the Colts had beaten the Giants
in the greatest game ever played in New York, the
Colts and the Giants repeated the exercise by playing the
(10:59):
NFL championship game in Baltimore, and I was there with
my dad. The Colts win the game and fans ran
onto the field. Everybody was so excited they didn't know
what to do. And I kept saying to my dad,
let me go down there, and he's like, no, You're
not going down there. You might get hurt. What they
were trying to do was to dissemble the goal post
(11:22):
down in the closed end of the playing field, not
really understanding that the NFL had changed from a wooden
gold post the year before to an all metal gold
post in nineteen fifty nine, So they were able to
knock the gold post down, but not much more than that.
Let me take you up to nineteen sixty five. The
(11:44):
Colts and the Packers were vying for the league championship.
The Colts had won it the year before nineteen sixty four,
and now they're vying with Green Bay for the conference title.
In nineteen sixty five. The teams finished the regular season
with identical ten to three to one marks and that
forced a playoff game in Green Bay, and the Colts
(12:08):
had it out there at a severe disadvantage. The Colts
number one quarterback Johnny and Iidis, had been injured earlier
in the year. His replacement, Gary Quaso, was injured in
the second to last game of the year, and that
forced running back Tom Maddie to come in and play quarterback.
Tom had played quarterback at Ohio State, but it was
(12:31):
a running offense and so they didn't throw the ball
a lot, and Tom was not an elite passer by
any means. But Tommy came in and the Colts took
a lead of seven to nothing early on in the game,
and as the game came to a conclusion the fourth
quarter winding down, the Colts were clinging to a ten
(12:52):
to seven lead over the Green Bay Packers, and at
that point Packer kicker Don Chandler came in booted a
field goal that was ruled good by the referees, even
though it appeared to sail wide. It was a high
kick went way up over the goalpost. And seemed to
veer to the left, but the referees allowed the points,
(13:16):
thereby tying the game, and the Packers went on to
win in the second overtime game ever played. The first,
of course, the Colts participated in as well in nineteen
fifty eight in New York. Now we move up to
nineteen seventy one, the Colts under Unitis make another postseason appearance,
(13:38):
losing to the Miami Dolphins, but nevertheless they made it
as they headed into the nineteen seventy two season. Problem
with this team at that point was that they were
getting old. A lot of the veteran players were just
kind of running out of gas. So it was up
to Unitas to try and carry them forward one more time,
but he couldn't do it. He was replaced about midway
(14:01):
through the season by Marty Damrays. Dom Rays guided the
Colts to a five to nine record that year. In
the last home game, something profound happened and Baltimoreans will
never forget it. The last home game, the Colts were
hosting the Buffalo Bills, not a very good team either.
(14:21):
Midway through the fourth quarter, Domras had taken his squad
to a twenty eight to seven lead over the Bills.
At that point, he was on the field and he
feigned an injury and hopped off the field, and you know,
the head coach said to Uniteds, get in there, So
Johnny went in. And as that was happening, a small
(14:42):
biplane flew over Memorial Stadium carrying a banner that said Unitis,
we stand, and the sellout crowd stood as one and
started cheering as the fabled legendary Unitas made what many
new would be his last appearance on Memorial Stadium turf.
(15:03):
Uniteds went out, took a snap from center, dropped back
and threw a sixty seven yard touchdown pass to Eddie Hinton,
and then he ran off the field for the last time.
The crowd sobbing, cheering, just going out of their minds,
having witnessed one of the great moments in Colts and
maybe in NFL history storybook stuff. You just can't make up.
(15:26):
Unitus and many of the veterans were let go or
traded after the seventy two season, and something had happened
after seventy one that was not a good thing for
our Colts. Owner Carol Rosenbloom, one of the greatest in
NFL history sold his team to Bob Orsay, and Hearsay
was not a good owner, and he brought in a
(15:48):
general manager by the name of Joe Thomas, who wanted
to run things his way. And Joe was responsible after
seventy two for cleaning house getting rid of the players.
