Colts Ghosts: Earl Morrall
With the Indianapolis Colts coming to town for a game that could define the Ravens‘ season, I’ve got Baltimore football history on the mind.
By the time my family moved to Maryland the Colts were long gone. The hold that team had on this city is lore to me and not much else. It seems like it was something special, and I envy those who grasp it deeply.
When it comes to games where the Ravens face the Colts, I’m split. I can imagine that for folks who lived and breathed with that horseshoe it must still sting. Yet the time to move on has come and gone. And certainly for anybody who didn’t grow up loving the Baltimore version of the Colts it’s pointless to manufacture hatred.
But…there’s still history. Things happened here, and they are part of our fabric.
Like Matt Stover. He’ll be remembered as one of the best kickers the NFL has ever seen, and he got there largely by kicking in Baltimore. On Sunday he’ll come back wearing — in one of the greatest ironies of recent sports history — a Colts uniform.
Then there’s Earl Morrall.
The quarterback we remember — rightly — is Johnny Unitas. But in 1968, the year the Colts lost Super Bowl III after a brash Joe Namath guaranteed his team’s improbable victory, it wasn’t Unitas at the helm. It was Earl Morrall. Sort of.
Take a few minutes and dig into An Old Stand-In Becomes the Star, from the November 22, 1968 issue of LIFE magazine. Morrall, 34 years old, stepped in that year for an injured Johnny U and led the Colts to a 13-1 record and a shot at the championship. Unitas hovered over his shoulder the entire time.
The stand-in eventually faltered, throwing three interceptions in the first half of the big game before being replaced by his rehabbed superior, who would lead the team to their only points.
That should have been the end. Yet somehow Morrall went on to even greater heights. At age 38 — four years after his odd season with the Colts — he went 10-0 in relief of Bob Griese during the Miami Dolphins‘ undefeated season. But he faltered again in the playoffs, and Griese returned to finish the job.
Does Earl Morrall have a place in Baltimore football history? Looking back it seems like he should, but at best he’s a footnote. The LIFE article says as much — he was only the guy until the guy was healthy enough to return.
“Earl’s still got his confidence,” says the Colts’ defensive back Bobby Boyd, “but I don’t see how he’s been able to keep it all these years.”
I doubt there was ever another professional athlete who found his breakthrough season at age 34, topped it at age 38, and managed both times to come up just short of the kind of glory that means the difference between a statue and a side note. Earl Morrall is a good luck, hard luck case. Or maybe a guy who was just good enough.
I’d bet that a lot of players past, present, and future would take the career of Earl Morrall and not even consider it settling. It’s got to be tough, though, getting that far by playing second chair all the way.
Cool story. Most people in our general age group will never grasp what the Colts meant to Baltimore. I always enjoy the somewhat elderly and cantankerous and teary-eyed-sounding guys that calls into Baltimore sports radio stations and talk Colts. I was raised on Redskins without really caring about sports. It wasn’t until I began to appreciate Baltimore later as a young adult that I began to hitch onto the Ravens. As for the current Colts, they don’t register at all as “former Baltimore Colts” or anything. I see the horseshoe, but it doesn’t say “Baltimore Colts” to me. Honestly, it says “Peyton Manning”. It’s kind of like how the majority of people who don’t appreciate Baltimore Orioles history look at the Oriole Bird or the Orioles script and think “losers” rather than “proud and previously very successful baseball franchise”.
joe posnanski gives berken his AL anti-cy young award, the “sweetland award”:
http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/2009/11/19/the-sweetland-awards/
“He made 24 starts in his rookie season. And I will now give you the best baseball stat you will see today.
The league — the whole league — hit .327/.384/.522 against him.
Basically, the whole league was an MVP candidate when Jason Berken was on the hill.”
the guys not wrong. he prefaces that by saying he realizes it’s just his rookie year and isn’t writing off his future by any means, but it seemed like with berken we just kept waiting for something…anything that we could hang a hat on…so i can’t really disagree with posnanksi.
@ryan97ou – Hrm. I saw that and had a subsequently totally unpleasant and unfulfilling argument over whether or not Berken ought to start ever again for the Orioles (or at least, that’s what I was arguing). Bottom line: yeah, Berken probably was the worst starting pitcher in baseball this year.
It’s unpleasant to think about, but it does seem like for every Daniel Cabrera we cut, another mostly useless starter emerges in his place, as if resurrected by Mickey Mouse himself. The Plan is supposedly going to put a stop to that practice this year or next, but I do wonder who replaces Berken in the rotation in 2010?
