Baltimore's dream is for black and blue

BALTIMORE -- To get purple, you mix blue with red, but the citizenry here never asked for such an exercise in science to color their football passion.

No, they had a primary color (blue) and a primary pro football love (the Colts), and for several generations the two went hand in hand, as perpetual as the sky and sea. Until, that is, a cold and wet spring night nearly 23 years ago when the sky fell and the seas parted and trucks sneaked into town and drove out with large chunks of their spirit.

The Colts, much to their shock, had moved to Indianapolis.

For the rabid football fans of this area, it was a day they will never forget. Blue has long been considered the color of stability, trust, and loyalty, but since the March night in 1984 it has represented an emotional pain that is not easily shaken. Forgive and forget? They are concepts seemingly difficult to embrace here, and this week the emotions have bubbled over and old wounds have been reopened.

The Colts, a fixture in Indianapolis for 23 NFL seasons, today are in Baltimore, where they were a fixture for 31 NFL seasons. Oh, they've made visits to play the Baltimore Ravens on three other occasions -- in 1998, 2001, and 2005 -- but this time it's different. This time it's the playoffs, with a chance to advance to the AFC Championship game. This time it appears to be far more personal and the layers of bitterness atop years of anger are unmistakable.

"I can put two and two together and realize how much intensity that this game means, especially to the fans," said Steve McNair.

He is the quarterback for the Ravens -- who've been the hometown team since moving here from Cleveland in 1996 -- but McNair connects to an emotion that permeates along the shores of Chesapeake Bay. Today it will be as much about beating the hated visitors as it will be about the home team winning, and so deep is the pain that the week has been filled with newspaper articles and sports talk radio that have tried to get to the heart of a story out-of-towners probably can't relate to.

Yes, owner Bob Irsay greedily and cowardly sneaked the Colts out of town following the 1983 season and took a better offer from Indianapolis. Yes, Baltimore got another NFL team in 1996, one that won the Super Bowl five seasons later. Yes, this Baltimore Ravens franchise is considered a model, complete with a Baltimore-born-and-raised owner, Steve Bisciotti. And, yes, in many ways the fans have moved on with their allegiance to the Ravens, so all is well, right?

Well, not quite, and Baltimore Sun sports columnist Mike Preston addressed this the other day when he wrote: "But we'll never forget and we don't need stiff-haired, fake-smiling sportscasters and transplanted out-of-towners telling us what to do with our lives. A Baltimore native can tell me about the old Colts and I'll listen. Anybody else can shut up."

Newspaper stories have implored the football citizenry to embrace purple, the Ravens' primary color, and not wear their old Baltimore Colts and Johnny Unitas jerseys, which are blue. Sure, those jerseys symbolize a passion that should never be buried, but come on. Blue represents Indianapolis. As a week's worth of questions have been delivered, Ravens coach Brian Billick could only do his best to put it in perspective.

"We've got some kids on this team who weren't even alive when that [move] happened," said Billick, who came to the organization in 1999. "But you can't live in this city [and not] grasp the depth of emotion that it elicits."

Said Baltimore linebacker Bart Scott: "I know all about the Mayflower [moving trucks]. I read the whole story and I know how disheartening it was around here. You can feel how much the fans appreciate having a football team around, because they've lost one. This was the game that they were calling for. They were calling for us to play the Colts, because they're still bitter and they're still sore in their bellies. For me and the Ravens representing the city of Baltimore, we want to oblige them."

Sore? Bitter? Oh, how he speaks the truth, and there are plenty of people who aren't ashamed to express those sentiments in public. Native son Barry Levinson, for one.

The director and producer whose list of hit movies includes "Diner," which was built around characters obsessed with the Colts of the 1950s and 1960s, penned a column for the Baltimore Sun the other day. He wrote of a city's love for pro football and the shock brought about by the move. "I want nothing good to happen to that team. Ever," he wrote.

When the Sun ran a question -- "Who do you think is most responsible for the Colts leaving Baltimore?" -- and asked readers to respond, the results were predictable. Irsay, who died in 1997, collected 83.9 percent of the vote. In a twist to the story some might find ironic, the man who finished fourth was William Hudnut, the former mayor of Indianapolis who now lives in Maryland. What's more, he served for a while as a member of the Chevy Chase Town Council.

"I had to do as mayor of Indianapolis what I thought was best for our city," Hudnut told a Sun reporter. "[But] I regret that it caused a lot of hurt in Baltimore."

That hurt has been soothed in some ways by the success of the Ravens, but not completely. Offensive tackle Jonathan Ogden, who was the first draft pick of the Ravens and has played his entire All-Pro career for the organization, thinks much of the problem could have been averted had Irsay and NFL officials worked in harmony.

"It would have been different, I think, if they did what the Browns did when Art [Modell] moved from Cleveland [to Baltimore in 1996]. He left the Browns logo and everything in Cleveland," said Ogden. "[But Indianapolis] has the horseshoe and the same uniform that the people [of Baltimore] grew up with. Cleveland, they got their Browns back."

But the Baltimore football citizenry never got their Colts back -- at least not in whole. Oh, they got the Ravens, and the team has served them well and they truly love them. If you don't think so, just tune in today and listen to a crowd of some 70,000 that is as loud as any in the NFL.

They will be covered in purple, a byproduct of blue.

Jim McCabe can be reached at jmccabe@globe.com.