Baltimore Fans

Wouldn't you know it. Baltimore sports fans finally find a New York team they can get behind and look what happens. The Colts at long last avenged their 1969 loss to Joe Namath and the upstart Jets on Sunday, and we're left on the short end of the yard marker both times. Now what do you do? Do you go with the ABC theory -- Anybody But the Colts -- or do you hold your nose and stay loyal to the American Football Conference and hope to take solace in the fact that the Ravens lost in the playoffs to the eventual Super Bowl champion for the third time in the last four years?

In the greater context of world affairs, the scheduling problem that has put the Ravens and Orioles at odds this week doesn't really amount to a whole lot, but the public relations dust-up over what normally would be a non-descript Thursday night in early September reveals quite a bit about both of Baltimore's big-time professional sports franchises and the leagues they represent. The Ravens, still riding their Super Bowl high, quite understandably were looking forward to the opportunity to host the 2013 NFL season opener at M&T Bank Stadium on the Thursday night before the first Sunday of the regular season.

It was after the Cincinnati game, after Baltimore's Ravens clinched AFC North title, after those mind-blowing runs by Ray Rice, that the three buddies, who'd just about yelled themselves hoarse, went upstairs to hear some music. That's when the purple lightning bolt struck, just as Kenny Silkworth was showing off one of his instrumental tracks, a piece that sounded inspiring to him — motivating, almost, like a battle hymn. Robert "McFreshington" Norton, who raps in town under the name Fresh Competition, heard it and then began to softly chant, "We are, we are, we are the Ravens nation.

I was a New Orleans Host Committee volunteer for the festivities leading up to Sunday's Super Bowl , and I talked to lots of Ravens fans, since New Orleans was purple by more than 4-to-1. I must congratulate the Baltimore fans for being so nice; they were very much into the spirit of having fun and enjoying the experience. The 49er fans were more reserved and uptight, it seemed to me. And the connection between Baltimore and New Orleans (Ed Reed and Jacoby Jones are both from the New Orleans area)

When Baltimore's persevering football fans finally got a taste of the Canadian Football League, they got a full-course meal.They got the rouge, the comeback and the kick that capped it all.They got 88 points, 857 yards of offense and 139 plays.They got a pulsating, 45-43 exhibition victory over the Winnipeg Blue Bombers at Memorial Stadium that punctuated Baltimore's return to pro football 10 years after it left town.Opening night may never again be as sweet or theatrical for Baltimore's CFL expansion team.

Got the perfect name for a Baltimore NFL team? Get in line.In a place where oyster yields are falling, industrial jobs are growing scarce, and the once-ubiquitous Natty Boh is almost impossible to find at sporting events, there is no shortage of passion when it comes to naming a potential football team."

THE COLTS vs. Baltimore. The billing has been in the making for 14 years, and it still sounds strange. Like the Celtics vs. Boston, the Yankees vs. New York, the Fighting Irish vs. Notre Dame.But here we are: The Colts are here in Baltimore for the first time since Robert Irsay broke the fragile hearts of tough football fans and punctured the area's collective ego when he moved the franchise to the Midwest.Now that Baltimore finally has regained its stature as an NFL city, it's time for payback.

All Baltimore's frustrated pro football fans can do now is wait.From the press box to the owner's box, the Baltimore fans wowed the pro football world with their enthusiasm at the preseason game Thursday night at Memorial Stadium."

He scratched and climbed the backstop screen, bowled over opponents, argued with the manager and entertained the adoring fans with his parody of Babe Ruth's called home run during rain delays.During 10-plus seasons at Memorial Stadium, Rick Dempsey, even more than the team's sluggers, became the symbol of the Baltimore Orioles' grit.And now, at 41, he seems destined to outlast the stadium that was once his stage."I hope to play in the new place," he said last night as his current team, the Milwaukee Brewers, prepared to play their final game of the season here.

For the rest of the country, the pro football weekend unfolding today and tomorrow should be among the best, offering a pair of playoff doubleheaders with winners moving within one win of a berth in the Super Bowl. In Baltimore, however, the weekend will be something else entirely, something dark and personal and unrelenting. It will be the ultimate Hate-a-Thon. The three teams Baltimore fans dislike most - the Washington Redskins, Indianapolis Colts and Pittsburgh Steelers - will be in action, seeking further glories.