So the next couple of years seventy three and seventy four,
under Joe Thomas and a variety of head coaches, the
Colts were terrible. But in seventy five they brought in
(16:10):
a guy who Uniteds had dealt with before back in
Pittsburgh when he lost the quarterback job to who would
become the colts new head coach, Ted Marchibroda. So Marchibroda
comes to town. He takes second year quarterback Burt Jones
and says, Bert, let's make this thing go. Jones had
a lot of great players with him, and they returned
(16:33):
the Colts to the path of glory, as the team
captured Eastern Conference championships in seventy five, seventy six, and
seventy seven. Unfortunately, they had three postseason berths and lost
them all first two to Pittsburgh in the final one
and historic game at Memorial Stadium to the Oakland Raiders,
(16:54):
which the Colts lost to in double overtime thirty seven
to thirty one. I believe that game, played on Christmas
Eve that year, turned out to be the last playoff
game that Baltimore fans would ever see their Colts participate in.
In the summer of nineteen seventy eight, Burt Jones was
hurt in an exhibition game, hurt his shoulder and was
(17:16):
out for a while. Tried to make a comeback and
it just wasn't the same, and the team floundered without
Bert's general ship out there and had a losing season.
The Colts would never have a winning season again, as
they lost six years in a row. The final six
years in Baltimore, they were losers, and that, coupled with
(17:38):
Hearsay's unpredictable behavior as an owner and Joe Thomas as
the GM just tearing that squad apart, led to a
real drop in attendance. I think the last game they
played in nineteen eighty three, they drew thirty two thousand people.
They remember that they had been drawing sixty thousand sell
(18:00):
every game for years, and now they were doing barely
half of that. That led to Hearsay shopping around the
team and ultimately moving them out of town to Indianapolis.
On a dark night in late March nineteen eighty four,
word got out the people saw that the Colts had
(18:22):
moving vans backed up to their training facility, and Bobby Arsay,
under the cover of darkness, snuck them out of town
as they headed to Indy. Now something profound and good
happened to the city regarding its Baltimore Colts. Shortly after that,
Baltimore Mayor William Donald Schaeffer instructed Tom Maddie to go
(18:42):
to Indianapolis and negotiate with Hearsay to try and get
the Baltimore Colts archives to come back to Baltimore. He
was successful, so Schaeffer got a moving van of the
Baltimore Colts archives delivered, and that day we became the
Baltemore Colts Official Archives and Museum. In two thousand and five,
(19:05):
our museum opened another museum called Sports Legends Museum at
Camden Yards, and it featured, among other things, a major
display on the history of the Baltimore Colts. It turned
out to be one of the most popular exhibits in
that museum. People would go in there and get tears
in their eyes just thinking about their great Baltimore Colts teams.
(19:30):
They really, as I said before, were more than just
an NFL franchise. They were part of the fabric of
this community and part of what made the NFL of
what it has become today. We called that exhibit almost religion,
because in fact, that's what the Baltimore Cults were to
the city of Baltimore.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
And a special thanks to Mike Gibbons, Director Emeritus and
historian at the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum. The story
of the Baltimore Colts. Here our American School
This is our American Stories, and we love bringing you
stories about history and about sports, and today we bring
you a combination of the two. Here's Mike Gibbons, director
Emeritus and historian at the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum,
also located in Baltimore, to tell us more about the
legendary Baltimore football team that helped the NFL become what
(00:33):
it is today.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Today we're going to be talking about the Baltimore Cults,
one of the NFL's storied franchises, a team that helped
put the NFL on the map for a variety of reasons,
but also helped to give Baltimore a new identity. During
World War II, Baltimore was one of the industrial centers
of the United States, producing ships and air craft for
(01:00):
the war effort. But at the conclusion of World War
Two in nineteen forty five, the industries really lost their market.
They didn't have to produce ships and aircraft in the
numbers that they did during World War II, and so
many of the plants in and around this area closed
down and Baltimore lost its manufacturing capability. The town gradually
(01:26):
slipped and declined and became known really as nothing more
than a pit stop between Philadelphia and Washington, d C.
The Baltimore Cults arrived on the scene in nineteen fifty three,
and though in the beginning they were not very good
at all, it gave Baltimoreans and Marylanders something to look
(01:47):
forward to on Sunday afternoons in the fall. The team
in nineteen fifty six had started to get a little
bit better under head coach we Buwbank, and he started
a core by the name of George Shaw. In the
fourth game of nineteen fifty six, Shaw was injured and
(02:08):
to replace him came a rookie quarterback by the name
of Johnny Unitas. Johnny went to the University of Louisville,
where he was a star quarterback, and he was drafted
in nineteen fifty five by the Pittsburgh Steelers, but he
lost out in a competition for quarterback to a fellow who
(02:29):
would later show up on the Baltimore landscape, a guy
by the name of Ted Marsher brodo So. Unitas played
semi pro ball in his hometown of Pittsburgh and waited
for a phone call that ultimately came before the start
of training camp in nineteen fifty six, and that call
came from Colts general manager Don Kellett. For the price
(02:53):
of a ninety cent long distance phone call, Kellett was
able to secure Unitis and bring him to Baltimore. He
played well enough in training camp and in exhibition games
to make the roster and was George Shaw's back up.
