The Move | Episode 3: Mayflower

Last time I talked to you, and Steadman, you were a bad man, So I don't want to talk to you.

Let me ask the first question.

Okay, what y Let me ask one thing?

What is all this about?

It's Saturday, January twentieth, nineteen eighty four. Robert Arsay, the owner of the Baltimore Colts, is just inside the doors of a building at Baltimore Washington International Airport. He's flanked to his left by William Donald Schaeffer, the Mayor of Baltimore. In front of him is a stand with several microphones bearing the logos of Baltimore news stations. It's a press conference and is being carried live on TV in Baltimore.

Let me put in ahead, good on the on the h give.

Me a let me break, Let the mayor have a chance, but thank.

You in the newspaper.

In the newspaper today, there was a story that said Robert Arsay was in Arizona and that the rolls mister.

I am.

I told everyone that you told me if you were going to move the team, ever going to move the team, you'll tell me first what.

They're let me all we get this over real fast. I haven't been in Arizona. I haven't been in a zero Arizona. I had been in three four places where I got working machines going my own companies.

I haven't been in Phoenix. I give you my word of honor. I'm a good Catholic. I haven't been in Arizona. Where tow does all come from?

Who started?

Is?

I don't want to talk to you. I don't want to talk to you.

The Governor's aid had mentioned that last night to the media, and that's where.

I want to give you my word of honor.

I have not been in Arizona, UH for the last digitable days.

Did you have a meeting plan today with I.

Didn't have any meetings planned. I don't know where else comes from. Don Schaeffer's my friend.

The report, in fact was true. Ersay and the Colts had come to a handshake agreement with Arizona businessman Anthony Nikolay, who was a close friend of then head coach Frank Cush's as well as Arizona government officials to relocate the Baltimore Colts to Phoenix. Nikolai had been working on a deal to get the Colts to move to Phoenix since January fifth, which was a little over a week after

January nineteenth of nineteen eighty four, and I was an administrat assistant. I was down the hall from the General Manager, Ernie A. Corsi. Jim Orsay was in Tampa for the Super Bowl that year. I was delivering a document to our general manage at the time into his office and he was on the phone with mister Ersay, and he hung up It was me and one other person, the director of marketing, who was a close friend to Ernie Speck then and he said, we're moving the Phoenix. We're moving.

You know.

I don't know when, but it's you know, I don't know when yet, you know. And then twenty minutes later, I get called down to Ernie's office. I get Paige Pete Warick into my office. I went down there and he's on the phone again and he hung up the phone. He's with mister. He said, yeah, Bob okay, okay, Bob okay. And he hung up the phone and he said, somebody from the Governor's office in Arizona leaked a deal and he's pulling out. He wants me to call a press

Is he doing?

That meeting between URSA and the Arizona folks that was supposed to be on January nineteenth, it never happened. News of the deal had hit newspapers in radio airwaves across the country. First the meeting was delayed, then it was canceled. Nikolay held out hope the deal could be revived, he later told the Arizona Republic, until Robert Orsay showed up at BWY, ostensibly to clear the air with that press conference.

Now, why would I want to go to Arizona?

Did mister nicol come to you?

Mister nikola is a friend of mine has He's a friend of Frank Cush's.

Now you just put this in your bag. He's a friend of Frank Cush's, not mine.

Did he offer me?

I don't he offered me whatever I want money. I am not any intention to moving to goddamn team. If I did, I would tell you about it. Okay, stay here, I said, if I have an intention of the movement team. I would tell you about it.

Ersay with the city of Baltimore, watching was continually pressed by the media on reports of the deal, and he continued to deny there ever was a deal in place.

Now we have no deal with mister Tony.

Tony is a friend Anthony Nikolai is a friend of Frank Cushi's not mine. I only saw him once. That's I can't picture what all this is about.

Was that in Chicago two weeks ago, sir?

He was He was my guest in Chicago two weeks ago.

That's supposedly when this deal was formulated.

There was no deal formulated.

Okay, weren't you supposed to meet the governor of Arizona.

To No, absolutely not. I don't want to talk to you.

Everybody else I.

Don't want to talk to you. Some other questions.

Why would he say that? Why would he say, I don't call him.

The whole scene that unfolded on live TV gripped the city of Baltimore, a city that, for all the rumors about the Colts leaving over the last six or seven years, collectively didn't believe the Colts would actually pick up and leave. A reporter then asked your say, if you would pledge to keep the Colts in Baltimore, how strong would you Baltimore.

