NO JOY IN MUDDVILLE

The Indianapolis Colts beat the Baltimore Ravens yesterday, 15-6. I guess us Baltimore fans were asking for it given the way we built this game up beyond all reason. What we ended up seeing was how the Ravens have played all season: the defense was dominating, the offense was shaky. The defense did rattle Peyton Manning a bit, creating 2 interceptions, 1 sack, and allowing no touchdowns. That, at least, was satisfying. If only the offense could've delivered some touchdowns. Oh well, there's always next year.

The game was cathartic in a way I hadn't expected. By experiencing the loss, I realized that it really didn't matter much in the vast scheme of things. The Indianapolis Colts are just as alien to me as the New England Patriots or the San Diego Chargers. I was more upset that we weren't going to the Super Bowl than that we lost to the Colts. In some strange mental twist, I no longer saw Baltimore's past in that blue-and-white jersey. They're just another team. I have purple in my veins now.

Football season is essentially over for me. I'm eager to begin devoting my Sunday afternoons to creating new customized action figures, and I will report on my progess in future entries. Stay tuned.

RAVENS VS. COLTS

A few months ago, I made a post about my childhood love for the Baltimore Colts and my John Unitas action figure. At the time, I had no idea that the Baltimore Ravens would make it to the playoffs and wind up taking on the Indianapolis Colts for a run at the Super Bowl. Since the game is hosted in Baltimore, the media has been abuzz all week about how this will be payback for Robert Irsay moving the Colts out of Baltimore. I too have been caught up in the frenzy and am now forced to come to grips with my 23-year hatred for the Indianapolis Colts.

The players on both teams are either too young to remember when the Colts were in Baltimore or not even born when the team snuck out of town on a snowy March night in 1984. They are bewildered by the intensity of this controversy. Even young Ravens fans don’t understand the anger us older fans feel toward Indianapolis and the need for revenge. Frankly, the more I analyze my own feelings, the sillier it seems to me too. I don’t hate the city of Indianapolis, since they simply wanted an NFL team to root for and found an opportunity to get one. I can’t hate Jim Irsay, the current owner of the Colts, who seems like a much nicer guy than his dad was and had no hand in the move to Indianapolis. The only person I can truly hate is the former owner Robert Irsay, and he’s dead.

The ill feelings between Baltimore and Irsay started as soon as he bought the team and escalated to a fevered pitch by the time he left. It’s like if you had a fine, respectable community newspaper that was suddenly bought by an outside publishing firm, which quickly turns the paper into a sleazy tabloid. After awhile, no one wants to read the paper because, not only is it trashy, but it’s an insult to what the paper once was. The circulation declines, so instead of improving the paper, the owners decide to move it to another city. You’re happy to see the sleazy tabloid go, but you wish the newspaper had continued the way it was originally.

Another criticism leveled at us old-Colt-fan-curmudgeons is that Baltimore took away Cleveland’s team much the same way Indianapolis took our team, so we got our payback. There are some holes in that argument, however. First of all, we never wanted another city’s team; in fact, the idea of doing such a thing sickened us. We tried twice to get an expansion team, but were shot down by then-NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue (The Emperor to Irsay’s Darth Vader). Tagliabue was blinded by geography and television markets. He couldn’t see why Baltimore would want its own team when the Washington Redskins were 40 miles to our south and the Philadelphia Eagles were 100 miles to our north. We should simply shut up and root for one of those teams. What he couldn’t fathom was that Baltimore was no more like either of those cities than Seattle or Phoenix. We had our own culture, our own traditions, and once had our own team.

After it was made clear that the sneering Tagliabue would not give us a team, we reluctantly brokered the deal to bring Art Modell’s team to Baltimore. However, we did one thing that Robert Irsay was too evil and mean-spirited to do. We let Cleveland keep the name, the colors, and the records of its old team should they ever get a new one (which they did within a few years). We started fresh with a new name, new uniforms, and new legends. If Irsay had extended the same courtesy to us, this whole controversy would be a non-issue. We’d still be rooting for the Colts and they’d be rooting for the Indianapolis Nappers or something.

