RED LION, Pa. - No one had expected photographers to be there. All of it was supposed to be hush-hush. But when Myles Gipe drove his Mayflower van out of the parking lot at Colts headquarters, he looked down from behind his big steering wheel upon a cluster of reporters and cameramen stationed along the side of the street in the snowy darkness. A photograph was snapped as he drove away, and it lives on 23 years later as documentation of an NFL owner caught red-handed in the act of robbing a beloved franchise from a city. The owner was the late Robert Irsay, who is nowhere to be found in the photograph. The city was Baltimore, which awakened that gray March day in 1984 to the somber news that the Colts were gone.
But Gipe was less concerned that day with the implications of what he was doing than with getting the heck out of there. He had 12 hours of driving ahead of him and 600 miles of icy roads before he got to Indianapolis. Ironically, he had been a Colts fan back then, going as a boy to Memorial Stadium to see up close the exploits of quarterback John Unitas. But it would not be until years later that he understood that what he had moved was far more than just boxes, even if one of them contained the gleaming trophy the club had won in Super Bowl V. That the citizens of Baltimore would end up later with a transplanted version of the Cleveland Browns is no small irony.
"I remember thinking as I drove down to Colts headquarters, 'This cannot be happening,' " says Gipe, 69 and retired. "But it was, and all I knew then was that I had a job to do. But I understand why people were emotional about it. Heck, they still are if the subject comes up."
Given that Red Lion is just an hour or so from Baltimore, it does with some frequency, especially with the Indianapolis Colts set to play the Chicago Bears in Super Bowl XLI on Sunday in Miami. While few know Gipe is the guy driving the truck in the infamous picture, people do know he played a part in the clandestine operation and that it was set up by another local fellow, Donald H. Warner, then a top executive with Mayflower in Indianapolis. Now back in Red Lion working as the president of Warners Moving and Storage, which he took over from his dad, Donald M., in 1986, "young Don" says that his mom had been a Colts fan and with a laugh adds: "She was so upset that she would not feed me for 3 years!"
Ordinarily, Warner says that it takes a year or more to properly organize such a large move; boxes have to be labeled and so on. But there was no such period of preparation prior to the Indy caper. Warner received a call at 3 p.m. from Indianapolis Mayor William Hudnut, who told him: "Don, I need 15 trucks and 75 men at Colts headquarters at 3 a.m. tomorrow. And you cannot let anyone know." The secrecy had to do with the effort on behalf of Baltimore to block any potential move, which Irsay had been threatening during a turbulent negotiation with the city. Baltimore Mayor William Donald Schaefer had even proposed to prevent the team from leaving by protecting it under the eminent-domain statute. Concerned that a court order would even temporarily hold up the move, Hudnut told Warner that his men had to get in and get out.
Warner chuckles. "If we got there by 3 a.m., he wanted us out of there by 3:15 a.m," he says. "They wanted us gone before the courts opened that day. And they wanted us to get going as soon as each truck was loaded up. The fear was that if we took off in a caravan the police could stop us with a roadblock."
Warner scrambled to come up with the necessary tactical force. Immediately, he called his dad in Red Lion and asked him if he could share any trucks for the job. Donald M. Warner says he told his son he could have four. One of them was driven by Gipe, who hopped in his rig and remembers that he headed to a "meeting place near the Baltimore beltway." They then headed to Colts headquarters in Owings Mills, Md., and were joined by a convoy of trucks and buses, the latter of which carried the 75 workmen who would load up the cargo. Warner remembers that while it was supposed to be "this James Bond kind of deal, all three networks were there with their lights set up and cameras rolling."
"Gosh, it was like a ticker-tape parade," says Warner. "So we got there and it was a cold, snowy night. As soon as a driver was loaded they were told to take off and that we would meet up a week later in Indianapolis. We just wanted to get out of Maryland!"
Gipe was the first to set off into the soggy gloom, his 48-foot trailer packed haphazardly with the Super Bowl trophy, weight equipment, helmets and shoulder pads. He got back on the Baltimore beltway, headed up I-83 to Red Lion (where he packed a suitcase) and got on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, where he picked up I-70 in New Stanton and followed it into Indiana. There, he checked in at Mayflower headquarters and a few days later joined the caravan to Colts headquarters in Indianapolis. Gipe remembers that fans stopped their cars on the shoulder and applauded them as they passed. "Like I had performed some kind of act for them," says Gipe, who did not stay for the "Welcome to Indianapolis" party at which the bellicose Irsay later spoke.
But Warner was there. And he remembers, "Boy, did he ever rant and rave."
Twenty thousand fans were there that evening in Indianapolis. "And so,'' Warner says, "Irsay gets up and says, 'And if you think this is your team, you have another thought coming! This my team! And if my family or I want to move it out of Indianapolis, we will move it out of Indianapolis!' And 20,000 people went silent. And they were just looking at this guy ranting and raving on the stage."
The chronically boozed-up Irsay was not a favorite of Warner, who frequently saw the owner in action on Sunday in his stadium suite. "Oh, he was a real stinker," Warner says of Irsay, who died in January 1997 at the age of 73. "Wherever he was, there just seemed to be this tense feeling of apprehension. You were just waiting for something to happen, and it usually did. He would get loud, explosive, tell people off. He was not a pleasant person to be around. Now his son [Colts owner] Jim is a great guy."
While Warner says that Mayflower gave Indianapolis "a terrific price," he adds that the firm more than made up for it in publicity. The Wall Street Journal published a light article identifying "The 10 Most Useless Things in the World" and cited the Mayflower franchise in Baltimore as being among them. But Warner says that did not prove to be the case. He had expected the firm to "nearly go out of business in Baltimore," but says there was "probably only a small dip" in business there. That said, he does think the Mayflower drivers were subject to an inordinate number of arrests by the Maryland State Police.
"Some of the trucks were harassed," Warner says. "So I kind of think some of the [police] kind of pitched in."
Gipe echoes that. "Or they would hassle you at the scales," he says. "I remember once I delivered some GM parts to Baltimore and when I got up to the dock, the guy said: 'No one here is unloading Mayflower. You stole the Colts!' But that fellow was just kidding. He unloaded me and we had a laugh over it."
That people still bring it up does not surprise Warner, who says that the Colts leaving Baltimore after 31 years was different than what happened in Cleveland with the Browns. Along with the team, Indianapolis got the Colts' name, logo, colors and records. The legendary players who graced the gridiron on 33rd Street at Memorial Stadium are now part of the collective history of the Hoosier state, which explains to Warner why Baltimoreans have remained so embittered. And he can understand that. When the Browns headed to Baltimore under owner Art Modell, they left Cleveland the essentials that formed their history. The Browns are now playing again in Cleveland. Baltimore has the Ravens.
"That the team in Baltimore is called the Ravens and not the Colts still sounds odd," says Warner. "I think if Baltimore had been allowed to keep the Colts' name, some of that anger would be gone by now."
His dad agrees. "Losing a team is one thing," says Donald M. "But the people of Baltimore just fell in love with that horseshoe."
Gipe figured 23 years ago he was just moving "stuff." He knows now that he was moving a piece of history, and perhaps it should have been allowed to stay where it belonged. "Later I realized what a loss this was for Baltimore," he says. He pauses and adds, "And yeah, the whole thing was kind of sneaky." *