I'm very strong about it. I have no problems with the mayor. I have a very fine lease, all right. I let me tell you.

Sign the contract for the mayor. Now we signed the contract with the stadium for the night.

Let me tell you I flew a couple thousand miles to be here tonight, and I don't need any aggregation, all right. And I only came because of him. Because of him, and I told you I flew a lot of miles today. That's my plane out there, and that burned burns a lot of fuel. I come over to tell you I don't know what the hell is about, only because Anthony Nikolai made a statement.

Now, why don't you make a statement.

Well, I think, speaking on behalf of the media, we love the Colts, and we want to make sure, behalf of everyone who lives here that it stays there.

If you love the Colts, why didn't you treat me right?

I'm going to send you some articles this man here number one insteading a couple of others hang me all the time?

What do you hang me for?

That's a reporter for a local paper that you're referring to.

Now I'm reforting to read the papers. What do you hang me for?

You want me here?

Why do you hang me?

What are you hang me for?

Took the plane to Baltimore that night and kind of reiterated his commitment to Baltimore. But no one believed in our relationship with our fan base in Baltimore was blown to hell. It was surreal. Okay, it was stunning. It was just Baltimore had broken away from the regular program. It was live broadcast live on Baltimore TV. All the satellite trucks were there, and it was just, you know, a surreal scene. And then what kept running through my mind is how are we going to salvage this? You know,

You know, Ward didn't know it at the time, No one with the Colts did. As they picked up the pieces of an irrevocably shattered relationship with the city of Baltimore. But what the cults are going to do from there? From that moment at bw I, they were going to move to Indianapolis. This is episode three of The Move Mayflower. Over the seven or so minutes Robert Ursay's press conference was on live TV in Baltimore, plenty of people who

Alarm and got really quiet after the Arizona thing, and it was almost as if, you know, well, maybe this is just another threat like Jacksonville had been a couple of years before.

Things were different though for the Colt's business operations. Plenty of folks on that side of the building were Maryland natives, and there were folks who probably wouldn't join the team in a new city and from a business standpoint too, the lack of certainty about where the Colts would actually be playing in nineteen eighty four, but plenty of stress on staff members total unpredictability.

It was a very unsettling time. It didn't really know it still had not issued season ticket renewals or renewals with our sponsors, you know, and our car dealers and all that sort of things. So it was really a tough time for a lot of employees.

After Phoenix fell through, Memphis popped up in the relocation rumor mill, but that was dispelled pretty quickly. Weeks went by with the specter of the team moving still hanging around, though nothing close to that two day stretch in January had materialized. But again, the lasting effect of the near miss in Arizona and the ensuing press conference was a lingering feeling in Baltimore that the Colts were going to

In Arizona, there was nothing there.

Colts owner and CEO Jim Er say, oh, yeah, come.

And play in a college stadium. You know, we're the cow's team plays. And you know, as far as the new stadium, we have nothing on that yet for you, buddy. And oh, by the way, you're probably gonna have to sell at least forty nine fifty you know, uh to you know, several different businessmen in Arizona.

I mean, there was no way.

And while some Baltimore officials were still trying to pitch Robert Ursay on staying in town, others realized they were out of options to cut a deal with the Colts. And perhaps it was time to operate not with the Olive branch, but with the Bayonet. On March second, nineteen eighty four, Mark Wasserman, who was an aid to Mayor Schaefer, wrote a memo presenting a last ditch but aggressive option

They threatened because the negotiations have become so acrimonious.

Jerry Sandusky is a Baltimore native who's now the voice of the Ravens.

They floated the threat. They didn't make the direct threat, but they flowed the idea that they were going to initiate eminent domain, basically saying the culture so valuable to this community, the city now owns the Cults, kind of like a dictatorship taking over the oil factory or the lumber factory.

You've probably heard of local, state, or federal government officials claiming eminent domain over private property to build infrastructure, a highway, public works, et cetera. But claiming eminent domain over a football team. That's a stretch, right, you'd think so. But earlier in the decade, the city of Oakland claimed eminent domain over the Raiders when al Davis i to move to Los Angeles. The Raiders took the City of Oakland to court and the eminent domain claim was dismissed with prejudice,

There was a lot going on about the stadium, about eminent domain, about trying to do something to force the team to stay in Baltimore.

Jane Miller was a longtime reporter for Channel eleven in Baltimore.

