Colts

The last man to take a horse to Belmont with a chance to snag the elusive final gem in the Triple Crown has some advice for Doug O'Neill. Stay true to the horse. "I think trainers going around asking other people what they should do, looking for how to handle it, that's stupid," Rick Dutrow, trainer of Big Brown in 2008, said in a phone interview Sunday. "It's got to be about your horse. Whatever anybody else did doesn't matter. You know your horse. " O'Neill, trainer of Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner I'll Have Another, has already disregarded common wisdom over the past three weeks.

Only 30 horses have made it to the Belmont Stakes with a chance to win the Triple Crown. Eleven have succeeded. This is whyI'll Have Another's quest to become the 12th at Belmont Park on June 9 will captivate a nation that long ago stopped paying close attention to the way thoroughbred horses run. Every contender vying to become the first Triple Crown winner since Affirmed in 1978 is a Cinderella - a term not commonly used to describe...

Deputed Testamony is 32-years-old. His dark brown coat is shaggy, and his biggest excitement is going into his paddock at Bonita Farm for three or four hours of grazing each day. He is a pensioner, an icon. The oldest living winner of a Triple Crown race. But when Billy Boniface looks at the horse in his paddock, he sees the striking colt that was born and trained at the family farm and raced to victory in the 1983 Preakness - the last horse bred or trained in Maryland to do so. "Oh my gosh, I still get goose bumps when I look at him and remember that day," said Boniface, who was 18 then and had just taken over the breeding operation at the farm.

Jesse L. Thomas, a Baltimore Colts defensive back in the 1950s who then spent four decades at Morgan State University, serving for several years as its head football coach, died of dementia complications May 16 at his Columbia home. He was 83. Born in Guthrie, Okla., and raised in Flint, Mich., he was a much-praised athlete at its Central High School, where he was inducted into the school's Hall of Fame. He was Flint's 1945 Athlete of the Year and held letters in basketball, baseball, track and football.

Date Opponent Result Week 1 JAGUARS W, 14-12 Week 2 AT DOLPHINS W, 27-23 Week 3 AT CARDINALS W, 31-10 Week 4 SEAHAWKS W, 34-17 Week 5 AT TITANS W, 31-9 Week 6 BYE WEEK Week 7 AT RAMS W, 42-6 Week 8 ...

No. Name Pos. 1 Pat McAfee P 3 Matt Stover K 4 Adam Vinatieri K 7 Curtis Painter QB 14 Sam Giguere WR 17 Austin Collie WR 18 Peyton Manning QB 20 T.J. Rushing DB 23 Tim Jennings DB 25 ...

Kevin Cowherd Ravens 24, Colts 21 Ravens are on a roll; Colts are rusty. I'll take the team with momentum every time. Jamison Hensley Colts 27, Ravens 13 The Ravens should be applauded for their dominating performance in New England. But Peyton Manning isn't banged up like Tom Brady. Edward Lee Colts 20, Ravens 17 Maybe the Ravens overachieved getting to this stage, but I see a tight game. Former Raven Matt Stover hammers final nail in the coffin.

Kevin Cowherd Ravens 27, Colts 6 Are the Colts still playing? Or flipping Colts to decide: Peyton Manning or Andrew Luck in 2012? Edward Lee Ravens 29, Colts 14 The Colts put up a good fight against the Patriots last Sunday, but the Ravens defense won't be as accommodating in garbage time. Mike Preston Ravens 27, Colts 10 Ravens history will no repeat itself. The Ravens may have lost to winless Miami a few years ago, but the will handle the Colts easily..

Ravens 24, Colts 10 Fourth quarter: 0:00 Indianapolis Touchdown - 13-yard pass from Dan Orlovsky to Jacob Tamme. (Adam Vinatieri extra point is good). Ravens 24, Colts 3 Third quarter: 3:41 Baltimore Touchdown - 7-yard pass from Joe Flacco to Dennis Pitta. (Billy Cundiff extra point is good). Ravens 17, Colts 3 Second quarter: 3:06 Indianapolis Field Goal - 22-yarder by Adam Vinatieri. Ravens 17, Colts 0 Second quarter: 10:07 Baltimore Touchdown - 6-yard run by Ray Rice.

Tanking season absurd Kevin Van Valkenburg Baltimore Sun Anyone who thinks the Colts should essentially tank this season to position themselves in the Andrew Luck sweepstakes is being completely naive. If Indianapolis really wants Luck and they're not in a position to draft him in 2012, they should just offer whatever it takes to get him. But suggesting they throw the season is absurd. And doing it might even be illegal. Imagine the gambling implications alone if Joseph Addai decided to start intentionally fumbling whenever he sniffed the end zone.

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.

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.

How could The Sun produce a historical list of the most outstanding athletes in Maryland's history and not include Tom Matte? I don't even want to guess. One of the criteria was that the player had to have lived in Maryland for three years. Tom Matte has maintained his home in Maryland ever since he first joined the Colts in 1961 - a total of 51 years - when he first was a running back behind Lenny Moore . A professional football team in those days had only 38 players, which meant that each player had to be versatile and able to fill in at any spot.

Lenny Moore can hardly attend an NFL function without some gnarly old linebacker wagging his finger at the 78-year-old Baltimore Colts Hall of Fame running back and telling Moore something he already knows. "Lenny," the old-timer will say, "I had a bead on you so many times out there, I was going to knock the living hell out of you. But then I'd look up and, all of a sudden, here comes Jim Parker - and he'd get me first. " Moore will listen, smile and nod. Then he'll look skyward and thank the man upstairs - No. 77, the big lug with the horseshoe on his helmet - for running interference.

From The Aegis dated April 30, 1987: A Harford woman was sentenced 25 years ago to five years in prison, which equated to "one year for each bullet she fired into her husband's body. " The woman never denied shooting her unemployed husband, but said she did it because she feared the man she had lived with for 19 years and feared for her children. Not only did her husband abuse his step-daughter, he also fought with his two sons with the woman. She pleaded guilty to manslaughter.

RG3 has better support Sam Farmer Los Angeles Times Robert Griffin III will have a better rookie season because he'll be surrounded by a better supporting cast. The Redskins have a better-than-respectable defense, and an offense that's primed to succeed with a double-threat quarterback like RG3, especially with his accuracy on deep passes. That's not to say Luck is the wrong choice for the Colts. He should eventually round into an elite NFL quarterback.

The Ravens decided against a reunion with Kyle Boller, but they will reunite Curtis Painter with Jim Caldwell. After a free-agent quarterback workout today that also featured Boller and Dennis Dixon, the Ravens have agreed to a one-year deal with Painter, who started eight games last year for an Indianapolis Colts team that was without Peyton Manning. Caldwell, now the Ravens' quarterbacks coach, was Painter's head coach for the previous three seasons in Indianapolis. In his career, Painter, 26, has appeared in 11 games, all but two of them coming this past season.

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.