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Thread: Baltimore Blues
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Baltimore Blues
You may know the story of how the NHL franchise in St. Louis that just won its first Stanley Cup was supposed to be Baltimore's franchise.
If you don't, here's how it goes.
When the league expanded in 1967 from 6 teams to 12, Baltimore was in line to be the sixth new franchise. It boasted one of the larger markets in the country at the time, with a history of strong support for minor league hockey. In fact, the minor league Clippers at the time were regularly out-drawing the NBA Bullets.
However, the league power brokers were reluctant to put a team in Baltimore. They cited a poor arena (Even then! It was only five years old, but a rectangular seating bowl meant poor sight lines around an oval rink) That's about the only public objection they could come up with.
Meanwhile, the league was talking up the appeal of bringing hockey to new territory in the Midwest--pushing for a team in St. Louis instead, even though St. Louis had not even put in a bid.
A bigger factor lurking behind the scenes was Blackhawks co-owner James Norris, who also owned the St. Louis Arena. His arena was falling apart and bleeding money. So, under pressure from the Chicago group, the league coaxed St. Louis to get into the mix under the condition they purchase the arena from Norris.
The rest is history. St. Louis was in, Baltimore was out.
Baltimore got their baseball team in '54, but they got what should have been our hockey team in '67.
What's all this have to do with football?
It seems eerily similar to the storyline from the NFL's 1993 expansion, where a strong bid from Baltimore ended up a last-minute loser.
Recall that Baltimore was one of the early favorites, along with the shoo-in bid from Carolina. The second choice likely would have been St. Louis, but their ownership group collapsed.
Rather than just give Baltimore the ball, the league awarded Carolina a franchise and delayed their decision on a second market. It would give St. Louis time to gin up a new, Stan Kroenke-led group.
If St. Louis couldn't get its act together, Baltimore would be the fallback favorite over Memphis and Jacksonville. They had a stable owner option now in the picture, with Al Lerner, the best stadium option, and the largest market.
In a fair fight Baltimore wins in an unanimous decision. Except it was rigged: owner interests stood in the way.
Jack Kent Cooke, owner of the Redskins, didn't want to see a team parked just up I-95. Also, I've always maintained that Art Model--who was a strong voice on the expansion committee in '93--may have steered the award away from Baltimore because he was saddled with ownership of a money-bleeding, crumbling facility, and wanted to Baltimore's stadium deal to save himself. Modell had all the reason to vote for Baltimore--he was friends with AL Lerner. But rather than awarding his friend the expansion team, I theorize he cooked up a deal that would eventually give Lerner ownership of a new team in Cleveland after Modell would move his Browns to Baltimore.
So with league forces working behind the scenes against Baltimore they needed to find an acceptible alternative market.
St. Louis wasn't going to work because the original owner group was posed to sue the league if Kroenke's group got the team.
So the commissioner and Redskins ticket holder Paul Tagliabue, and ops guy Roger Goodell, started steering the award toward Jacksonville, which had long been considered a long-to-no-shot bid. In fact, they had withdrawn their bid and had to be coaxed back into the running. Their Gator Bowl facility was a crumbling dump and the city was tiny, second only to Green Bay in its lack of butts to put in seats.
But Tags got on TV and trumped-up the idea of needing more NFL teams in the sunbelt, and Baltimore, once again, was left standing at the altar.
It was an all-too familiar tale.Last edited by Shas; 06-13-2019 at 09:06 AM.
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06-13-2019, 09:03 AM #2Legendary RSR Poster
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Re: Baltimore Blues
I never knew that story about the NHL team that never was to be. I would love to see a NHL team here but a new location and venue would absolutely be needed. The Baltimore Arena is garbage for damn near any event. The only Decent event I have seen there in 20 years is a UMD Basketball game.
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06-13-2019, 01:06 PM #3Regular 1st Stringer
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Re: Baltimore Blues
love these tidbits that come out in regards to hockey in Baltimore. Like most revisionist history, i am left with plenty of "what if's"........
if we landed an NHL team, do we have a new(er) arena today? being that our shrinking market already had MLB and NHL, would we have landed an NFL team? Would DC have landed the Caps and would the Blue still be in town today?
I think everyone knows if Baltimore landed an NHL team in 2019 there would be no way this market could support it.
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06-13-2019, 01:27 PM #4
Re: Baltimore Blues
Well I'd rather be the city that lost one hockey team vs the city that lost TWO football teams. They can keep the Blues and we'll hold onto our Ravens
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06-13-2019, 02:36 PM #5Pro Bowl Poster
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Re: Baltimore Blues
We did lose two NFL teams. The AAFC Colts, which originally formed in 1947 and saw its league merge with the NFL in 1950. They dissolved after one (1-11) NFL season. In 1953, the Dallas Texans folded and the franchise was sold/moved to Baltimore under Carol Rosenbloom and became the blue and white Colts everyone remembers.
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06-13-2019, 02:43 PM #6
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06-13-2019, 03:21 PM #7Pro Bowl Poster
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06-13-2019, 03:23 PM #8
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Re: Baltimore Blues
All of this leads to two pretty interesting trivia questions that most outside of Baltimore wouldn't get right.
1. Which North American city has fielded football teams that won championships in the CFL, NFL and USFL?
2. Which North American city's current NFL and MLB teams shared the same nickname prior to the franchises moving there and changing their names?
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06-13-2019, 05:50 PM #10
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06-13-2019, 05:52 PM #11
Re: Baltimore Blues
As a side note to Shas’ excellent post ....the Philadelphia Flyers were also supposed to be in Baltimore. Some sort of money deal that didn’t go through and they end up on Broad St. That’s actually why their colors are orange and black. The owner was a huge O’s fan and wanted the teams to match.
“You gonna do something .....or just stand there and bleed” Wyatt Earp
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Re: Baltimore Blues
I'm pretty sure I remember the Penguins also being a team they talked about moving to Baltimore in the 70's . The Skipjacks had been affiliated with the Penguins at one time (and just about every other NHL team at one time or another).
Last edited by Shas; 06-14-2019 at 09:18 AM.
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