He admitted he still loves the notoriety.
“Anybody who tells you they don?t like a little attention is either a liar or a fool,” Artie Donovan said during an afternoon at the old Colts? home behind the Valley Country Club in Towson.
He?s been slowed by a hip replacement, but at the age of 82, is as gregarious, irascible, opinionated and funny as ever. The hair is thinner and no longer red, but his eyes remain as green as an Irish hillside.
He?s as restless as ever, too.
“Hell, I got nothing to do any more,” he groused. “My riding mower broke down, and now I can?t even cut the grass. I?m bored.”
Adds Dottie, his wife of 50 years: “He keeps saying he needs a job ? ?I need a job,? ?I need a job? ? give me a break.”
The couple travels and makes local appearances. Artie also gets together with friends and former teammates Jimmy Mutscheller, 74, and Sisto Averno, 81. But he passes most of his time at the club that he and Dottie have owned for four decades. They live behind the club?s mansion in a house they built in 1967, but they turned the day-to-day operations of the business over to their oldest daughter, Debbie, two years ago.
“We do about 80 weddings a year here,” Artie says. “And you know, someone will always ask if I?m around. So, I end up after the reception, waiting at the end of the bar like an old hooker, looking for someone to come up, say hello and buy me a drink.”
From the Bronx to Baltimore
Artie, as every Colts diehard knows, grew up in the Bronx.
“3034 Grand Concord,” he said. “We lived in six-room apartment house.Twelve cousins on the same block. After church on Sunday everybody would hang around and shoot the breeze for an hour. That?s what I miss. Now, as soon as Sunday Mass is over, everyone hops in their cars and takes off.”
At least, he says, the rattling train and light-rail tracks near his current home remind him of his childhood. “The subway station was right underneath our building.”
He is the grandson of a middleweight boxing champ and the son of the renowned boxing referee Arthur Donovan Sr. ? who was the third man in the ring for Joe Louis? famous 1938 knockout of Max Schmeling, and has long enjoyed his homecomings in the Big Apple.
“Before the 1958 [title] game [against the Giants], I was walking around New York with a teammate,” Artie said. “And someone shouts at me from across the street, ?Hey Donovan, I hope you?re better than you were when you played at St. Michaels. The Colts are going get their butts kicked tomorrow.? I told my buddy, ?These are my people.? ”
By now everyone in this town has an “Artie” story. Maybe they bought their first legal beer at his old liquor store or got yelled at by him for goofing around at the club?s swimming pool. Maybe they shared a beer with him at linebacker Bill Pellington?s Iron Horse or Kusen?s old bar on 33rd Street, where the old Colts went after practice.
“I was at Buckingham Palace with my wife, watching the changing of the guard,” Artie said, recalling one unexpected encounter with a Colts fan. “And a guy comes up, some stranger, and whispers in my ear, ?Wouldn?t you rather be at Pellington?s having a hamburger?? I said, ?I sure would.? ”
But only Artie told Artie stories the best. Like the ones about him drinking beer and eating cheeseburgers during his numerous hospital stays.
“Even when I?m in the hospital now, people bring me so many cheeseburgers, baloney sandwiches and Schlitz, I can?t possibly eat and drink it all.
“Once, Gino Marchetti and I were in the hospital together,” Artie recounts, warming up to the subject. “He had an emergency appendectomy, and I had a leg infection I couldn?t get rid of. Well, he comes into my room in a wheelchair to watch the Colts play the Packers and says, ?Artie, let?s switch. I?m sick of sitting in this thing.?
“Of course, a bunch of people come to watch the game with us, and they bring a case beer and sandwiches. But at 10 o?clock the nurse kicks them all out. So, it?s just the two us, and we finish the beer ourselves and have a pretty good buzz going by the time the game ends. I tell Gino, ?Hey, I can?t get out of this wheelchair,? he says, ?Well, Fatso, I can?t get out of this bed.? So we end up waking up the next morning just like that.”
Naturally, his former teammates have their favorite tales ? mostly related to his off-the-field activities.
One of Johnny Unitas? favorite receivers, Jimmy Orr, recalls a time in San Diego in 1970, when some of the old Colts made the trip to watch the Colts play the Chargers. “They had a great time, went sailing, came to the game and drank beer all day. Art?s roommate on this trip, Dick Szymanski, told me that when he woke up the following morning, Artie had the television on, sitting upside down on its stand. He was warming up a cheeseburger on top of it.?
Donovan says Orr got the story completely wrong.
“It was a pizza.”
A man for all seasons
The Baltimore Colts joined the NFL in 1950 but survived for only one season ? Artie?s rookie year ? before folding. They were re-incarnated in 1953, and when the Colts won the 1958 and 1959 titles, Donovan and guard Art Spinney were only holdovers from the 1950 squad on the roster.
