believe it. (I constantly berated him about the long lines at the men’s rooms back when I bitched about stuff for a living. Many fans brought their complaints to me or my airwaves in hopes of getting answers.)
I can hear his voice now: “Keep holding me accountable! That’s the only way it’s going to improve!”
I have pictures of us wearing purple dunce caps on the field at Memorial Stadium from the last game on 33rd Street in December 1997. He loved to tell the story about me accosting him upside down on a training table after the Pittsburgh Steelers beat his team in the first game at the new stadium in 1998 to tell him what I liked and didn’t like about the first game “experience.”
Since his death, I’ve remembered countless stories and smiles and food and drinks and laughs – God, he had such energy – but there are a few that must be shared to celebrate his life and what he meant to me.
Part of being a journalist is being “sourced” for information.
It was 18 years ago this week that I showed up at his office on St. Paul Street in a driving snowstorm. It was mid-January and everyone was gone. I went to the office to pick up two tickets to the NFC Championship Game in Minneapolis between the Dirty Bird Atlanta Falcons and the prolific offense of Randall Cunningham and the Minnesota Vikings.
The Ravens were in the midst of their first job search in Baltimore for a head coach.
8
David Modell and I sat in his office for two hours talking about life and football. He told me that I should go to Minnesota to meet Brian Billick because he was going to be the next coach of the Ravens. Chris Palmer and Jim Haslett were the other candidates. And Terry Donahue was his father’s first choice. But David insisted on another far more analytical approach. I documented it in here in Purple Reign.
Three days later, I met Billick after one of the most excruciating losses you could imagine. Eighteen years later, he’s one of my partners at WNST.
Yeah, David Modell had some serious impact on a kid from Dundalk and a town. I’ve always told folks the No. 1 turning point in my life for the better was the day the Ravens showed up in Parking Lot D – November 6, 1995. It breathed life into my career and into what became WNST.net and AM 1570 and my life’s work.
David was instrumental in Art’s decision to leave Cleveland. And in many ways, he lived the kind of life that sought to justify that decision to save the franchise and its value for their family. It was excruciatingly difficult for the Modells to sell off the team because they didn’t have the money to keep it.
The Ravens’ Super Bowl run of 2000 and into 2001 still stands as the greatest sports memory any fan could ever have. My memories are filled in a 300-page book. I’m glad I wrote it. I’m glad I wrote as much about David’s contribution then but his passing this week has brought back a flood of memories and how this purple football thing in Baltimore could’ve really gone the wrong way. Just look at Cleveland. Or Jacksonville. Or St. Louis. Or San Diego.
And then think about Ozzie Newsome and Jon Ogden and Ray Lewis and Brian Billick and Ed Reed and Steve Bisciotti and John Harbaugh and Joe Flacco.
8It really marks the years and the long journey.
In 2003, I got married around the same time he got divorced and wound up marrying one of the Ravens cheerleaders, Michel, who I also knew very well from my time around the team. After his family sold the team to Steve Bisciotti and he moved away from the football operation, we settled into a life of friendship and dined with them as often as time would allow. He came by my condo when Jenn was healing from her bone marrow transplant and did some radio with me.
We talked politics. We talked sports. He loved hockey. We both loved Bruce Springsteen. He had a wicked sense of humor and timing and tonality and a sinister laugh that made you laugh, too. And he loved football. And being the son of an actress, he loved Hollywood and storytelling.
I once sat with David late night in the lobby bar of The Loews in Miami Beach at the Super Bowl for two hours watching the beautiful people roll by and Calista Flockhart at the next table when she was the biggest star on television.
We were in the same stadium in Sao Paolo, Brazil in 2006 when his company was shooting U2 in 3D. He loved to tell the story about showing Bono the film for the first time in an editing suite – and the singer seeing bassist Adam Clayton swing his guitar neck at his head in HD wearing 3D glasses! “It’s a mindfuck, David!” Bono proclaimed.
I couldn’t write about David without mentioning his many superstitions. It was perhaps his most endearingly bizarre quality.
In the fall of 2003, my wife and I were on a trip to St. Louis to see the Ravens play the Rams. My wife was having a medical issue and needed a pharmacy. It was 6 a.m. on a Sunday morning and we were staying at the team hotel, which was a little distance from downtown – or civilization, really at that hour in that town. Google didn’t exist in our hands just yet so finding pharma relief for my wife was a little challenging and would’ve been pricey in a cab even if we could find one.
8David was in the lobby, cigar and newspaper in hand, looking for coffee and couldn’t find any. He bumped into us and saw Jenn was distressed. He immediately called for a car, grabbed his wife Michel and we jumped into a four-wheel drive Navigator. Ten minutes later, we were scanning aisles in a Walgreens at 6:30 on a Sunday morning like four immature idiots. David turned it into a scavenger hunt and a big game. We also got a certain brand of coffee that David associated with winning – at least temporarily.
Of course, his kindness was appreciated but en route back to the hotel he explained his credo: “If we lose the game tonight to the Rams, I’ll never hang out with you again before a game. I’ll never drink this brand of coffee again. And I’ll never stay in this hotel again.”
The Ravens lost 33-22 to the Rams that night on ESPN Sunday Night Football.
Six weeks later, unbeknownst to my wife and I, we walked into a department store off Union Square in San Francisco and David and Michel dove under a jewelry rack to hide from us because he believed bumping into us was bad luck.
Turned out, he was right. The Ravens lost to the Oakland Raiders, 20-12 on that trip.
Amidst my initial tears, it occurred to me that David Modell died on Friday The 13th of January.
Since he departed from running the team a dozen years ago, he was always a presence around town. My wife and I have bumped into him at yoga class, at restaurants and charity events and even at the Farmer’s Market downtown on Sunday mornings. He also never missed Ravens games.
8He said he would never leave Baltimore and he never did. And he never set foot in Cleveland again.
When it was business in the early days, he answered every tough question – and there were a LOT of them when the Browns were kicking the Dawgs and the team was moving from Cleveland to Baltimore. Justifying PSLs, costs, tailgating, naming the team, the “disputed” logo, the Ray Lewis trial – all of it. It was not easy being the president of the Baltimore Ravens and the adopted son of one of the patriarchs of the NFL and a famous Hollywood actress who knew all of the beautiful people in Cleveland, New York and Los Angeles.
He went from a ball boy to being the guy instrumental in moving the franchise and making it great in Baltimore. The one thing that is unanimous in any observation I’ve seen since his death is his unspoken (until now, perhaps) impact on why the Ravens have been such an incredible civic success on and off the field and in the community.
David Modell is the reason it hurts so badly when the team finishes 8-8. Because “mediocre” wasn’t the bar that he and his father set when their family set sail from Cleveland to come to Baltimore.
He was ALWAYS honest with me. He probably uttered a million words to me over 20 years – every one of them was legitimate. As a journalist, as a fan, and later in life as a friend – what more can you say about a person?
His legacy can be felt in many ways every time you see the Baltimore Ravens. The color purple. The logo. The stadium. The band. The Ravens Walk. Tailgating. All of this was David Modell.
Perhaps his most subtle, enduring tradition is when the fans yell: “DON’T BE A JERK!” every week when the stadium rules are unveiled in the first question. It’s right up there with Google’s “Don’t Be Evil” credo.
8I can’t think of anyone whose company I enjoyed more than David Modell. He taught me a lot.
He was smart. He was kind. He was enlightened. He was joyful, soulful and my memories of him will always be warm.
I loved David Modell and I’ll cherish my memories with him. I’m really gonna miss him.
