BALTIMORE -- Amid the rotted rowhouses on the West Side of town, the mystery of Big Daddy Lipscomb lives on.
His too-short life will always bind Pittsburgh to Baltimore.
Lipscomb, who stood 6 feet 6 inches and weighed 310 pounds, revolutionized professional football as a defensive lineman, first as a member of the Baltimore Colts, then as a Steeler.
He played his last two years in Pittsburgh, but he died in Baltimore on May 10, 1963, under circumstances that remain murky. The coroner found that a heroin overdose killed Lipscomb, a ruling teammates in both cities never accepted. Big Daddy, they said, hated needles and would not have injected himself.
Lipscomb was the kind of player and personality who would have made headlines in any era. His on-field philosophy was simple, much like that of today's Steelers and the Ravens, who meet Sunday in a divisional playoff game in Pittsburgh.
"I grab a whole armful of guys with the other color jersey," Big Daddy would say, "then I peel 'em off until I find the one with the ball."
He made All-Pro three times, even though he never played college football and lacked fundamentals when he was discovered by the Los Angeles Rams in 1953. The Rams, disgusted by his work habits, shipped him to Baltimore three years later.
Fans are quick to criticize today's players for off-field excesses, but few had anything on Lipscomb.
He died at 31, leaving three ex-wives, a fiancee and several girlfriends. The Baltimore medical examiner said he found enough heroin in Lipscomb's system to have killed more than one man.
Friends insisted Big Daddy's death must have involved foul play, but other evidence made that seem unlikely. For one, his liver was about to go, ruined by whiskey.
In Baltimore's working-class neighborhoods, though, old-time fans remember Lipscomb for his excellence and gentleness.
"At the time he played, you couldn't pay me not to watch a Colts game," said Winslow Woodson, 54, who has lived here all his life. "Now the poor sportsmanship turns me off. It wasn't that way with Lipscomb."
Lipscomb, whose first name was Eugene, established himself as a gentle giant in a violent sport. He helped up the ball carriers he knocked down, and was famous for sweet-talking opponents.
A professional wrestler during football's off-season, Lipscomb refused to play the bad guy in the ring. Kids, he said, would not accept Big Daddy as a villain.
Traded to Pittsburgh in 1961, he played two strong seasons for the Steelers, even as he battered his body more than the opposition did.
Lipscomb might have become a Steelers legend if not for that night in Baltimore when he turned up dead above a bar on Brice Street.
The West Side is in decline now.
"Drugs weren't a big problem when Lipscomb was here," Woodson said. "Now, it's terrible."
City needs a team
Many in Baltimore say the Ravens have unified the city and restored excitement to its neighborhoods.
Bob Leffler, the last marketing director of the Baltimore Colts, is one of them. Leffler, 56, said the quality of life in any urban area is sparked by the presence of a big-league football or baseball team.
"I've seen it. I've felt it," Leffler said. "The Ravens bring people together who normally have nothing in common. They break down the barriers that exist in an urban area, if only for a day."
After the Colts fled to Indianapolis for a better stadium deal in 1984, Baltimore had no big-league football team for 12 years.
A Canadian league team located in Baltimore, and even called itself the Colts until the National Football League sued over rights to the name. But there was no magic.
"I started my own advertising agency, and I was making three times the money I had been with the Colts," he said. "But I would pine on Sundays. I was dying inside. It was so empty and lonely here."
The Ravens arrived in 1996, pirated from Cleveland, and have done wonders for the city, Leffler said. He landed the Ravens as a client, but said he would tout them even if they did not contribute to his business.
Yes, he admitted, the $220 million public cost of the Ravens' new home, PSINet Stadium, was hard to swallow, given all the city's needs. Baltimore had nine homicides in the first two weeks of this year, and police protection is one of myriad concerns for the city's politicians.
But Leffler maintains that the Ravens have provided welcome relief from the daily grind.
"Every market has a choice," he said. "You either build the stadium or it's empty Sundays."
Big Daddy, football held the hearts of two cities 
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