Restaurants make most of that dough. At Baugher's (est. 1948), the lunchroom gets so busy between Ravens workouts that some regular patrons stay clear for the month that the team is in town.
When morning practice ends, around 11 a.m., the plum-colored throng fans out.
"We've had people drive up in purple cars and people come in wearing purple beads," said Toston, a waitress there for 12 years. "Kids come in wearing the same shirts they just had autographed."
Sometimes, come evening, a player will drop by, too.
"Once I waited on this big guy at the counter," Toston said. "I asked, 'Did you watch the Ravens practice today?'
" 'No,' he said. 'I had to work.' "
Turns out he was a lineman.
"I felt like such a fool," Toston said.
Off-campus player sightings have tailed off since the Colts' halcyon days of a half-century ago. Then, the team lived in the hot college dorms, attended Mass at St. John's Church and drank beer and shot pool with townies at a joint called Os and Ginny's.
"Today's players aren't as easy to get to as we were," said Gino Marchetti, the Colts' Hall of Fame defensive end. "Back then, on a nice evening, you could walk the streets of town without being asked for autographs. A couple of our players even married girls from Westminster."
Still, residents talk proudly of having spotted a Raven here or there, in civvies, acting just like normal folk.
Overheard on the streets of Westminster last week:
"Yeah, I stood in line behind Willis McGahee at SunTrust Bank. ... I was getting my nails done at the salon and two Ravens came in for pedicures. ... Did you see Jonathan Ogden (6 feet 9, 345 pounds) last year making his own salad at Safeway? He looked like Sasquatch in sweat pants."
At Krysztof's Barber Shop, near the Best Western motel where the club is quartered, Ravens pictures dot the walls. Never mind that some are bald.
"I've shaved [general manager] Ozzie Newsome's head with a straight razor," owner Chris Sontag said. "As I worked, we talked about our families, and about women. No football."
Both of Baltimore's football teams have left their mark on the town, said Jackie Finch, a Westminster resident for 50 years.
"The Ravens built an awfully nice rubberized track at McDaniel. My husband goes up there to do his walking," said Finch, who lives 1 1/2 blocks from the college.
More important, Finch said, were changes spurred by the Colts' training there during the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