And I think there was some skepticism generally about whether you could do that.

The Raiders, despite ongoing litigation with not just the City of Oakland but an anti trust suit against the NFL, still were able to move to Los Angeles in nineteen eighty two. Al Davis had made plans to move to Los Angeles long before the nineteen eighty one season ended, which was a much more normal relocation timeline as far as Baltimore was concerned, because the Colts hadn't entered in agreement with another city, maybe they had a shot to

It's very clear you know what the eminent domain law was and what it potentially meant to destroy in your business. But what's even more clear is their intent to fight. That's a message I think that forced them to make a decision.

A headline in the Baltimore Sun on March sixth, nineteen eighty four read quote legal scholar thinks eminent domain could hold the key. The article is an interview with a law professor at NYU who thought, based on Oakland's chances of continuing to emerge with favorable judgments in court against the Raiders, as well as a few other recent other uses of eminent domain, that the city of Baltimore's best shot at keeping the Colts was by pulling that lever.

I and every other employee didn't really know what was going to happen. And by March twenty seven to twenty eighth, there's no way we're moving. It's too late in the year. You know, we have the draft coming up in a few weeks, and we got Mini camp a week after that, and then we got training camp coming up then, and it was just and we you know, we'd have to sell season tickets and all that sort of thing. It was just it was so as unbelievable when and when it happened, you.

Know, How it happened and why the Colts had to leave Baltimore in the cover of darkness started with an under the radar action by the Maryland State Senate. On March twenty seventh, nineteen eighty four, a bill was brought to the floor of the Maryland State Senate by Thomas Bromwell, a state senator from Baltimore County. The legislation would grant the City of Baltimore power to claim eminent domain over

I lived at an apartment called Morningside Heights where a lot of the players lived in.

It over looked the complex, so I was that close.

John Scott was the Colt's equipment manager in nineteen eighty four.

So that was a Tuesday, and about ten o'clock at night, I get a telephone call, pick it up and I recognize the voice right away. It's Jim Mersey and it's Johnny.

It's Jim Talks.

You know.

I just talked to my dad. We're moving. It's twenty seventh at night.

I go, oh my gosh, I said.

When he said tomorrow, I'm like, oh my gosh. Then I said phoenix fingers crossed, and there's a long pause. He goes, no, Indie, and then he told.

Me, hey, you got to keep this quiet.

You can't tell any of the staff working with the culture, can't tell your friends. You got to keep it quiet from your family.

I'm going, oh my gosh, what is going on?

And it was, you know, didn't know at the time that the State of Maryland, see they're trying to get the team to eminent domain.

Colts Vice president and general counsel Michael Chernoff recalled seeing the eminent domain blurb in the Baltimore Sun tucked away in a note section deep within the paper and feeling like, as he told The New York Times later in nineteen eighty four quote. They were putting a gun to mister Orsay's head and cocking the trigger and for saying the Colts they didn't have time to figure out if that gun was loaded or not.

The bottom line is they forced him to move because they were gonna, you know, eminent domain means for those people who've never heard of the laws, is it means, you know, the city, you know, we're building a new highway for the public interests.

We're gonna, you know, claim your house.

And it says your house is worth two hundred thousand, so you have to you don't have a choice here to do the one hundred thousand. Get out of your house because the highway's coming to here. They were going to try to use that on the football team that okay, we're taking the Colts because it has to stay here for the public interest.

Scott, the equipment manager, slipped into the Colts Owings Mills facility at four o'clock in the morning on March twenty eighth. He shut the doors to the team's equipment room and he started packing an NFL team, knowing he had barely twenty four hours to complete a job that otherwise would have taken weeks, if not months.

Then it was so surreal.

As I'm doing it packing the uniforms, I'm going I wonder if the colors are going to change.

I wonder if the name is going to show.

These things going through my head as I'm packing it up, and still I pinch mysel am I dreaming this thing.

