INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - Harriet Irsay, the mother of Indianapolis Colts' owner Jim Irsay, has died of natural causes, the team announced Saturday. She was 87.

Harriet Irsay, who divorced previous team owner Robert Irsay in 1988, died in her Chicago-area home on Friday, a statement from the team said.

She had attended Colts games at the RCA Dome as recently as last season until her diminishing health precluded that, Jim Irsay said in the statement.

``When our family acquired the team in 1972, my mother signed the check,'' Jim Irsay said.

She was born June 9, 1921, to Polish immigrants Peter and Josephine Pogorzelski in the Bucktown section of Chicago. She married Robert Irsay in 1946.

She served on the Board of Directors for the American Institute of Polish Culture in Miami since its inception in 1972 and established the Harriet P. Irsay College Scholarship through the Institute in 1992.

Her other two children, Roberta and Thomas, both are dead.