Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

To celebrate Derby Day, I thought I’d feature Alan “The Horse” Ameche, of the Baltimore Colts. Derby, Horse, Colts–pretty clever, huh?

A little Googling turned up these facts about Ameche:

• He played on the 1952 Wisconsin team that won the Big Ten Championship and played in the Rose Bowl. The Badgers lost 7-0 to USC. There is a nice photo of the 1952 team on the University of Wisconsin web site. (Ameche is number 35, second from the left in the second row.)
• He won the Heisman Trophy in 1954. (I knew this.)
• He made the Pro Bowl his first four years with the Colts.
• He scored the winning touchdown in the 1958 Championship Game against the Giants, “The Greatest Game Ever Played.” The SI Vault has a photo of him scoring the touchdown.
• Academy award winner Don Ameche was his cousin.

The card pictured above is Ameche’s rookie card, a 1955 Bowman. Though the card shows him in Colts blue, I’m pretty sure his jersey was red when the photo was taken. The image matches a 1954 photo in the University of Wisconsin Archives. It appears he was running right out of his socks! (There’s also a less flattering photo that appears to be from the same session.)

Ameche played only six years with the Colts, retiring after the 1960 season because of an Achilles tendon injury. The card companies apparently didn’t get the word, because he appeared on two cards the year after his retirement: the 1961 Topps and 1961 Fleer cards below.

You can see all of Ameche’s cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery. There is also a nice article about him in the University of Wisconsin Archives.