Business side employees, front office staffers, and coaches all showed up to work that morning in Owings Mills like it was a normal day. The coaches went to work with our usual schedule. They had meetings on football in the morning, and then they had meetings on the upcoming NFL draft in the afternoon. The Colts had two first round picks that year, their own number eight overall and the nineteenth overall pick acquired from the Denver Broncos in nineteen eighty

It was about mid and my good friend rested in cheace. Hal Hunter was my good friend and one of our assistants, and he was real close to Frank and he stopped me in the hallway and whisper, he whispered, hey, listen, don't go home tonight. After work coach is coming back. And coach wasn't even in town, and he wasn't in town a lot in those days during the offseason. So he said, he's coming back in town. We're going to have a meeting about six o'clock, he said, So, you know,

News of the teams and pending moved to Indianapolis was

The reason for the stealth, the reason for the immediacy, was that Baltimore. Now they were going to try to block Bob from leaving, and they were going to try to block him with the legal concept of eminent domain, you know, which essentially says that the community owns the franchise and you can't move it. And he, I guess felt his legal people felt that maybe they could do that, and so he was going to get out of Dodge before it got to the you know, to the house

As the hours sticked away and as employees began getting ready to go home, not knowing it would be their last day of work for the Balti More Colts, Pete Ward was summoned to Jim Orsay's office for the second time in nineteen eighty four. Ward was told the Colts were moving.

Late in the day. Jim calls me those office and says, you know, my dad says, we're moving tonight to Indy. Go home, get your personal life in order. I live like five minutes away in an apartment. But be back here by ten o'clock because all the trucks are going to arrive and you need to help bring some sembilance of order to the move. So and I had very few possessions and not much of a personal life, so that part was easy for me.

One of Ward's first orders make sure everyone who sticks around to pack the team up stays safe.

After the Phoenix thing, I had to hire guard a guard company with guard dogs because we were getting death threats and bomb threats. We had them on call, and right after I was told we're moving, I call them up and we had so we had security there.

Most employees left work that day noticing or thinking anything was up. The Colt's facility was two stories, with the football side of the team's operation on the first floor and the business side on the second floor. But one eagle eyed staffer a guy who stayed late after work to play racquetball at the facility. Yes, it was a facility that had a racquetball court. Notice something strange.

As he left work, everyone else has to be out of the building. And it was a short list, you know, and you know who you're waiting for, well Keakowski to get out of the building because he was playing racquetball. And we're like, because he wasn't on the list to come.

This one gentleman is a great guy. He's our per director, a young man. He's only twenty three years old at the time. He's our PR director.

You know.

And I went home and he called me at home and he said, Pete, something's going on here. I was leaving the office and all the coaches cars are here, but all their doors are closed. And I said, well, the hold on, let me come over there. So I went to the office and I met with Walt. I went down to see Jim and that's when he told me everything. And I said, well, Walt knows something's up. And he said, well, send Walt down to me. Walt, being a great guy, you know, he took a you know,

Sees what the hell man? You know? That was Rick.

So Walt went home, and as far as I know, he never told anybody. He gave his word to Jim, he never told anybody.

Venturi found out what was going on that evening. He stayed past five o'clock, and a few hours later he found himself in a conference room with seven other coaches, a handful of front office staffers. Pete Ward and Jim are saying.

Jim clears his throat like he always did in those days. He always cleared his throat before he delivered. And I'll never forget it what he said. He said, Okay, man, he goes. The deal has been done. We're moving to Indianapolis tonight. The trucks will be here at eleven. We will all assist in different deals to help on the move. And this will be done with the secrecy of moving an embassy in Washington, d C. Don't tell your wives,

Everybody left in the building had a specific job. Venturre's was to take down all the blackboards and whiteboards in the complex. He grabbed a screwdriver and he went to work. Everything, and I mean everything had to be taken off the walls and thrown into boxes. Time was of the essence. Anything that didn't make it out of the Mayflower moving trucks, which were a few hours from rolling into the team facility,

And right at ten o'clock, all the trucks arrived and they're coming in. It's dark. We're kind of in a rural area and they have their lights out, and they're all Mayflower vands and a bus comes in.

This is how spooked the Colts were at the wrong people. Getting wind of what was happening, churn Off scrapped hudnuts plan of a convoy of Mayflower trucks and asked him to have the moving company dispatched trucks from a handful of East Coast depots. The drivers were to arrive at the Colts complex in Owen's Mills after nightfall, but they were not to be told their destination until it was absolutely necessary.

So finally it was time, and I swear I remember standing outside waiting for the trucks, and it was dark, and it was snowing, And when that first truck, when the first gear in Owen smells back then you had to climb a big hill to get to our parking lot and the complex, and I said, my god, the whole state of Maryland could hear that.

Hudnutt earlier in the day had called Mayflower CEO John B. Smith at about eleven forty five am, and he told him send the trucks Meanwhile, the folks who were swiftly packing up boxes needed some help getting those boxes onto the waiting moving trucks. That's when a bus showed up, filled with college students from the University of Maryland, who were usually tasked with moving foreign diplomats and dignitaries around the Washington, d C.

