You re Never Gonna See Hank Again
Baltimore And The Colts — A Bond 'You lot're Never Gonna See Again,' Upton Bell Says 06:56 Re-create the code beneath to embed the WBUR sound thespian on your site
Re-create the code beneath to embed the WBUR sound thespian on your site
Play
Dallas loves the Cowboys. Pittsburgh loves the Steelers. Lots of other NFL cities characteristic fans who spend more than than reason could dictate on flavour tickets, paint their faces in squad colors and sit in freezing weather, howling like dogs ... because some people in Cleveland still beloved the 0-xvi Browns.
Only where are the roots of the love between a pro football team and the town where it lives?
'In A Family'
Upton Bell thinks he knows. He started learning the answer 57 years ago.
"And you were how old?" I enquire him.
"Twenty-two, going on 10," he says with a express mirth. "It was a summer job, simply with the thought that the following yr, when I terminate college — which I didn't — that I would come dorsum, and I would have a full-time job with the Colts."
Upton Bell is the son of Bert Bell, who was the commissioner of the NFL from 1945 until his death in 1959, so a summertime job as a gofer in the league was natural enough for immature Upton.
Upton Bell feels he was specially fortunate that his first employer was the Colts. He began feeling that way when he entered the team's training camp locker room for the beginning time to encounter quarterback Johnny Unitas, star receiver Raymond Berry and defensive standout Gene "Large Daddy" Lipscomb, amongst others.
"Every one of them walked over: 'Hiya, kid. Your begetter was great. Welcome to the Colts. What can we do for y'all?' " Bell recalls. "Can you imagine getting that today? It was like I was near — already, in the first few minutes — in a family."
According to Ron Borges, who covered the Colts for a time, even fans without Bong's entre felt that way nigh the team in those days.
"Johnny Unitas ran an acetylene torch at the Bethlehem Steel found in the mornings," Borges says. "Artie Donovan was a liquor salesman. A lot of these guys, they had to piece of work, and so they would go to their other job, which happened to be football game."
Overcoming The 'Bang-up Inferiority Complex'
And so fans of the Colts could identify with the players, and the players were good with that. Borges says that at training camp, there were no ropes between Unitas and the working stiffs who came to see him. Beyond that, those Colts were good. They'd won championships in 1958 and 1959 for a town that needed a champion.
"Baltimore has the great inferiority complex," Borges says. "They're trapped betwixt New York and Washington. In that location'southward no VIP room in Baltimore. Most cities, you lot got a VIP room for the athletes and the politicians. And in Baltimore, you went to Gussie's --"
"Gussie's Downbeat," Bell interjects.
"Gussie'due south Downbeat, and it was merely as likely you were gonna run into Gino [Marchetti] and Unitas and those guys as you would run into me and Upton," Borges continues. "And I remember Unitas set the tone. Unitas was about as down-to-world a guy as you were always gonna find in professional sports."
The accessibility of the players — Johnny Unitas in detail — bred familiarity, or at least the powerful illusion of familiarity. As Borges puts it, the city of Baltimore embraced the Colts the way a pocket-size customs sometimes embraces a high school team that wins a state championship.
Bell feels every bit if those players who stayed around after they retired helped plant and reinforce the relationship between the squad and the community, a relationship that the active players also enjoyed.
"It was like watching an old picture show of the guy that works in the shipyard, comes in, he has a shot and a beer, and he's talking to his buddy: 'Oh, I gotta go home. I've gotta pay the bills,' " Bell says. "They might end up sitting side by side to one of the players, and the player's saying, 'Oh, my god, I got hurt today. I can't stand the coach. He's a hurting in the neck.' And you're never gonna get that once more."
'Baltimore Is Still Hither In This Stadium'
Nope, you're probably non. Most of the players in today's NFL don't have to larn welding or drive a beer truck in the offseason. They may sign autographs at training campsite, but they aren't ordering burgers with the fans when day is washed. Such was already the case 33 years ago, when the squad Upton Bong recalls with such affection left town. That fact was indisputable. The team became the Indianapolis Colts, and the owner, Robert Irsay, became the most hated man in Baltimore.
Simply it was a testament to the connectedness betwixt team and city that numbers of citizens refused to admit what had happened. The Baltimore Colts marching ring did not disband. They played on, equally if there was still a home team for which to play. And, as Borges recalls, the band members weren't the only ones in Baltimore to firmly reject rejection.
"I don't want it to come back. Because I had it, and a few other people had it. You're never gonna see it again."
Upton Bell on the relationship between Baltimore and the Colts
"That autumn, when what would have been the opening game of the flavour at Memorial Stadium, the band was there, even though the team was not, and one other person was," Borges says. "John Steadman was the leading columnist in town, who sat in the bleachers for four quarters and and then wrote a cavalcade. 'In that location'south no squad here, but nosotros're hither. Baltimore is still here in this stadium.' And they fought and fought and fought to get a team back, and ultimately, in true American way of the 2000s, they stole somebody else'due south squad and got it dorsum."
Cleveland's. They stole Cleveland's squad. Or maybe the people of Baltimore were merely receiving stolen goods. Doesn't matter. Or at least in one sense, it doesn't matter to Upton Bell. Sure, he says, the Ravens won the Super Bowl in Baltimore. But no team's ever going to capture the hearts of the people in that location the way the Colts did dorsum in the late '50s and early '60s. And perchance Bell is right. Simply by building that powerful bond between squad and community, the Colts became the envy of every other team in the league, and they gave the Cowboys, the Patriots, the Steelers et al. something to which they could aspire: make loyalty built on something more homo than mere "brand."
But would Upton Bell desire to see the render of those days when the players were without entourages? When they lived downward the street from the plumbers and the grocery clerks rather than in gated communities with the moving picture stars?
"I don't desire it to come back," Bell says. "Because I had information technology, and a few other people had it. Y'all're never gonna see it again."
Maybe not. Only what we do see every weekend — and on Monday and Thursday nights likewise, and on a couple of Saturdays, in one case the playoffs begin — is the contemporary version of what those Colts created in Baltimore: loud enthusiasm, adjoining on hysteria, for whoever's wearing the home team's jersey.
Read more nigh the Baltimore Colts of the 60s in Upton Bell'south new volume, written with Ron Borges, "Nowadays at the Creation: My Life in the NFL and the Rise of America's Game."
Source: https://www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2018/01/05/baltimore-colts-upton-bell-ron-borges
0 Response to "You re Never Gonna See Hank Again"
Postar um comentário