Veteran Baltimore broadcaster Vince Bagli was there in 1953, when the 6-foot-2, 275-pound future Hall of Famer arrived attraining camp in Westminster.
“Well, he was fat,” Bagli said. “And we wondered if he could play.”
Donovan went to Boston College, but Western Maryland College (now McDaniel College) is where he perfected his defensive line skills.
“There are thousands of guys who play football in New York City, but everybody plays three-on-three basketball,” Donovan said. “That?s where I got my quickness. That, and playing paddle ball. Nobody at Westminster ever beat me at single-wall paddle ball.
“But it was [Colts? head coach] Weeb Ewbank who made me into a great player,” Donovan said. “He taught me about peripheral vision and how to watch blockers.”
He was all-NFL in 1954, ?55, ?56, ?57 and ?58, playing alongside Marchetti, Don Joyce, Ordell Braase, Ray Krouse, Tom Finnin and Gene ?Big Daddy? Lipscomb. Marchetti, like Donovan, was a decorated WW II marine. Donovan fought in several Pacific battles, including Iwo Jima; Marchetti saw action at the Battle of the Bulge.
Artie shrugs. “We were tough.”
Before the big pro salaries, Donovan made ends meet hustling as a Shenley liquor salesman, as well as helping to manage the club with Dottie. Artie proudly notes that Dottie, a trained pharmacist, took hotel and restaurant management classes at Cornell in the summer.
“She works two days a week at Hopkins,” Artie says now. “I drive her to the shuttle bus, give her five dollars for lunch and then pick her up. She looks cute in her uniform getting off the bus.”
“I know,” said his daughter Kelly, a lawyer. “I?m like, that?s too much information, dad.”
With his own children ? Kelly, Debbie, Chrissie, Artie and Mary ? he was always strict about work during the summer ? and curfew.
“We all started flipping hamburgers in the [club?s] snack bar when we were 12,” Kelly said. “And about curfew he would always say, ?Nothing good happens after midnight.?
“To our friends, he was just ?Mr. Donovan.? But one of my friends told me when she went to college everyone was so impressed that she knew my father.
She was like, ?He?s just Mr. Donovan.? Dad was never the type to be too impressed with himself ? or anybody else for that matter ? and never acted like he was a big deal.”
A horseshoe love affair
The theory is that blue-collar Baltimore of the 1950s fell in love with Artie?s crew because they represented the average hard-working breadwinner, who reveled in the fact that the Colts were world champions in 1958 and 1959.
It?s dismissed by Donovan.
“Ah, they loved us in 1950, when we went 1-11,” Artie said. “We won one game in the middle of the year and the crowd ran down and carried us off the field on their shoulders.”
Donovan?s take is matter-of-fact, “It?s just always been a great football town.”
Bagli, also the co-author of ?Sundays at 2:00 with the Baltimore Colts,? insists there was a special bond between the players like Artie and the city.
“[The old Colts] genuinely cared about each other, and they liked and genuinely cared about people,” Bagli said. “And that?s how Artie is. He?d see you in church and give you an elbow and smile when he walked by.
“I never saw him turn down an old lady for a hug or a youngster for an autograph. He?s just a big-hearted guy.”
It?s an enthusiasm for the game, fans and life that hasn?t waned since he was a 26-year old rookie in 1950.
Recently at the Ocean Pride restaurant, where the old Colts meet once a month to discuss Players Association issues and charity events, a dad hesitantly approached Artie with his three children.
He sent his oldest, Brandy, 9, up first, with a cold Schlitz in her hand as an offering for an autograph. Artie, resembling an out-of-uniform Santa Claus, smiled broadly and immediately starts a conversation with the girl, and then corralled her two brothers in as well.
“I just always figured it was easier to be nice to everybody,” No. 70 said. “Do you know what I mean? It takes too much energy to be scheming or to try to manipulate things.
“I?ve been lucky, that?s all ? always had someone looking out for me.”
On Sept. 16, 1962, before an opening-day contest against the Los Angeles Rams, Donovan took the Memorial Stadium field for the last time as the Colts retired his jersey in front of 54,796 emotional fans. He thanked the city of Baltimore that was good to him and made his mom, Mary Elizabeth O?Keefe Donovan, proud.
“My mother loved coming to Baltimore,” Artie said. “I used to pick her up at the train station and we?d got out somewhere to eat, like Dickman?s, at Mount Royal and Maryland, a nice white tablecloth place and everyone treated her like gold.
“In New York, she was the boxing referee?s wife. But in Baltimore, she was Artie Donovan?s mom.”