Region.

And I hopped on the bus and it's all the packers, you know, And the guy in front says, hey, man, is this an embassy. You know, because the embassy's move at night.

It didn't take long for those college kids on the bus to realize what they were doing and how they might be able to take a little advantage of the situation.

So the trucks are pulling up.

Then a bus pull up and it's all these workers hired that night or the day before to come in. And then they started taking a lot of the boxes that I had going on the Mayflower trucks. So I'm I'm kind of watching these guys. And then about a hour later I noticed watching these guys and they had coats on. It was a rainy, snowy night, and underneath their jackets was as if I could see Baltimore across here.

Are redskin fans.

Why did they have you know where I'm going with this. They would go in the back parts of these rooms, put on a jersey, put on a Colt's shirt or whatever, put their jacket back on, and then walk out.

And then they were ripping us off, you know.

And these guys were gaining weight.

Look like he was one hundred and ninety five now he's two forty. You know, he's like a Michelin man.

Yeah, they're stealing stuff right and left. It was mass chaos.

So I got with the guy in charge. I said, hey, you know something's going on here. You know, whatever it is, you need to get with those people. You know, it's okay, I get, I get, give me fifteen minutes. So went back in the locker room.

There's a mountainous stuff.

There's football's jerseys at all in this big pile. You know, these guys had taken from I'm sure they got off with something.

The scene at the Colts facility was utterly chaos. How could it be anything but a handful of people were trying to move an NFL team as fast as they could. Organization was not at a premium.

It wasn't like, Okay, I's to this office in this office, so I couldn't be everywhere to label box and it was just mass chaos. And so that's how things end up being packed and shipped. And when we got to Indianapolis, there's just a big pile of boxes and desks, and you know, we new Bank's hat and the footballs and everything.

As snow and darkness fell in Owings Mills, that sleepy, somewhat rural Baltimore suburb, the move was going according to plan, at least as planned out as moving an NFL team with a few hours notice could be. Nobody outside the building had let it slip that the team was about to skip town. But at some point in the night Ward had to call up the Colts football video guy. All the video equipment in the building actually belonged to the video director, not the team.

Now, our video director at the time was a native Baltimorean and he owned our video equipment. So we had to call him in to come get his equipment. And he was a long time, I mean all the way back to the fifties, you know, and he was the one who had up calling local radio station. That's what broke it, you know, about midnight.

Word was out. Shortly after the news broke over the radio airwaves. The pitch black, snowy darkness outside the Colts complex was broken by the glowing lights of TV trucks. News crews were quickly dispatched to Owings Mills.

That was before cell phones and everything else.

Jane Miller, the longtime Baltimore news reporter, was quickly sent to Owings Mills to report that night.

You know, clearly word got out that they were moving.

So I hustled out there. And it's in Owings Mills, which is about it's a suburb of Baltimore City. It's probably about twenty five to thirty minutes outside the city. It was the nasty night.

It was dreary weather.

It was like a wet snow that was falling by the time the sun came up.

John Zeeman, the leader of the Cult Marching Band, worked at a local TV station in Baltimore. He and his wife Charlene, who was also involved in the Colt Band, were out that night doing auditions for the nineteen eighty four season.

At the time, I worked for WMRTV in Baltimore and studio operations, and the night they moved, I was auditioning new drummers because at the time I was also in charge of percussion line, the drum line. My wife Charlene was auditioning new flag line for some reason, I don't know why. We didn't turn a radio on. Gone home and I got home. My son Christopher was forlorn. Patrick was just born. Here's a month old movie two.

And the babysitter just looked at me coming in.

I thought something happened to one of the boys, and she just pointed to the TV in a saumet flower and I saw the name Bottom calls inside the building, and then it was Hoover.

Zeeman was dispatched to Owings Mills to help with wmr's coverage of the night. He was one of the few people around Baltimore who, for years truly believed the Colts were destined to move, But as he watched those green moving vans get loaded up, the emotions he felt were

I had to take a light kid and go out to the bottom of Calls Complex with the reporter Susan White Bowden and stand out there all night in the snow and freezing rain.

And watch the Mayflower movie bands leave.

And it was hard on me as a citizen in a kind of bottom of Colts fan, but even harder on me as something invested in that team, and that a lot of times I didn't think this is real.

