Baltimore Colts

This Sunday, the Indianapolis Colts face the New Orleans Saints in Super Bowl XLIV to determine this season's NFL Champion. Unbeknownst to the Colts, they face another opponent on Super Bowl Sunday -- the historical image of themselves -- the Baltimore Colts. Super Bowl XLIV will be the 438th game (counting all regular season and postseason games) the Colts have played since the team moved to Indianapolis in 1984. Between 1953 and 1983, the Baltimore Colts played exactly 438 games.

I'll Have Another, fresh off winning the second leg of the Triple Crown, nipped at anyone who came by Sunday morning. He was more playful than ornery. Someone told trainer Doug O'Neill that the colt's eyelids looked heavy.  "He's always got that look," O'Neill shot back. It's true. I'll Have Another appeared only mildly bothered yesterday after running a mile and three-sixteenths in under two minutes and being herded into a crowded winner's circle. After his connections partied late into the night outside of his barn - except for O'Neill, who went to his hotel room with his wife and kids and ordered room service - I'll Have Another was spry at dawn.

Lenny Moore and Lydell Mitchell were two of Penn State's greatest players, and not surprisingly, became two of the greatest Baltimore Colts. Two weeks ago they drove to State College, Pa., to pay their respects to Joe Paterno, who died Sunday and who they give much of the credit for their success on and off the field. "When you say Penn State, you say Joe Paterno," said Moore, the Colts' Hall of Fame running back. Moore played for the Nittany Lions in the mid-1950s, when Paterno was assistant to head coach Rip Engle.

Last week, on what would have been his father's 79th birthday, Chad Unitas visited his grave at Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens. There, on the edge of a pond filled with ducks and ringed by weeping willows, he knelt by the marble marker and spoke with the one many call football's greatest quarterback. "I go there a couple of times a month, to ask my dad's advice about this and that," Unitas said. "He's been gone 10 years, but I can still hear his voice. " Johnny Unitas died of a heart attack Sept.

It has been a source of continuing aggravation. Demeaning. Frustrating. Thirty-five years of franchise residency for the Baltimore Colts and then, in absentia, all that remains, to go with the joy of past achievements, is an enormous bundle of pain and regret. A team that meant so much to a city and to history now means so little.There should be more than a perishable memory, which will continue to fade with the passing of time, to mark the spot of a team that contributed in so many definable ways to the success of the NFL and its contemporary appeal.

I have a distant childhood memory of the Christmas when Bert Rechichar came to dinner at the home of my uncle, Joe Mignogna. The year was 1958, and a few days later Mr. Rechichar and the rest of the legendary Baltimore Colts would be in New York, beating the Giants in what was hailed as the greatest football game ever played.Uncle Joe says he knew Bert Rechichar and quite a few other players from his job as an assistant manager of Mar-Matic Sales, where the Colts and other celebrities were invited to shop at wholesale prices.

What needs to happen at a time like this is for someone, somewhere, to tell the National Football League it is not going to be bullied, threatened or coerced. Baltimore must stand up and be counted. In this connection, it must fight for the right, if that's necessary, to use the name Baltimore Colts for a Canadian Football League team and be willing to go all the way to the Supreme Court to defend such a position.The name was invented in 1947, the result of a write-in contest. The NFL had nothing to do with such a designation.

Lucy Ewbank, wife of former Baltimore Colts coach Weeb Ewbank, died Monday in The Knolls of Oxford (Ohio). She was 105. Her husband died in 1998. He coached the Colts from 1954 to 1962, winning championships in 1958 and 1959. He also coached the New York Jets. He went into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1978. According to a news release from Miami University in Oxford, where her husband was an athlete and coach, Mrs. Ewbank is survived by her daughters; Luanne Spenceley, Nancy (Charles)

Walter G. "Mose" Adolph, a retired gas station owner, died of heart failure Thursday at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. The Ruxton resident was 78. Born in Baltimore and raised on Sherwood Road in Idlewylde, he was a 1948 graduate of Towson High School. He had been a member of the Army Reserves. Family members said that age 18 he bought a Texaco station on York Road in Govans. In 1957, he was named the Maryland Service Station Owner Dealer of the Year. He was also an auto mechanic. "He was known for his friendships with members of the Baltimore Colts," said his daughter, Miriam A. Fleury of Wiltondale.

It wasn't the national anthem, but it whipped people to their feet in shouts of patriotism -- Baltimore style -- yesterday at Towson's annual Fourth of July parade.The song was "Let's Go, You Baltimore Colts." And it was performed by the Baltimore Colts Marching Band in its last round of parade appearances in Towson, Dundalk and Catonsville before changing from blue to Ravens purple in a few weeks."This was my last time to yell, 'Fight, fight, fight,' " said Roseann Maher Curran of Cockeysville, who fairly shouted the fight song as the Colts band wound through the center of Towson.