The bottom line is, us old Colt fans were hurt badly, not only by the team leaving, but by the years of acrimony between Irsay and the city leading up to the departure, and by the NFL’s outward contempt for Baltimore. No matter how much you rationalize, you can’t deny the pain. Just like a bad relationship, the hurt remains regardless of how much time passes or how much better your life gets. Beating the Colts in M&T Bank Stadium on Saturday probably won’t change anything, but it’ll sure be fun to watch!

GO RAVENS!!!!

JOHNNY HERO

I was never much of a sports fan, probably because my father was not into sports. Neither my brother nor I had any desire to participate in organized sports. I was especially unsuited for it: chubby, awkward, poor hand/eye coordination, etc. The only sport I ever held a life-long interest in was football. As a child growing up in Baltimore during the late 60s, Johnny Unitas was a god. My family worshipped Unitas and the Colts in front of the t.v. every Sunday afternoon. My mom could take on the histrionic behavior of a revival tent show regular, particularly when the Colts scored a touchdown. She’d leap off the couch, stomp, scream, and clap her hands like she had just seen Jesus. I was some times worried that she might throw herself out the living room window. Thus was the power of football in Baltimore back then. Those from outside the city can marvel at the amazing performance of the underdog Jets during the 1969 Super Bowl. Baltimore fans from that era only feel heartbreak.

I relate all this only to introduce the next action figure that loomed in my early life, Johnny Hero. This 13-inch entry into the action figure world was designed to capitalize on professional sports the same way G.I. Joe capitalized on the armed services and Captain Action capitalized on the super hero craze. Johnny himself was a bulky figure made of foam rubber molded onto a wire frame. He was dressed in a generic track uniform and his plastic head was shaped into a rather bland countenance, sort of like G.I. Joe meets the early Ken doll. His hands were giant, flat things with small points sticking out of them, designed to be inserted into the balls and bats sold separately. The accessories came as part of the outfit sets. Each set was a football or baseball uniform based on the 1965 or 1966 uniforms of Major League Baseball or the National/American Football Leagues.

As shown in this picture, I had a Baltimore Colts uniform to adorn my Johnny Hero. In fact, I had no knowledge that this was really a generic action figure with multiple uniforms available. I thought he was specifically made to be Johnny Unitas. Why not call him Johnny Hero, since Johnny Unitas was a hero and more to those of us in the town of crab cakes and National Bohemian beer. Johnny was another one of those figures I lugged around everywhere, and I do mean lugged since the guy weighed a ton to a three year old. I often took him into the bathtub with me; not a good idea for a toy made of foam rubber. He would lay on a towel for days drying out.

That’s what brought about the demise of my hero in blue and white. The foam rubber body eventually dry-rotted, turning my beloved Johnny U into something from George Romero’s nightmares. He eventually entered the action figure hall of fame in Trash Can, U.S.A.

A few years ago, I got the bug to create a new Johnny Unitas action figure for my collection. I managed to nab an old Johnny Hero Colts uniform on eBay. Of course, any authentic Johnny Hero figure would be rare and expensive, and most likely dry-rotted all to hell, so I purchased a figure from Cotswold Collectibles that kinda sorta looked like Johnny U, and also bought a figure that had flexible hands. I swapped the hands on the figures, put the Colts uniform on the figure, and stuck the football into the flexible right hand with a toothpick. My uniform didn’t come with shoulder pads, so I invented some makeshift pads with some strap-on armor pieces from a G.I. Joe ninja figure. As a final touch, I created some stick-on numbers so that the uniform would be emblazoned with the famous number 19. Here is a picture of the final results:

Although I am now a Ravens fan, I will always think of the Colts as Baltimore’s team. Robert “Darth” Irsay may have bought the franchise and smuggled it to Indianapolis during the dark of night, but the heart and soul of what the team once was still exists in all fans old enough to remember.