So now we go forward to Game four. The Colts
(03:15):
did not play well under their rookie quarterback, who threw
an interception for a touchdown return, and the Colts fumbled
four times, losing badly to the Chicago Bears that day.
But over the last eight games in nineteen fifty six,
with Unitis at the helm the team went four and
four and there was hope for a brighter future. I
(03:39):
went to my first game in nineteen fifty seven, the
home opener against the Detroit Lions. I was, let's say
eleven ten years old at the time, and what a
spectacle it was to go out there on a Sunday afternoon,
beautiful day. And I remember squinting my eyes because the
Colts wore white helmets and could see the sun glittered
(04:01):
off of those helmets. The team the Colts faced in
that home opener Unitas's first home opener, by the way
as a starter were the world champion Detroit Lions, while
the Colts, under Unitas's leadership and strong arm, put Alecknomen
Detroit that day, winning the game and propelling to a
pretty good season for the Colts. They finished with a
(04:22):
record of seven and five with a lot of burgeoning stars,
guys like Gino Marquetti, Lenny Moore, Raymond Berry, Unitas, Larready Donovan,
all future Hall of famers. There they were in Baltimore,
and we knew that we had something special. In nineteen
fifty eight, the Colts went nine to three and captured
(04:44):
the Western Conference crown. That took them to the championship
game at Yankee Stadium in New York, where the Colts
would face the Giants. Webuwbank in the visitor's locker room
at Yankee s Stadium that day, gave a pregame speech
to his team, referencing every one of them, walking around
(05:07):
to all thirty three players, addressing them and saying, you
wouldn't be in the NFL if it wasn't for your
Baltimore Colts. You really never had it together until you
got here. So go out there, play your best and
give it all You've got. The nineteen fifty eight game
(05:32):
is often referred to as the greatest game ever played,
and the reason is Johnny Andidas and what he was
able to do to pull out the game in what
turned out to be the NFL's first sudden death overtime.
Late in the fourth quarter, with the Colts trailing by
three points, Unitis gets the ball back on his own
fourteen yard line, eighty six yards from the Giant's goal line,
(05:58):
and Johnny at that moment, invented the two minute drill.
He took his team down to the thirteen yard line
with about ten seconds left on the clock. Steve Meyer,
the placekicker, came in kicked a nineteen yard field goal
to tie the game and send the game into overtime.
In overtime, the Colts stopped the Giants on a contested,
(06:20):
controversial placement of the ball. The Giants swear that they
got a first down on Frank Giffert's third down run,
but the referees said, nope, you didn't make it, and
they punted to the Colts, and the Colts, under Johnny Andiitis,
took the team down the field and into the end zone,
Alan Amici scoring the game winning TD for a twenty
(06:42):
three to seventeen victory. So that game was witnessed by
the largest audience ever to see an NFL game on television.
TV was still pretty new at that time, and the
high drama that played out that afternoon was never forgotten
by the fans who watched it. The game is often
(07:03):
said to be responsible for putting the NFL on the map.
It certainly put Johnny Unitis and his Baltimore Colts on
the map. They went on to become one of the
premier franchises in the history of the league. In Unitis's
sixteen seasons as a starting quarterback from nineteen fifty seven
(07:24):
through nineteen seventy two, they suffered only one losing season,
and that was their last season nineteen seventy two, John's
last season in Baltimore. But up to them, they had
the best record in the NFL for fifteen years under Unitis,
and they were tied with the Cleveland Browns for most
wins over that period in the NFL. So a pretty
(07:47):
successful team. Now. Other things to think about when we're
talking Baltimore Colts football is a series of firsts that
took place at Baltimore's more Memorial Stadium, better known as
the largest outdoor insane asylum. I remember going to my
(08:09):
third game in nineteen sixty. My father and I got
season tickets and we sat in the end zone where
the Colts came out for pregame introductions. And I'll tell
you when Unitis took the field and was introduced to
the crowd in the closed end of this horseshoe shaped stadium,
it was the loudest sound I've ever heard to this day,
(08:32):
the biggest noise I've ever heard that stadium, just by
its architecture and by the enthusiasm of the fans. Six
two hundred and thirty eight every weekend that they played
just was almost unimaginable to comprehend.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
And we've been listening to Mike Gibbons tell the story
not just of the Baltimore cults, but in the end
a story of Baltimore itself, especially post World War Two.