Leading up to and after the Super Bowl, we'll be sharing dispatches sent to us by Ravens fans going to New Orleans. We hope that "Super Fans: A fan's-eye view of XLVII" allows the rest of Ravens Nation to share in their experience. Posts will be published blog-style in reverse chronological order as we receive them. Entries are edited for style. There are no words, but I still wrote 700 Confetti falls during the post-game ceremonies. Tammy Lunkenheimer posted 1:14 p.m. Tuesday I am barely able to find the right words to describe my Super Bowl experience.

Ravens fans had waited 12 years for another Super Bowl victory, and they packed the Mercedes-Benz Superdome, dwarfing 49ers rooters in both numbers and volume. They about blew the roof off the stadium when Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco flicked his first touchdown pass as the team began its march to a commanding halftime lead. Then Baltimore - the team and its fans - held on for dear life. Down by 22 points early in the second half, the 49ers staged a furious comeback that fell just short as the Ravens held on to win, 34-31.

Ray Lewis took the microphone and said one word three times: "Baltimore. " Staring out at thousands of people crowding the Harborplace Amphitheater, most of them holding cell phones or cameras aloft to capture the moment, the second player ever drafted by the Ravens launched into a short speech. The team was making a pit stop Monday on its way to the airport to fly to New Orleans for Sunday's Super Bowl, so these would be Lewis' last public comments in Baltimore as a member of the franchise he has come to personify.

This year's Super Bowl features two teams -- and cities -- with much in the way of grudges. But that won't stop fans from creating them. Fans can start whipping themselves into a proper frenzy right now by sharing their love for either Baltimore or San Francisco -- and Wheat Thins -- via Twitter and or Instagram. Baltimore fans should simply Tweet or post #BAL #MUSTHAVEWHEATTHINS from now through Sunday. San Francisco fans have to tweet .... something else. Fans from the city with the "loudest fans" will be eligible to have 10 boxes of assorted snacks delivered to their door on Super Bowl Sunday.

I wrote a little about this before. But now I want your opinion. So come sit down by the bar, grab a Boh and give me your two cents (no, that's not the suggested tip). The Ravens play in the AFC title game Sunday. One upset win over the New England Patriots and Ray Lewis and company are back in the Super Bowl for the first time since 2000-01. Meanwhile, the Orioles host FanFest on Saturday and record crowds would not be a surprise. The club, after all, made the playoffs for the first time in 15 years.

For most of the callow Colts, the history of the Colts' move from Baltimore to Indianapolis might as well be as distant and foreign as the publication of the Magna Carta and the War of 1812. “I wasn't even born then," Dwayne Allen said of the 1984 move of the franchise. He's 22 years old. Born in 1990. “I wasn't even a thought. " That's true for most of this team. And the older guys? They were kids when the move happened. They were trying to figure out multiplication tables when those Mayflower trucks left in the dead of night.

He's said it so often that many have come to dismiss it as the old chief executive's paranoid rambling.It was the Redskins' fault, says former Gov. William Donald Schaefer. The Redskins and their owner, Jack Kent Cooke, delivered him one of his most stinging rebukes. Cooke and National Football league Commissioner Paul Tagliabue conspired against Baltimore and cost us the expansion franchise that rightfully should have been ours.As daffy as it sounds, Schaefer might be right. The state's expansion strategy had its flaws.

Don't misunderstand. Barry Krauss loved Baltimore - from the crabcakes to the Inner Harbor to the rich provenance of the NFL team that picked him sixth overall in the 1979 draft. But five years later, the Colts' move to Indianapolis proved a godsend for the players, said Krauss, a tough linebacker who played 10 seasons with a horseshoe on his helmet. "It wasn't fair to Baltimore fans, to lose the franchise, with all that great history," he said. "But the relationship between the team and the community was so broken, so sad. It was tough, playing before 35,000" at Memorial Stadium.

Dave Rather and Ray Lewis go back a long way. In 1997, Rather bought Mother's Federal Hill Grille, a popular Federal Hill restaurant that draws packed crowds for Ravens games. He has had season tickets since the Ravens arrived in Baltimore in 1996. Rather said he hasn't missed a home game and even went to Tampa, Fla., in 2001 to watch the Ravens - led by their then fifth-year star linebacker - throttle the New York Giants in Super Bowl XXXV. On Sunday, Rather will be at M&T Bank Stadium for the team's wild-card playoff game against the Indianapolis Colts.