My most vivid recollection of the pre-ride, was just how worn out every member of the organization was looking. Virtually no one in the party looked like they had gotten any sleep at all. After playing the game of their lives on Sunday evening, partying until dawn, flying home in the late morning on Monday, dealing with all of the well-wishers once they got home and getting out of bed at 7 a.m. to ride in the parade, it was evident that they were hitting the wall.
The 45 minutes after that jeep started moving were among the most fascinating moments of my life.
More than the game or the week or the crazy trip that made it all happen, riding in that parade was beyond description.
Somewhere, Mike Flynn has a videotape of the pair of us talking to each other and to the camera, and someday I hope we can sit and watch it to relive it.
When we turned the corner at the red light behind the Oriole Park at Camden Yards warehouse and saw the throng of extremely jubilant, extremely wet people, our jaws simply dropped.
The deeper into the route we got, the more amazed we were.
People were screaming our names, screaming the word “Ravens,” waving uncontrollably. Flynn and I mugged for photos, screamed back at the people we knew and waved back.
8Soaking-wet confetti flew, posters were everywhere – it was the most honest, innocent, and emotional bond I had ever experienced in sports.
It was just like you always saw it in the movies.
Only I was in the middle of it!
To be honest, I felt very awkward, because I was merely gravy training on this jeep. I certainly didn’t deserve anything. I was just along for the ride.
Here was a team that hadn’t really played, physically at least, in front of its fans in more than four weeks because they were a wild-card team traveling on the road, and the fans just wanted to give them pure and unconditional love now that they were home.
It was, in short, everything Flynn and I had missed in Fells Point on Sunday night after the game, only without the alcohol.
“How crazy were they going?” he wondered Sunday night.
Well, here was his answer.
One of my many joys of the parade, was riding beside the jeep of safety Kim Herring, who is easily one of my other favorite Ravens. Just a super person, whom I consider a friend, Herring exchanged his disbelief with Flynn and I several times during the route. It was one of those moments where we just couldn’t stop smiling.
8Flynn’s innocence and true charm came out at one point, and I really hope I captured it on videotape, although I’m not really sure.
At one point late in the route, after we both had expressed our complete disbelief (I’m not even sure if there’s a proper word for what we were feeling) about how cool this was and how lucky we were to experience it together, Flynn turned to me and made a most profound and heartfelt observation.
“It just struck me,” he said, in all sincerity. “This city really loves us. This city will always love us. We’re like I always hear it was with the Colts, only it’s now, not back then. We’ll always be able to come back here for reunions, like 10 or 20 years from now, and they’ll talk about this day forever. People will be telling their grandkids about this day. And I’m always going to be a part of it. Wow!”
Just then, Flynn and I got a little emotional.
He was right.
He was just so right.
We quickly looked at each other, got right emotionally, shrugged our shoulders, smiled and started waving to the crowd again.
8I was wearing my Raven-logo construction worker hat, mainly to keep the rain off my head. Flynn had a Raven-bird ski cap. He liked my hat and wanted to swap. I thought it would be very appropriate for him to adorn the blue-collar look once we got to the stage, so we swapped.
Moments later we were pulling in front of City Hall, where a huge platform was erected on the square. Music blared and the sound of the P.A. boomed, welcoming the players one by one and leading the cheers of the metropolis.
For some, it was a real and honest feeling of civic warmth. For others, especially Governor Parris Glendening, who was roundly booed by the crowd of more than 200,000, it was another chance to grandstand and take responsibility for something they had very little to do with achieving.
Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley was doing the player introductions as WMAR-TV’s Scott Garceau was feeding him the correct pronunciations of the players’ names. O’Malley still managed to butchered them pretty good. In actuality, the Mayor wasn’t much of football fan, but he was doing his best.
Once on the stage, I saw the Billick family stage right and wandered over amid the hubbub to say hello. After exchanging pleasantries, Brian Billick came over to say hello.
Only riding in one place in the parade, I didn’t get to see much of what had happened in front or in back of me during the route.
On Wednesday morning, the evidence of Billick’s hold on the city was there in living color in The Baltimore Sun for all to see. There was The Boss marching afoot down Pratt Street, hoisting the Lombardi Trophy over his head for all to see.
8One friend of mine, who was on the street during the parade route, summed it up for me: “Dude, he looked like General McArthur marching in with the troops with those military jeeps and hummers behind him. It was surreal!”
Once on stage, however, he was relatively low-key, blending into the scene as much as a man of his height can.
Standing next to me, or should I say towering over me, I told him that he should have been the one introducing players to the crowd.
At least he would have pronounced the names right, I said.
Then, I remembered his long-standing, banquet-circuit speech about being elected the Mayor of Baltimore if he ever brought a Super Bowl championship to town.
I said to him, “You always said you’d be elected the Mayor if you ever won the big one.”
Without a second of response time, he looked at me with a big smile.
“I could be the Mayor of Baltimore if I wanted to be,” he said. “I could be today.”