My dreaming inside the facility, the frenetic work getting things loaded up was starting to wind down. Some of the trucks began leaving in the wee hours of the morning.

I would say two thirty three am somewhere in there. You know, it escapes me a little bit. But then Jim called us all together and he said, okay, our part of it is done. You know, we want you guys to go on home. He said, we will then all fly out on my dad's plane and we will leave from Dallas Airport. And he gave us a time and obviously we couldn't leave from Maryland. I mean that way to lab to get killed.

But leaving the now Baron Colts Complex was not going to be the easiest thing for anyone there. The presence of news crews complicated things. The employees who were left in the facility would ultimately have to leave and get past those crews waiting outside. For one employee, that was an especially problematic situation, jim Irsay, who was the son

He said, just to let you know, you and I are flying to Indianapolis in a couple of hours.

And I think, okay, all right. He goes, we got to get some sleep. Are you almost done here? I said yeah. He goes, I can't.

I can't go.

Home because there's been death threats on my family everything else.

I said, well, wait a minute, just go to my apartment.

He goes, yeah, but you gonna have to sneak me out of here.

I said, well, okay, we can do that.

So we went in my car. I'm driving Gym's in the passenger side. I have this big blank in the bat I throw it over him. Now as we're going out, of.

Course, there's a lot of news people and they got their cameras and everything, and I'm pulling up.

You know, they're stopping me and taking pictures. I rolled down. I wouldn't I say, hey, can I help you? Oh that's John said equipment. Yeah, come on through, you know.

So I went there and Gin's hiding underneath it.

As dawn broke on Thursday, March twenty ninth, some employees, those ones who left the day before at five pm, trekked through the snow and slush to the Colts complex. A handful of longtime fans showed up to see the sight of team leaving Baltimore for themselves. The mood among the folks outside the gate are people watching things unfold on the morning news? Are Colts fans? In general? Was a mix of the five stages of grief. There was denial.

I was doing an internship at a TV station and it came across the ap wire story.

Jerry Sandusky is a Baltimore native who's now the voice of the Baltimore Ravens.

That the Colts had moved, and I read it a couple times before I could digest it, because it was like saying, you know what, Christmas no longer exists. There's now only seven months in the year. It was like all these impossible thoughts that hit you all at once.

There was anger when you have to sneak out in the middle of the night.

Don't inform your invested employees of your intentions. I don't want to work for people like that.

There was bargaining.

You never forget the Colts.

Are you going to go on wearing that hat?

Absolutely, we're still going down our convention June notion City to corrals. We're not gonna stop just because the team's gone. The band didn't stop in fifty and fifth be won, so why should we stop. We'll be here when the new Colts come in.

There was depression.

I saw my father cry twice in his life. My father was born in nineteen nineteen. He died in ninety two. I saw him cry when his sister died, and I saw him cry when the Colts left town.

And there was acceptance.

The last person out, the very last person that was gentleman by the name of Walter Ktawski, Walter was a p architector.

And he came out and I'm.

Paraphrase and said, guys don't stand after a cold.

They're gone. And he closed to get and that was it.

Whoever you believe was to blame for the colts overnight move, whether that's Robert or say the state legislator eminent Domaine, whoever, whatever, the impact on scores of people was profound. They hadn't just lost their team. They went to bed on March twenty eighth as Baltimore Colts fans. They woke up on March twenty ninth without a team, without a piece of their identity, and without a part of their city. And the speed with which that happened, which with they had

I mean here was unbelievable. You know what in twenty four hours in other words. When that complex in Baltimore closed, let's say at five o'clock, it was a fully functioning complex as you would know today, equipment rooms, everything.

You know.

By four in the morning or five in the morning, it looked like an empty airplane hangar.

Maybe the Colts are going to move anyway. They almost left for Phoenix two months prior, and Indianapolis put together a strong bid to land the team. They met every one of Robert Ursay's requests while opening the Hoosier Dome with its sixty thousand serendipitously colored blue and white seats. But when the Maryland State Senate overwhelmingly approved eminent domain legislation, signaling it was a matter of when, not if the city of Baltimore could try to seize the Colts, it

Not necessarily eminent domain, because that was that was a reach. That was what spurred the move to be that night. But a judge could have temporarily issued a stay and so and actually we had stuff that was still there for another year and a half because he was able to sign an order first thing in the morning that we had and yeah yet shipped. So we had is that we're in Baltimore for another eighteen months or so.

