Doyel: T.Y. Hilton celebrates new baby, inspires crowd, Colts

Daddy was on a tight schedule. Had been since about 5 a.m. Sunday, when mommy's schedule went right down the tubes and into a hospital delivery room. Colts receiver T.Y. Hilton's pregnant wife, Shantrell, wasn't due until Dec. 15. Before going to bed Saturday night in the hotel where the Colts stay before home games, Hilton turned off his cell phone. Why leave it on? Who would be calling?

Turns out, his wife. Nurses. Friends. Shantrell Hilton went into labor in the middle of the night, less than 12 hours before the Colts played the Jaguars. Nobody could find T.Y. His cell phone was turned off. The phone in his hotel room rang twice, and Hilton picked it up just long enough to hang it back up.

"I thought somebody was punking me," he said.

So anyway, let's fast forward past the Colts employee knocking on Hilton's door at 5:15 a.m. to get him out of bed and into a car, where Hilton sped toward IU Health North Medical Center in Carmel. Fast forward past the delivery Sunday morning at about 7:30 of Eugenia Emma Hilton — "We're gonna call her G.G.," Hilton said — and past Hilton spending the first three hours of his daughter's life on his feet, with his wife and first daughter (he has two sons). Fast forward past noon, when Hilton finally showed up to the stadium, so late for a 1 p.m. kickoff that he'd be benched and fined and maybe even suspended without a legitimate excuse.

Fast forward past the legitimate excuse and the touchdown and even the end zone celebration that had much of America in happy tears. Fast forward right to the crowd of media near Hilton's locker, waiting to talk to Daddy, waiting to tease him about cigars and diapers.

Daddy was in no mood to be teased. Not grouchy, not angry, not mean, not at all, but in no mood for anything but business. Because his schedule? It's tight. He was going on very little sleep, very little food — "No fuel in my body," he said — and very little time to adjust. So as the media crowded closer, Hilton was trying to get ready to leave. He had a little girl to see. They're gonna call her G.G.

"Two minutes," Hilton said, giving us the chance to get ready. Because he was on a tight schedule.

"Thirty seconds," he said, pulling on his backpack.

"Twenty seconds," he said, dropping a cell phone into his jeans pocket.

"Ten seconds," he said, dropping keys into another pocket.

"Five seconds," he said, pulling on a hat that matched his T-shirt, the word "MONEY" in big green letters, with the following written in smaller, black type below: "Just make it."

"Action," he said, and we asked how he'd describe his touchdown celebration ("I rocked that baby to sleep") and when he came up with that idea ("in the car coming to the stadium") and what he planned to do with the football he used to score that 73-yard, game-changing touchdown before shushing the crowd and turning the ball into a make-believe baby girl and cradling it in the end zone. ("When I get back to the hospital, I'm going to take her the ball.")

And then the interview was over. Hilton needed two things: some food, and a trip back to the hospital to see his wife and baby.

For the rest of us, Hilton's touchdown — and his TD celebration — was the feel-good moment this game was lacking. Until Hilton got behind Jaguars cornerback Dwayne Gratz midway through the third quarter, catching the ball near midfield and outrunning Gratz to the end zone, the Colts clung to an unimpressive, if not uneasy, 13-3 lead. The Colts weren't going to lose. No chance. Jacksonville is simply terrible on offense, gaining less than 200 yards and scoring three points only because the Colts were, in their own bumbling way, equally terrible on offense for most of three quarters, losing one of their six fumbles at their own 12-yard line, giving the Jags gift field position that Jacksonville screwed up so badly it was forced to kick a field goal.

And yet this game was tied at 3 until the final seconds of the first half, and the Colts led just 6-3 until midway through the third quarter. Until Hilton scored that touchdown and rocked that baby, this game had no feel-good for the Colts. Bad offensive line. Bad fumbles. Bad quarterback play. They were going to win, any Colts fan could see that, but for several hours this game was like the best line from Dangerous Liaisons, when Glenn Close's character scolds John Malkovich by telling him, "One does not applaud the tenor for clearing his throat."

On Sunday at Lucas Oil Stadium, the playoff-bound Colts were the tenor. One-win Jacksonville was, ahem, something clogged in their throat.

Until T.Y. Hilton rocked that baby. And the video went all over the Internet. And then we were in the locker room talking to Hilton and his teammates about it. Defensive tackle Ricky Jean Francois told me Hilton had tears in his eyes after the touchdown and then again after getting a game ball in the locker room. Donte Moncrief told me the celebration made him long for his own little girl, Malayna, who is with her mom in Mississippi.

"I miss my daughter," Moncrief said. "A lot."

So did Hilton, which is why his postgame press conference ended and he was gone, the ghost disappearing out the back door and into the night. Eugenia Emma Hilton was only hours old, and she was waiting.

They're gonna call her G.G.

Connect with Star columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or atwww.facebook.com/gregg.doyel .