Mark Spector

Mark Spector is a columnist for sportsnet.ca

Johnny Unitas was a record-setting star in Baltimore in the '60s and '70s.

MIAMI - "This is my Goddamned team!"

They say that Bob Irsay, then owner of the Baltimore Colts, was hammered the night he snarled those words back in January of 1984. The story was beginning to leak that Irsay was planning to move the Colts out of Baltimore. Their stadium was decrepit, and Irsay was despised in Baltimore anyhow.

It was the beginning of one of sports' great and tragic stories, spawning movies, marching bands that refused to die, and an undying hatred that earned the not-so-dearly departed Irsay a cameo in The Wire - as a picture on a dartboard of a crooked Baltimore longshoreman.

Stop me if you've heard this one before, but if you have never seen the movie Diner - if your memory hazily equates "Mayflower" with a ship that brought pilgrims to Thanksgiving dinner - then there's something else you should know about the squeaky-clean Indianapolis Colts.

As anyone older than 30 can tell you, Peyton Manning wasn't the first guy in this franchise's history to call an audible. That sterile, dirt-free atmosphere inside Lucas Oil Stadium hides a history that began in the dirt and mud of Memorial Stadium in Baltimore, seeded in losing, deceit and heart break.

Where did the Indianapolis Colts come from, really?

They came out of the backs of 15 Mayflower moving trucks that packed up a city's heart in a 2 a.m. move on March, 29, 1984, ripped it out of its chest and trucked it off to Indy. The trucks all took slightly different routes out of town, so as not to alert suspicion from Baltimore cops who may have been tipped off to the midnight move.

It was like a scene out of Dr. Seuss, as a blue-collar shipping town that loved its' NFL team, no less than any Canadian team loves its NHL club, awoke one morning and found their team was gone.

"The Baltimore Colts weren't just a football team to us. They were our team," wrote celebrated director Barry Levinson, whose movie "Diner" is a fantastic window into Colts culture. "Then on one snowy, early spring morning, Robert Irsay shipped the Colts to Indianapolis in Mayflower moving vans, and the team was gone."

They cried in Quebec City and Winnipeg when their hockey teams left. But in those cities, divorce was prolonged. Each one saw it coming miles away and months ahead, yet couldn't muster the capital to hold on to their teams.

In Baltimore, a spat over a perceived promise to build a new stadium begat a legal manoeuvre by the City of Baltimore to seize the team from Irsay, citing "eminent domain." Irsay acted swiftly and without compassion, backing up the trucks that wintry night like the Grinch, a move that typified the hard, hard man whose son Jim now owns and operates the Colts.

Irsay was to Baltimore what Blackhawks owner (Dollar) Bill Wirtz was to the city of Chicago. The bigger the fan of the team, the more you despised its owner.

He was a hard drinker who was hated by his own mother, who at age 84 told Sports Illustrated: "He's a devil on earth, that one."

"When my husband got sick and got the heart attack, he took advantage. He was no good.

"He stole all our money and said goodbye."

Irsay made his money in a family heating and ventilation business. "I don't know how else to say this," younger brother Ronald once said, "but my brother tried to run my father out of business. Bob actually worked to try to destroy his own father. Oh, he's a real sweetheart, all right."

Today, the Colts are the class of the NFL and closing in on their second Super Bowl in four years. The Baltimore Colts Marching Band never disbanded, and now call themselves Baltimore's Marching Ravens. And Jim Irsay has learned from his father, who softened in his later years the way most old bastards tend to.

Jim Irsay created a lottery where five Colts fans got Super Bowl rings, with the money going to charity.

"I believe firmly that who else should have a Super Bowl ring besides your fans," Jim Irsay said this week in Miami. "Once you have greatness, you have a chance to define yourself and what you're about. In terms of the humility of the franchise (it is due to) the incredible support that we have in Indianapolis."

Of course, they just built Irsay a new stadium in Indy.