The morning of March twenty ninth, the Maryland Assembly quickly moved the eminent domain bill through committee and then to its floor, where it easily passed. By noon, Maryland Governor Harry Hughes signed it into law, saying, according to the Baltimore Sun, quote, I don't like having to do something like this, but extraordinary circumstances made it necessary. The Colts are an integral part of the Baltimore community and the

It's one of life's lessons, right. I don't know what else to say.

Nestor Eppertio is a long time Baltimore radio host.

If there's not enough money, the business closes and you don't get to eat the ring dings you love there anymore, right Like, if enough people don't support it.

But the narrative in Baltimore quickly and strongly became as mayor. William Donald Schaeffer told TV news stations outside his home on the morning of the twenty ninth that the Colts had to sneak out of town. The narrative was that Robert Arsay did something despicable and dishonorable over.

Nine the team moved. That's classless.

To this day, Robert Arsay is still hated by baltimoreans old enough to remember March twenty eighth, nineteen eighty four, or because of how that night played out, But the way his son observed it, a few things were true. Robert Arsay didn't really want to move the Colts, but he needed a new stadium, and the state of Maryland pulling the ripcord on eminent domain was the reason why Robert Arsay had to get the hell out of Baltimore overnight.

I would just tell anyone who wants to vilify my dad about moving the team is totally wrong. I would say, if it's right, look at when my dad's wrong, I'll tell you he was wrong. When he's right, I'll tell you he was right. And that's just the way I am with myself or anyone else. I mean, I'm not gonna. You know, the truth is is that there was no

I mean, it's like what Indianapolis's government officials and business community meanwhile put their reputations on the line to construct the Hoosier Done. They're bold actions. Building a sixty thousand seat stadium without an NFL tenant set the city up to welcome the Colts with open arms on March twenty ninth, nineteen eighty four. Hud Nuts maneuvering to build the stadium wasn't universally well received until it paid off.

So as a journalist, it's kind of showed me, you know, really, you know, are you really I mean this feeding this bs here or in this dream land of how things are everything? You know, So you do have that attitude early on.

Debbie Knox began a long career as a reporter for WISH TV in nineteen.

Eighty But when those vans loaded up Baltimore Colts, you know and all their you know, stuff that they had in vans and they're traveling in anatolasy Bob brsdayes in the city.

That's when it really became real.

So beginning on March twenty ninth, nineteen eighty four, the Baltimore Colts were now the Indianapolis Colts. They did it. The team moved.

Now what didn't really know where to be. We didn't have you know, we didn't have phones. We didn't have any boy the answer phones. We didn't have stationary, We didn't know what our address was. We didn't have a copier, you know, all that stuff.

It was just like more how.

Starting a franchise from scratch, except that you had your players and your coaches of the contract.

The story of what came next after the Colts arrived in Indianapolis and how on remarkably short notice an NFL team got off the ground in a new city with just over five months before the season started is on the next and final episode of The Move Aftermath.

Well, now we're going to take you to the complex.

I think you great.

Yeah, I hope it's as nice as the one in Baltimore. And we pull up to Fall Creek Elementary School. Yes, why are we here?

March twenty nine to eighty four, the Colts arrived in Indy. I still remember thinking, wow, that's kind of late, you know, in the in the ticketing process to move, and I thought, wow, that's going to be pretty tough for someone over there in Indy.

Little did I know there was going to.

Be meet like the talking has sound life during wartime, you know that gunfire and the distance time getting used to it. Now, you know, it's so absurd that no one would possibly you just could not believe.

What was going on that first year.

I mean, it's just it's unbelievable.

There was a learning curve to becoming a crowd.

I think what was evident once the season started it was a basketball state with a tremendous heritage because whenever the offense got in the field, they were cheering. So we come ahead and kind of hold our hands down, like no, no, no, we're cheer when they're on defis.

I was angry about it for so long, bro. I lan ended at your airport and I went in passed the Kolachi stand and into Center City for years and would see that Colt shop in the mall. It would piss me off.

The story of the nineteen eighty four season, and the fallout of the Colts Move, both in Indianapolis and in Baltimore, will be told on episode four of The Move. The episode will be released on July fifteenth. Subscribe to the Colts Audio Network on your podcast platform of choice to download episodes one and two of The Move, which tell the story of Baltimore and Indianapolis before the Colts moved. Episode three of The Move was written and narrated by

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