Some 2,000 Crew fans, give or take, jammed the front plaza of City Hall on Sunday. There, they launched their effort to #SaveTheCrew and did a fine job of it. It was a sun-splashed lunch hour filled with passion, emotion and determination.

Crew owner Anthony Precourt has designs on moving Columbus’ soccer team to Austin, Texas, as if it were a jalopy he happened to find in a barn he bought for the lumber. Crew fans on Sunday served notice that, if they have not been driving this particular car, they had a big hand in building the thing, and they have maintained it for 22 years and aren't just going to let some greasy, out-of-town twoccer get away clean.

If Columbus is your city and/or the Crew is your team, and you were at the rally, your heart swelled. You had to think that, by golly, this effort has a chance. You had to believe that an organized, galvanized, energized band of brothers and sisters, all in the right, have a fighting chance against the exclusive club of millionaire and billionaire MLS owners who are backing Precourt’s exit plan.

Dear readers, as many of you may know, I come from Hartford, the Insurance Capital of the World, where actuarial tables are part of the particulate pollution of central Connecticut. You might be aware that I was covering the Hartford Whalers as a beat reporter when the NHL team was ripped out of the city and moved to the hockey hotbed of Raleigh, North Carolina. The experience informs the cynical view I take of these situations. Here is how they can go:

Whalers owner Pete Karmanos, after he announced he was moving — readying himself to go to Columbus, provided that taxpayers agreed to an arena ballot issue — explained his reasoning to The New York Times in April 1997. (By that point, he was deep into ducking the Hartford media.)

Karmanos spoke of his late wife and said, “I gave $18 million to the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit. And I’d much rather give that institute another $20 million than waste another $20 million in Hartford.”

The Columbus ballot issue failed. Karmanos could have accepted an extraordinarily generous arena deal in Hartford, but that was not his Plan B. He parked his team in Greensboro, North Carolina, for two years, or until he could move it to Raleigh. Estimates are that this move ultimately cost him — and, by his reasoning, the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit — scores of millions of dollars.

In any case, ol’ “Ponytailed Pete” wound up in the Hockey Hall of Fame as a Builder. Life can be funny that way. Genghis Khan built Mongolia. It’s like that.

The purpose here is not to sap energy from the #SaveTheCrew campaign — which won’t happen in any case, not if Sunday’s rally is any gauge. A double-sized Nordecke was dropped on the eastern bank of the Scioto River and, boy, it was something to see. Crew fan Morgan Hughes did a fabulous job of organizing and lining up a cast of speakers who’ve spent years polishing the Black & Gold car, and they’re on to the guy who jimmied the locks.

“If you came here for a funeral,” Hughes said, “if you thought this was a wake, you’ve come to the wrong place.”

And then everyone started singing, “Columbus 'til I Die.”

The best chance of saving the team for Columbus is in the hearts, minds and passion of these people. Their website, savethecrew.com, has already generated more than 30,000 unique visits. They are mobilizing supporter groups in the U.S. and overseas. A thousand people have already ordered flags.

Shame the shameless. Maybe it’s possible.

marace@dispatch.com

@MichaelArace1