Joe Vitt went directly from the football field at Towson State to his first job in the NFL as the strength coach of the Baltimore Colts in 1979. A little more than 30 years later, Vitt finds himself in the middle of one of the biggest stories in the league's recent history - and one of its biggest scandals. Though the 57-year-old New Orleans Saints assistant coach has been suspended by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell for the first six games of the 2012 season for his role in an illegal bounty system, Vitt was named interim coach Thursday by the Saints.

Sisto Joseph Averno Sr., a guard who played on the Baltimore Colts in the 1950s and went on to sell Chevrolets for 57 years, died of complications from Parkinson's disease Monday at Northwest Hospital. He was 86 and lived in Pikesville. Born in Paterson, N.J., he was the son of Roberto Averno and Elvira Isabella Salerno. While a student at Paterson High School, he played football and was scouted by colleges. He won athletic scholarships, but he forged a birth certificate so he could enlist in the Navy during World War II. He was assigned to the South Pacific and served as a gunner's mate aboard a destroyer.

I was there that night. It was 28 years ago, in the snowy, pre-dawn darkness of March 29, that the Mayflower vans rumbled out of Owings Mills and the Baltimore Colts left for Indianapolis, ripping an entire city's heart out in the process. Just before midnight, we started getting calls on the sports desk at the old Evening Sun that there was unusual activity taking place at the Colts complex. At first we thought it was just a couple of crank calls. But more folks were calling in to report that the complex was lit up, with the sound of trucks echoing everywhere and security guards stopping anyone not authorized to enter.

You knew it would come up as soon as you heard that the Indianapolis Colts would be releasing star quarterback Peyton Manning and a sportscaster there was calling him the "best player to ever play for the Colts. " More than a few Baltimore Colts fans will beg to differ with him. So the Johnny Unitas vs. Peyton Manning debate is likely to be re-ignited by today's release of Manning . And you're sure to hear that Manning is the greatest Colt who ever lived.

Hines Ward may be gone, but he won't soon be forgotten by Ravens fans. Now that the Pittsburgh Steelers have parted ways with the wide receiver and his maddening, ever-present smile, here's a look at some other famous Baltimore sports villains.  Robert Irsay -- Erratic owner who moved the beloved Baltimore Colts to Indianapolis under cover of darkness in March, 1984, breaking a city's heart. Paul Tagliabue -- Cold-hearted NFL commissioner who bluntly suggested, in the wake of the Colts leaving town, that Baltimore should have built a museum rather than pine for a new pro football team.

As he carried the Lombardi Trophy to midfield after the Super Bowl Sunday, past a double row of giddy and groping New York Giants, Raymond Berry felt their glee. "They (players) were in another world," said Berry, 78. "As I watched them touch the trophy, and kiss it, the emotion of the experience was written all over those boys' faces. Winning the championship is a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and I could identify with them. I've been there. " Fifty-four years ago, Berry led the Baltimore Colts to their first NFL title, a 23-17 sudden-death victory over the Giants.

I f Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts beat the New Orleans Saints in the Super Bowl on Sunday - they're favored by five points - it's quite likely you'll hear references to the victory being their third Super Bowl trophy. Of course, around these parts, that kind of statement is about as insulting as it is dishonest. Sure, a team wearing helmets with a blue horseshoe on the side will have won three Super Bowls, but counting Baltimore's 1970 victory over the Dallas Cowboys as part of Indianapolis' total is akin to Gisele Bundchen telling people that Tom Brady's and Bridget Moynahan's son is basically her own. (Which she did, by the way.)

Lenny Moore and Lydell Mitchell were two of Penn State's greatest players, and not surprisingly, became two of the greatest Baltimore Colts. Two weeks ago they drove to State College, Pa., to pay their respects to Joe Paterno, who died Sunday and who they give much of the credit for their success on and off the field. "When you say Penn State, you say Joe Paterno," said Moore, the Colts' Hall of Fame running back. Moore played for the Nittany Lions in the mid-1950s, when Paterno was assistant to head coach Rip Engle.

Lucy Ewbank, wife of former Baltimore Colts coach Weeb Ewbank, died Monday in The Knolls of Oxford (Ohio). She was 105. Her husband died in 1998. He coached the Colts from 1954 to 1962, winning championships in 1958 and 1959. He also coached the New York Jets. He went into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1978. According to a news release from Miami University in Oxford, where her husband was an athlete and coach, Mrs. Ewbank is survived by her daughters; Luanne Spenceley, Nancy (Charles)