"Being naive and still riding high on fan adulation after the championship game, I thought, 'Maybe the VIPs use a special entrance,' " Moore writes. "Then it dawned on me that white people probably expected a black person at the country club to be a server from the kitchen, not a guest."
When Moore finally got inside, the bartender refused to serve him a drink. No one seemed interested in speaking to him, Moore recalls, including two of his teammates, Art Donovan and Jim Mutscheller. He left the club immediately, incensed. Incidents like that helped him decide he was going to spend his free time where he felt comfortable, which was usually with Lipscomb in jazz clubs in African-American parts of the city.
"I know when I first arrived in Baltimore, it was like two different sections: one white and one black," Moore said. "Even after the championship game, it was pretty evident. We couldn't really get together. There was not a team any closer than we were when we hit that football field. We were a tight-knit family. Unfortunately, society didn't give us that same kind of welcome when that same game was over."
Friendships between teammates of different races were complicated by the era. Journalist Mark Bowden writes in his book, The Best Game Ever, that Davis and Ameche once tried to watch a movie together in Westminster during Davis' rookie year. When the theater owner wouldn't let Davis in the door, Ameche complained: "Is this the land of the free and home of the brave or are you some a - -?"
But, years later, Bowden writes, Ameche approached Parker, the team's Hall of Fame offensive tackle, in his restaurant in Reisterstown and apologetically asked him to leave.
"Ameche, ashamed and embarrassed, explained to his teammate that if a black man were seen eating in his establishment in that part of Baltimore, it would kill his business," Bowden writes.
"There was always a feeling of 'I'm not inferior in any way,' " Moore said. "So why am I being treated like an inferior?"
There were occasionally light moments, though. Andy Nelson, who grew up in Alabama, had a playful friendship with Lipscomb.
"He told me once, 'Andy, when I make a lot of money, I'm going to go down to your hometown in Alabama and I'm going to buy me one of those plantations. And I'm going to have all white cotton-pickers,' " Nelson recalled, laughing. "I told him, 'If you do, man, I'll be your slave driver.' But we got along real good."
