Michael Olesker, The Examiner
2007-07-24 07:00:00.0
Current rank: Not ranked

BALTIMORE -

Sports Department

Baltimore Examiner

Dear Matt:

This is to offer you inclusion in the federal Witness Protection Program, Sporting Division. You will need such protection after bearing false witness against history. Here is my suggestion to you. Go underground. Change your name. Find a surgeon to rearrange your features before someone on the street offers you a spontaneous nose job.

Matt, Matt, Matt.

Where did your mother and I go wrong? I speak to you now as a surrogate father, because you’ll need all the parental help you can get after the mental meltdown you suffered in Monday’s Examiner.

Like a quarter-million others, I picked up the newspaper Monday and saw the front page streamer that read, “10 Best Games: The Examiner’s Jon Gallo and Matt Palmer debate the top contests with links to the Baltimore region.”

Beautiful, I thought. An easy-reading list of the gladdest moments in Baltimore sports history to peruse before digging into the morning’s murders and mayhem and …

But, what’s this?

No. 1 on Palmer’s list — 1969’s Super Bowl III, otherwise known around here as “a date which will live in infamy,” in which the Joe Namath Jets bumped off the Baltimore Colts.

Matt, Matt, Matt.

Where did your mother and I go wrong when we taught you love and compassion for your hometown friends and neighbors? You live and work in Baltimore, where those of us of a certain age still get nauseous over the mere mention of Super Bowl III. In fact, of all the tens of thousands of sporting events ever played in Baltimore, it’s probably one of the top two most painful, ignominious moments in our history.

The other, of course, being …

Wait, what’s this?

Down there at No. 9, Palmer’s got Ravens vs. Colts, 2007. The one that Baltimore fans awaited since the Mayflower vans pulled out of town in ’84. The one that was supposed to give us revenge against Irsay’s ghost. The one where Peyton Manning …

No, no, it’s still too painful to talk about.

Matt, Matt, Matt ...

With your No. 1 pick of the ’69 Colts-Jets game, you write, “Put down the pitchforks because you know it’s true. … Had the Colts won, the NFL-AFL merger never would have worked and a modern-day sports league juggernaut would not be what it is. …”

And what, exactly, is that juggernaut of a sports league? Do you mean the juggernaut that thinks it’s all right for franchises (not just Baltimore’s) to take off in the middle of the night and abandon communities that have lavished so much love (and money) on them? Do you mean the juggernaut that stiff-armed Baltimore all those years we begged on our knees for a new team? The juggernaut that thinks it’s fine for a ballclub to blackmail cities by demanding they build brand-new ballparks — or else — when those cities struggle to pay for teachers and firefighters and cops?

Matt, Matt, Matt …

We’ll give you this much, pal. At the top of Monday’s “The Great Baltimore Sports Debate” lists, the language refers to “the area’s most important” games. So, OK, you had something beyond wins and losses in mind. You were thinking about the sweep of history, and that “juggernaut” NFL.

But sports isn’t about rooting for the juggernaut corporation. Sports are affairs of the heart. Around here, we’ve had our hearts lifted, and we’ve had them broken. It’s the nature of the game.

But when we talk about great moments in a town’s sports history, we mean the things that lifted our hearts, that made us feel good about ourselves, that bond us as a community.

In that spirit, my own list:

1. Colts beat Giants in ’58. For its unparalleled drama and the 30,000 gathered afterward at the airport. The turning point for America’s sporting culture.

2. Ravens over Giants in Super Bowl XXXV. Not just a win — a stick in the eye of that “juggernaut” league that tried to kiss us off.

3. O’s sweep Dodgers in ’66.

4. The night Ripken passed the ghost of Lou Gehrig and took his victory lap.

5. Any time Earl Monroe had a basketball in his hands for the Baltimore Bullets.

6. Tom Matte and the wristband against Green Bay in ’65. No matter that the Colts lost, the effort won a nation’s affection.

7. The ’59 Colts title win — the only championship pro football game ever played in Baltimore.

8. The last Orioles game at Memorial Stadium. Sure, it was bittersweet. But it was a gathering for all of us to celebrate a lifetime of memories together.

9. Super Bowl V. Vindication for Super Bowl III.

10. The last game of the ’82 baseball season. A heartbreaking loss to Milwaukee, but a magnificent, spontaneous farewell to Earl Weaver.

Michael Olesker is an award-winning newspaper columnist, author of three books and former commentator on local radio and television. A resident of Baltimore since the age of 4, he is a graduate of Baltimore City College and the University of Maryland at College Park, where he majored in journalism and was sports editor of The Diamondback.