Jim Irsay dead at 65

I have mixed feelings about the late Jim Irsay, whose father, Bob, bought the Baltimore Colts football team and gave Baltimore such misery by moving them to some town in Indiana somewhere. I understand they did not change the name of the team after they arrived in Hoosierland, but I will never call them the Colts.

Before the team moved, we used to see Jim around their training camp acting as ball boy and gopher for the coaches. I guess he stayed in that role of subordinate to his unbearable father, whose own mother once called him "the devil on earth,"  until he assumed ownership of the team when Bob finally shuffled off to wherever in hell he went. 

But let's be fair. It wasn't Jim's fault that his father took the team away, and he did have a good quality or two.

He collected rock 'n' roll memorabilia. He was a great admirer of Jack Kerouac, and purchased the original scroll on which Kerouac typed out his picaresque masterpiece "On The Road."

Not only that, but he wasn't one of those collectors whose idea of having is not sharing. Jimbo put that scroll on the road and exhibited it all around the country so that others could see the treasure. He honored Kerouac that way, and lots of people benefited from his generosity.

Irsay was 65 when he died in his sleep yesterday afternoon. He once told an interviewer that he overdosed "one time" because he "mixed multiple drugs that I didn't know anything about," and went "code blue" and stopped breathing, and had been in rehab "at least 15 times."   

 

Life will go on, someone will inherit the football team and the massive collection of whatnots, and some of us will wonder if he wasn't happiest chasing footballs around the playing fields of Goucher College when the team trained there. I'm not sure money brought him as much happiness as some might think.