Limbo Teams: The Baltimore Colts, Part II
By Stephen Turk
In the ring of honor at the Baltimore Ravens stadium, are the names of all hall of fame Baltimore Colts. Having never played in Indianapolis or for the Ravens franchise, they are in team limbo, and belong to no one but the fans who loved them.
After 1954, firmly rooted in Baltimore, the Colts began their ascent toward greatness. The Baltimore Colts got good the way any team does. They had some smart drafting, some good trades, and a measure of luck. The team had a couple of solid holdovers from the Dallas Texans days, including future hall of famers Art Donovan and Gino Marchetti. In 1956 Lenny Moore, another future hall of famer, was drafted in the first round. A solid team was being built, but clearly the greatest move of all was acquiring Johnny Unitas.
Unitas had been cut by his native Pittsburgh after being picked in the ninth round, and was relegated to playing semi-pro ball before going to a tryout for the Baltimore Colts in 1956. He was signed, and played in the fourth game of the season when the starter went down. He was terrible.
Unitas got better, however, and as he settled down over his rookie season and showed great promise. The team improved as well and in 1958 they went to the championship. The win against the Giants that sent the NFL on a new and glorious path to prominence, made Baltimore winners for the first time. The Colts then went on to be a powerhouse throughout the following decade, winning it all again in 1959, 1968, and 1970, with championship appearances in 1964 and 1969. In that era, even when the team was not in a championship, they were the picture of a well-run franchise and a threat to anyone in the league.
The team was traded by Carroll Rosenbloom to Bob Irsay in 1972 and the team floundered in the 70s. Unitas retired in ’73, and though they got some solid play from Bert Jones at QB and made the playoffs 
a few times, the team saw no more championships. The team took a nose dive in 1978 and never recovered. John Elway famously balked at the drafting to Baltimore in 1983 and was sent to the Broncos where he had a hall of fame career. Irsay wanted new facilities, but the team was losing and support was waning, so the city said no and Irsay moved the team to Indianapolis and the story of the Baltimore Colts was over.
The Indianapolis Colts struggled for a number of years in their new environment and new identity, but have found a great deal of success in recent years, and have been writing their own story of an era wholly apart from those Baltimore days. So looking back now there is this free floating entity of a team that once was. It’s a team that Baltimore residents born after the move have a strange almost-connection with. It’s like trying to remember someone else’s memories as if they were yours. You know it should be part of your consciousness, but it just isn’t there. And so there are the records, the film clips, the books, the pictures, and the artifacts left over to remind everyone of something great that once was, is not anymore, but will never go away.
Note: A great source for Colts history in brief can be found in Lou Sahadi’s One Sunday in December
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