So I have an idea about what this Cleveland Browns Diary will become — we’ll get to that in a moment — but first we should probably tie a bow on my 50 or so years as a fans of the Cleveland Browns.
I think this whole mess is just gonna get worse. The chanting he experienced in that preseason game. Who the he'll is gonna buy a browns jersey? Like reading various comments people are disgusted. The browns had built a playoff caliber team who had an injured qb they trotted out last year irradvisably and this is gonna end bad. That guaranteed contract is a killer tho. But what they did and how they mishandled baker. Man, the front office is a freaking mess.
Maybe there's a parallel with LIV golf. At some point doesn't honor and integrity mean something? While I don't fault anyone for chasing the money (and wins), if you lose your integrity in the process, what do you really have? You can win and make money without compromising your integrity. The best franchises know that.
It's pretty easy to determine when my LA Rams fandom ended. When they moved to St Louis. I shared season tickets with a large number of friends and it the Rams were everything. Even when they weren't good. We tailgated, had fun, celebrated wins and mourned losses together. And Hey, it was sorta nice when the greatest show on turf was around & had a great story & a Super Bowl. And then last year they got their elusive Super Bowl back in LA. I preferred that the Rams won in both cases. Because the other choice was a rando team. But I really didn't care. At some point, the franchise really didn't care about the fans, so why should we care? I will never pay money to watch them ever again. And I really don't go out of my way to watch them on TV either. I probably only saw their playoff games last year. I know that I wasn't looking to see when the Rams were on.
I would WHOLEHEARTEDLY try and draft you for this Team, just on the basis of it having the best feeling TD song/bar cheer ever known to any pro sports franchise. A feeling young Katie would have ZERO problem getting on board. Alas … they relocated. Song doesn’t work anymore. Sigh.
On Feb. 25, 1989, The Dallas Cowboys, fired Tom Landry, hired Jimmy Johnson, and I, at 16 years old, stopped caring about the one thing I may have cared more about than anything else to that point. It wasn't a moral decision- it was an emotional one. I simply didn't care anymore. They fired a guy I worshipped. and hired a guy I hated. I pretty much gave up pro football all together. I loved and watched college football, but enjoyed football free Sundays. I finished dinner and talked with my family instead of rushing off to the living room to watch the game. I read, Got good grades. Went to museums or the park. I'd follow it occasionally, draft fantasy teams of guys I knew from the college side. I can still will watch Tony Dorsett clips on youtube, or look at my old football cards with my kids. And I enjoy that. It's nostalgia. It's what keeps people watching every week. I live in Illinois where people can't get to the second half of a Bears game without mentioning the '85 team. It makes them feel young again, and good. But once the bond is broken, you realize the current product is brutal, plagued by ridiculously frequent commercials, and jarring graphics, and brutal, senseless injuries. And some dudes you don't want your kids to emulate or even read about. You can have the rare ,once a decade, amazing day like this winter with the Bucs-Rams and Bills-Chiefs, but even a casual, non-fan who didn't watch the preceding 20 Sundays gets to see that. Walk away, Joe.
The injuries are way more frequent, but also far more likely for a player to recover from. I thought the player who would have been the greatest Running Back ever was Gayle Sayers. If modern medical technology were around during Sayer's era he may have recovered in the a manner lose to Adrian Peterson and put up numbers that would truly manifest his unlimited ability.
Come on back to Kansas City Joe!! We loved you when you were here. You were the best sports writer KC ever had! I still have The Soul Of Baseball on my book shelves. So be a Chiefs fan again and follow a true winning QB!
I keep trying to give up the NFL altogether, but my Eagles keep sticking with me. Among cities with losing legacies, Philadelphia is like the New York of losing. "If you can't lose here, you can't lose anywhere," Frank Stallone sang, in "Philadelphia, Philadelphia." Cleveland can only aspire to the losing legacy of my hometown. Repeat after me: E-A-G-L-E-S EAGLES!
As much as I disdain the Eagles (Not as much as the Cowboys) whose fans are only slightly less obnoxious than Jets fans. That said, you cannot be serious calling this franchise losers. In 22 seasons, the have had a winning season 15 times. The Eagles have made the Playoffs 14 times. What team has made the playoffs more in the 21st century? The Eagles have also won the NFC East Division 9 times and won the NFC Conference Title twice. They won one of the two Super Bowls they were in. I'd say that they have made their fans happy over the last 23 seasons.
Great point, so let me clarify. Two things are at play here. First, I'm talking about a legacy of losing as a city. I came of age as a sports fan in at the start of '70s with stories from my grandfather and uncle. We have the first baseball franchise to have lost 10,000 games, but long before that I knew the Phillies' 1964 collapse like gospel. The Eagles were horrendous, just a few years removed from the Joe Must Go year. The Sixers' set the record for worst record in NBA history, a record that hasn't been eclipsed in the tanking era. I don't care about hockey, but we've got all 4 major franchisee. The Flyers and their fans have been cruising in their Broad Street Bullies era forever. The Eagles have been consistently competitive for a long times now, but that doesn't wipe away all the entitled whining much of our fanbase does over the fact that we've only won one Super Bowl.