And by the way, Mike Gibbons is the director Emeritus
and historian at the Babe Bruth Birthplace and Museum, which
is in Baltimore. Wherever they are go when we come back,
(09:10):
more of the story of the Baltimore Colts of Johnny
Unitas and more with the sports historian of the city
of Baltimore here on our American Story and we're back
(09:39):
with our American Stories and the story of the Baltimore Colts.
Here's Mike Gibbons again to tell us about this historic
team and the presence that they had in the world
of professional football.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Vince Lombardi, from the Green Bay Packers, legendary Hall of
Fame coach, said that he hated coming to Memorial Stadium,
the worst on the road for his team to visit.
And it wasn't just the sound. The Colts had cheerleaders.
They were the first team in the NFL to have cheerleaders,
they were the second to have a marching band, and
they had a great fight song which the town just loved,
(10:15):
and every time the band played it, we all stood
as though it was our national anthem. The Colts had
a mascot, a live horse, Dixie, who with Dixie's rider,
would go around the outside of the playing field every
time the team scored, and this really pretty much unnerved
the opposing teams as they came to Baltimore and contested
(10:38):
the Colts. And that's one of the reasons we think
that the Colts had such a great record over all
the years. Another profound memory for me was nineteen fifty nine.
So the year after the Colts had beaten the Giants
in the greatest game ever played in New York, the
Colts and the Giants repeated the exercise by playing the
(10:59):
NFL championship game in Baltimore, and I was there with
my dad. The Colts win the game and fans ran
onto the field. Everybody was so excited they didn't know
what to do. And I kept saying to my dad,
let me go down there, and he's like, no, You're
not going down there. You might get hurt. What they
were trying to do was to dissemble the goal post
(11:22):
down in the closed end of the playing field, not
really understanding that the NFL had changed from a wooden
gold post the year before to an all metal gold
post in nineteen fifty nine, So they were able to
knock the gold post down, but not much more than that.
Let me take you up to nineteen sixty five. The
(11:44):
Colts and the Packers were vying for the league championship.
The Colts had won it the year before nineteen sixty four,
and now they're vying with Green Bay for the conference title.
In nineteen sixty five. The teams finished the regular season
with identical ten to three to one marks and that
forced a playoff game in Green Bay, and the Colts
(12:08):
had it out there at a severe disadvantage. The Colts
number one quarterback Johnny and Iidis, had been injured earlier
in the year. His replacement, Gary Quaso, was injured in
the second to last game of the year, and that
forced running back Tom Maddie to come in and play quarterback.
Tom had played quarterback at Ohio State, but it was
(12:31):
a running offense and so they didn't throw the ball
a lot, and Tom was not an elite passer by
any means. But Tommy came in and the Colts took
a lead of seven to nothing early on in the game,
and as the game came to a conclusion the fourth
quarter winding down, the Colts were clinging to a ten
(12:52):
to seven lead over the Green Bay Packers, and at
that point Packer kicker Don Chandler came in booted a
field goal that was ruled good by the referees, even
though it appeared to sail wide. It was a high
kick went way up over the goalpost. And seemed to
veer to the left, but the referees allowed the points,
(13:16):
thereby tying the game, and the Packers went on to
win in the second overtime game ever played. The first,
of course, the Colts participated in as well in nineteen
fifty eight in New York. Now we move up to
nineteen seventy one, the Colts under Unitis make another postseason appearance,
(13:38):
losing to the Miami Dolphins, but nevertheless they made it
as they headed into the nineteen seventy two season. Problem
with this team at that point was that they were
getting old. A lot of the veteran players were just
kind of running out of gas. So it was up
to Unitas to try and carry them forward one more time,
but he couldn't do it. He was replaced about midway
(14:01):
through the season by Marty Damrays. Dom Rays guided the
Colts to a five to nine record that year. In
the last home game, something profound happened and Baltimoreans will
never forget it. The last home game, the Colts were
hosting the Buffalo Bills, not a very good team either.
