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A s 1952 drew to a close, Bert Bell pondered one of the most complex dilemmas he faced since becoming commissioner. The problem had been tormenting him for more than a year—ever since Abraham Watner turned the Baltimore Colts back to the league in January 1951. It turns out, according to Mike Devitt of the Indianapolis Star-News, that the Colts’ board of directors had known nothing of Watner’s plans to dissolve the team before it was too late and filed a lawsuit against him and the NFL. In an effort to head off litigation, Bell admitted that the league was wrong in allowing Watner to abandon the franchise and offered to return the team to Baltimore if its debt could be cleared. Devitt recalled that Bell’s promise wasn’t good enough for the city’s attorney, William D. MacMillan. “Instead of sitting on their hands, MacMillan proceeded with the lawsuit , which accused Watner and the league of, among other things, violating the Sherman Antitrust Act and restraining trade. Faced with the very real chance of losing such litigation (several preliminary rulings had gone in the city’s favor; the case would have been tried in Baltimore; and the judge expected to rule on the case was a devoted Colts fan), in December of 1952 Bell issued a challenge to the city: sell 15,000 season tickets in six weeks, and the league would reward Baltimore with another football team.” Bell’s action came after he again had sought legal advice from his brother, John C., who had recently been elected to a 21-year term as a Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice. Traveling to Baltimore to make the announcement, Bell told a crowded news conference on December 3 that he would happily find an owner if fans would buy $250,000 worth of season tickets by January 22, which coincides with the annual league meeting. “I don’t have an owner now, but I guarantee you will have one,” Bell said, adding that he had two or three names in mind. “The reason I don’t 28. Baltimore Rises from the Ashes 192 • Chapter 28 have one is I’m not going to make any agreement with an owner who is not going to operate the franchise as a business 365 days a year.” MacMillan, who also served as the Colts’ attorney, attended the news conference with Bell. He said that he had already received more than 1,000 requests for season tickets. The team had never sold more than 6,500 season tickets in the past but exceeded its 15,000 goal by 775 tickets in a little more than four weeks. MacMillan had served as one of Whittaker Chambers’s attorneys in the famous Alger Hiss perjury trial in 1950. He and Bell soon became close friends. “He’s a guy my father loved,” Bert’s son Upton said. “He knew everybody in Washington.” On January 12, 1953, Bell reached back into his familiar Ivy League roots to announce the new majority owner of the Colts. He was Carroll Rosenbloom, a local textile manufacturer, who played halfback at the University of Pennsylvania in 1928–1929. Bell was his backfield coach the first season and the two ex-Quakers stayed in touch while Rosenbloom worked as a consultant at the Philadelphia Quartermaster Depot and added to his considerable fortune by making uniforms and parachutes during World War II. It took some doing, but Bell finally persuaded his good friend to buy 51 percent of the franchise for $250,000 during a conversation in the living room of the commissioner ’s home in Margate. “He twisted my arm,” Rosenbloom told friends, according to William Henry Paul, author of The Gray-Flannel Pigskin: Movers and Shakers of Pro Football. “He told me it was my civic responsibility, that I was Baltimore ’s last hope. He made it so that if I didn’t take the club, I was one son of a bitch.” “I think Carroll wanted to be the owner all along,” recalled Bert Bell Jr., who later worked for Rosenbloom and the Colts. “He just wanted to be persuaded. He wanted to be convinced.” “It’s a good thing he’s in the shirt business, because he’s going to lose his,” Bell later confided to his associates, according to Rich Roberts of the Los Angeles Times. Rosenbloom eventually bought out his four co-owners to assume sole control of the Colts. He also became one...

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