They had to see what they had in Berken, I think. And I disagree that having Berken in the rotation was more of the same. In years past, it would have been some old dude. At least we got to see what one of our own farm guys could do. And the best part is, he wasn’t Daniel Cabrera, in that he didn’t fool us with his potential. Any potential that Jason Berken has is not really based on amazing stuff – rather, it’s just based on can he handle pitching at this level with suspect stuff and command? And no, he couldn’t. PLUS, unlike past retreads, the Orioles aren’t committed to having him stay in the rotation. And I’ll bet everything I have that he will not be in the rotation next season. He was strictly a place-holder and B-level prospect. Same goes for Hernandez, I think.
It’s going to be Guthrie, Bergesen, Matusz, Tillman, and somebody that we sign or somebody that earns it in spring training. Anything else and I’ll be shocked. Bottom line is that it’s exceedingly easy to replace Berken in the rotation with either a dude that we sign or the next Berken, i.e.: someone we want to get a look at who has earned a shot.
And I might add that “the next Berken” sounds really bad, but only because he didn’t succeed. But I still say it’s better to give a guy like Berken, who pitched great through the minors, a shot at this level if you’re not loaded with experienced starting pitching, which we weren’t.
Bergesen wasn’t all that much more touted than Berken prior to last season, and one succeeded while the other failed. That’s what it’s all about. We know what we have in almost all of our top pitching prospects. In my opinion, Berken’s slot (or the #5 spot in the rotation) will ultimately be filled by Arrieta.
I haven’t given Berken a single thought since the last time he pitched. He might end up finding a role on a big league club, it might be here, who knows? He’s just a young guy who came up and was way overmatched. He did what he could and we’ll see what happens next. I don’t think there’s much more to it at this point. He definitely won’t be in the rotation to start 2010 unless something very weird happens. For now I’m not entertaining that possibility.
Oh don’t get me wrong – I was thrilled that we were watching Berken and Bergesen instead of Adam Eaton and Steve Trachsel (especially since 3E1N looks like he could be a solid back-end guy), but it is alarming that Berken was just the next guy in a long line of pitchers like Kurt Ainsworth, Omar Daal, Matt Riley, Radhames Liz, Adam Loewen, Damian Moss, Brian Burres, etc. who were basically junk.
I’m hoping that we sign someone reasonable (I have no idea who that might be, though if it were up to me I might go with the heavily unpopular choice of Carl Pavano in lieu of John Lackey), because frankly I’m sort of terrified of finding out that Matusz, Tillman, or Arrieta aren’t that good.
Certainly at least one of them will end up being not as good as we thought he’d be. That’s the unfortunate Reality of Baseball. I’m with you — definitely not looking forward to finding out which one it is.
By the way, what was the “hissy fight” folks were talking about in the Camden Chat comments? That one was completely lost on me.
@Andrew – If he ends up here, I move that we refer to him only as “The Heavily Unpopular Carl Pavano”.
@neal s – heh heh. When Stacey did roar from 34 or numerOlogy or one of those, duck and johnny pops got into a long-ass argument because jp made a snide remark about the quality of the site and pimping out other sites, and then duck threw what jp called a “hissy”.
As for the Colts…I’m pretty sure my dad is still a Colts fan deep down (he got me a pair of pretty sweet Baltimore Colts glasses last Christmas that just look perfect filled with some whiskey), although his reaction to the band that wouldn’t die was touching in its sincere anger towards Irsay – this from a guy who doesn’t much care for the Ravens frankly because they aren’t the Colts.
It’s hard for me to get up in arms – I was born in ’85, which means I grew up with my godfather rooting for the Bears, and also that the Colts is just a name to me…but it sure is funny how a single conversation and a glass of scotch can make me really, really want to beat the Colts on Sunday. More than I’ve wanted to beat the Yankees, and that is really saying something.
@Andrew – I read Camden Chat all the time but don’t dabble much in the comments. It seems silly that anyone would object to Stacey taking the time to highlight other sites. I think it’s a great idea. I kind of wish I had done it myself. We’re not talking about CNN versus Fox News here. We’re all just a bunch of fans who are creating content based on passion. No reason not to spread the love around a little.
Back to the Colts, I find the whole dynamic very interesting. I fully get why the hate existed, but I’m less able to understand why it continues to exist. It’s a very Baltimore story.