(14:21):
Midway through the fourth quarter, Domras had taken his squad
to a twenty eight to seven lead over the Bills.
At that point, he was on the field and he
feigned an injury and hopped off the field, and you know,
the head coach said to Uniteds, get in there, So
Johnny went in. And as that was happening, a small
(14:42):
biplane flew over Memorial Stadium carrying a banner that said Unitis,
we stand, and the sellout crowd stood as one and
started cheering as the fabled legendary Unitas made what many
new would be his last appearance on Memorial Stadium turf.
(15:03):
Uniteds went out, took a snap from center, dropped back
and threw a sixty seven yard touchdown pass to Eddie Hinton,
and then he ran off the field for the last time.
The crowd sobbing, cheering, just going out of their minds,
having witnessed one of the great moments in Colts and
maybe in NFL history storybook stuff. You just can't make up.
(15:26):
Unitus and many of the veterans were let go or
traded after the seventy two season, and something had happened
after seventy one that was not a good thing for
our Colts. Owner Carol Rosenbloom, one of the greatest in
NFL history sold his team to Bob Orsay, and Hearsay
was not a good owner, and he brought in a
(15:48):
general manager by the name of Joe Thomas, who wanted
to run things his way. And Joe was responsible after
seventy two for cleaning house getting rid of the players.
So the next couple of years seventy three and seventy four,
under Joe Thomas and a variety of head coaches, the
Colts were terrible. But in seventy five they brought in
(16:10):
a guy who Uniteds had dealt with before back in
Pittsburgh when he lost the quarterback job to who would
become the colts new head coach, Ted Marchibroda. So Marchibroda
comes to town. He takes second year quarterback Burt Jones
and says, Bert, let's make this thing go. Jones had
a lot of great players with him, and they returned
(16:33):
the Colts to the path of glory, as the team
captured Eastern Conference championships in seventy five, seventy six, and
seventy seven. Unfortunately, they had three postseason berths and lost
them all first two to Pittsburgh in the final one
and historic game at Memorial Stadium to the Oakland Raiders,
(16:54):
which the Colts lost to in double overtime thirty seven
to thirty one. I believe that game, played on Christmas
Eve that year, turned out to be the last playoff
game that Baltimore fans would ever see their Colts participate in.
In the summer of nineteen seventy eight, Burt Jones was
hurt in an exhibition game, hurt his shoulder and was
(17:16):
out for a while. Tried to make a comeback and
it just wasn't the same, and the team floundered without
Bert's general ship out there and had a losing season.
The Colts would never have a winning season again, as
they lost six years in a row. The final six
years in Baltimore, they were losers, and that, coupled with
(17:38):
Hearsay's unpredictable behavior as an owner and Joe Thomas as
the GM just tearing that squad apart, led to a
real drop in attendance. I think the last game they
played in nineteen eighty three, they drew thirty two thousand people.
They remember that they had been drawing sixty thousand sell
(18:00):
every game for years, and now they were doing barely
half of that. That led to Hearsay shopping around the
team and ultimately moving them out of town to Indianapolis.
On a dark night in late March nineteen eighty four,
word got out the people saw that the Colts had
(18:22):
moving vans backed up to their training facility, and Bobby Arsay,
under the cover of darkness, snuck them out of town
as they headed to Indy. Now something profound and good
happened to the city regarding its Baltimore Colts. Shortly after that,
Baltimore Mayor William Donald Schaeffer instructed Tom Maddie to go
(18:42):
to Indianapolis and negotiate with Hearsay to try and get
the Baltimore Colts archives to come back to Baltimore. He
was successful, so Schaeffer got a moving van of the
Baltimore Colts archives delivered, and that day we became the
Baltemore Colts Official Archives and Museum. In two thousand and five,
(19:05):
our museum opened another museum called Sports Legends Museum at
Camden Yards, and it featured, among other things, a major
display on the history of the Baltimore Colts. It turned
out to be one of the most popular exhibits in
that museum. People would go in there and get tears
in their eyes just thinking about their great Baltimore Colts teams.
(19:30):
They really, as I said before, were more than just
an NFL franchise. They were part of the fabric of
this community and part of what made the NFL of
what it has become today. We called that exhibit almost religion,
because in fact, that's what the Baltimore Cults were to
the city of Baltimore.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
And a special thanks to Mike Gibbons, Director Emeritus and
historian at the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum. The story
of the Baltimore Colts. Here our American School
Host
Lee Habeeb
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