Forty years ago, the Colts delivered -- and so did Frances Taylor.

In New York on Dec. 28, 1958, Baltimore defeated the Giants in overtime to win its first NFL championship. At Johns Hopkins Hospital, hours before kickoff, the East Baltimore woman bore a healthy, 6 1/2 -pound son.

Sudden death for the Colts.

A timely birth for the Taylors.

Franklin and Frances Taylor celebrated both events and named their child Michael Colt. The moniker would change his life forever. It started right there in the nursery.

Hospital officials crowed over "the Colt baby" and gave him the most prominent crib, front row center. The Baltimore News-Post published a photograph of Mrs. Taylor cradling her newborn like a football and beaming, "perhaps with rosy dreams of the day when he'll be a big Colt star himself!"

"I am linked with history," said Michael, who grew up in Baltimore, where he still resides, even though the Colts do not. He turns 40 on Monday, the anniversary of Baltimore's 23-17 victory over New York in what has been called The Greatest Game Ever Played.

At 1 a.m. on Dec. 28, Franklin Taylor packed his pregnant wife into their 1949 Chevy coupe and headed for the hospital. En route, between contractions, they proposed boys' names and tentatively settled on Michael Joseph.

The name "Colt" had not occurred to them.

Five hours later, the baby arrived. By that time, Dad had returned to their home on Broening Highway to care for the newborn's big sister. As morning wore on, Franklin itched to see his wife and son, but his thoughts strayed to the impending football game.

At 10 a.m., his wife recalled, Franklin arrived at the hospital bearing a bouquet of flowers "as big as he was." Again, they discussed names; again, Dad's thoughts strayed to football.

Suddenly, he brightened.

"How about Michael Colt?" he asked.

Frances agreed. The Taylors were Colts season-ticket holders. And the name was different. "There are a lot of Michael Josephs in the world, but not many Michael Colts," she said.

Besides, naming their son after an entire football team might bring the club luck that afternoon.

"Lord knows what I would have said if we'd lived in Dallas or San Francisco," she recalled, chuckling at the thought of other middle names.

But Michael Colt -- well, that's a name the boy could be proud to grow up with. And he was, except when the team was losing.

"If the Colts were winning, I'd write my middle name out," Michael said. "If they were losing, kids would say, 'The team stinks, so you stink.'

"It was guilt or hero by association. But I was always proud of my name."

Michael's childhood birthdays were much the same: blue-and-white cakes topped with tiny plastic goal posts. After the party, he said, "If the Colts were having a banner year, my aunt Fran would call the newspaper, which would send a photographer to take my picture wearing a dorky plastic helmet. The paper would publish the photo with the caption, 'Remember this guy?' "

Fewer did as time passed. Michael's middle name was forgotten; still, he stuck with football. At Northern High, he made the varsity as a nearsighted, second-string center: "I figured that when I took my glasses off, I couldn't see a thing, so why not stand in the middle of the line and get beat up?"

The Taylors had moved to a home in Gardenville, just a brisk walk to Colts home games. On Sundays when his dad had an extra ticket, Michael would traipse along with him to Memorial Stadium. On drizzly afternoons, they'd fool around, father and son grabbing wet tree branches and shaking them on one another.

As a teen-ager, Michael got into games on his own, landing a job hawking programs.

When he was 25, the year before the Colts skipped town for Indianapolis, Michael's sister, Mary Frances, wrote to every player on the '58 club asking for autographed pictures. She told them their namesake had been born on the day of The Greatest Game Ever Played; all but three Colts responded.

"I got photos from Johnny Unitas, Art Donovan, Jim Parker and Gino Marchetti," Michael said. "Alan Ameche sent a picture of himself playing without a face mask. Alex Sandusky wrote, 'Happy birthday and best of luck from an old Colt.' "

Michael Colt Taylor has had luck, good and bad. He married, then divorced. Director of operations for a local shipping firm, he still lives in Gardenville and will celebrate his 40th birthday Monday by watching the tape of the Colts-Giants game "for the 1,000th time."

What's more, the Colts' namesake has made sure his legacy will go on. He has a son of his own, Michael Colt Taylor Jr., now 18. Coincidentally, the youth has dyed his hair blue.

Monday, the couple who started it all, Franklin and Frances Taylor, will phone their son and sing "Happy Birthday" in unison, as usual.

Typically, Dad's thoughts will stray to the football field as they did on that memorable Dec. 28 so many years ago.

"I did get to see that ['58 title] game," Franklin said. "At the hospital, my wife looked at me looking at my watch and said, 'Go.' "

Back home, he settled in front of the black-and-white TV and whooped as the game seesawed. When Ameche bulled over for the winning touchdown, Franklin leaped from his armchair and began pounding the wall of the family's rowhouse. On the other side, his neighbor, Earl, did the same.

The Colts had beaten the Giants, 23-17. And their youngest fan had entered the world.

"It was a hell of a day, a magical day," he said. "Forget the wall. I could have gone through the roof."

Pub Date: 12/26/98