Second, I'm simply pulling out all the stops I can so Joe can start rooting for the Eagles. The Bills are likely a better choice, but I've got to give it my best to steer him to my team.
I see, I thought you were only referring to the Eagles. My apologies for my mistake and your sports heartbreaks emanating from the City of Brotherly Love. I have a bit of a Philadelphia sports connection that befuddles me to this day. The 1964 Phillies flop has to be the worst in baseball history. Growing up, by the time I was able to comprehend baseball, the tri-state area no longer had an NL baseball team. My Grandfather was a diehard Brooklyn Dodgers fan and hated the Yankees. At the age of seven, I started watching baseball with an understanding of what was going on. With no NL team in New York, and the Yankees televising for free all 162 of their games, I watched a lot of Yankee games. But I also watched a Triple-A team located in Jersey City, where I lived. The Jersey City Jerseys televised their games on channel 13 before it became the education PBS station for the Metropolitan area. I usually watched most of my baseball in 1961 at my grandfather’s house on weekends. My Grandfather always rooted for whoever was playing against the Yankees. He hated the Yankees with a fervor. However, always watching the Yankees and Mickey Mantle grew on me. I eventually evolved into a secret Yankee fan. Mickey Mantle was my favorite player, followed closely by Roger Maris. I would sit with my grandfather and silently root for the Yankees. I didn't hide it as well as I thought I did, as my grandfather would occasionally say, "Are you rooting for the Yankees?"
When I was at my own house, I would watch the Triple-A, Jersey City Jerseys (Formerly the Havana Reds who fled Castro's Cuba, and shunned the nickname "Reds" due to its obvious communist connotation). If I recall correctly, they only televised the Jersey City Jerseys' weekend games. My grandfather would attend these games and bring my oldest brother with him. The Jerseys played their home games inside Jersey City's grand Roosevelt Stadium, which was built during the Depression with WPA funds in the 1930s. The Jersey City Mayor, Frank Hague had a special relationship with FDR. In every State but New Jersey, the WPA funds were issued to each State's Governor to allocate the funds as each Governor deemed necessary. Only in New Jersey did the WPA Funds get issued to the Mayor of Jersey City, Frank Hague. He proceeded to build a 'State-of-the-Art Baseball Stadium that was dedicated to President Roosevelt, as it was named Roosevelt Stadium. This ballpark was as grand and beautiful as any stadium in Major League Baseball, and better than most. It was designed as a combination of Wrigley, Ebbets, and Crosley Fields. The outfield walls beyond the fences were covered with lush Ivy in the same style of brick as Wrigley Field. The Left Field scoreboard is stylized upon the Leftfield scoreboard at Crosley Field. The Rightfield scoreboard was modeled upon the same style as the Ebbets Field Rightfield scoreboard. Overall, Roosevelt Stadium was a 'State-of-the-Art Ballpark that was the envy of most major league stadiums.
Being a 7 and 8-year-old kid from Jersey City, I watched as many of those Jersey City Jersey Triple-A games on TV as I possibly could. My older brother used to go to almost every home game as my grandfather was the Director of the Jersey City Parks Department and Roosevelt Stadium fell under his Supervision, albeit, Roosevelt Stadium had its own grounds Director who answered to my grandfather, who was also one of my grandfather's best friends. My brother was able to go into the Jersey City Jerseys locker room and got autographed bats and balls. I got a bunch of Black and White glossy photographs of the Philadelphia Phillies Manager, Tom Sawyer, and their players as the Mayor of Philadelphia supported The Jersey City Mayor in the 1960 Mayoral election. The Philadelphia Phillies then publicly became my favorite major league team, and the Yankees were secretly my real favorite baseball team.
I winded up developing a love for the Phillies, even when the New York Mets brought back NL baseball to the New York metropolitan area. While I quickly grew to adore the terrible 1952 Mets, they were terrible, so I still had an allegiance to the Phillies who were a very good team at the time. I am, drank and slept baseball at that time in my life. Like many other baseball-crazy kids, I snuck my transistor radio into bed to listen to the Mets' night games wherever I slept, even though I slept in the same bed with one of my four brothers. They enjoyed the games too. Regardless of whether I was at home or a relative's house, and/or my family's rented summer bungalow, I batted a 1.000, as I never got caught once, or at least nobody interrupted or stopped me from listening to the Mets' games... Even back then, I could discern that, as it got later into the games, the game's broadcast would inevitably become a little more difficult to discern, especially when Bob Murphy and Ralph Kiner teamed up. Everything was very funny to these two guys once the game got around the 7th inning.
I didn't realize that their slurring wasn't a transmission issue, but rather a Rheingold Beer overdose. if I recall correctly, when there was a Rheingold Beer commercial, Bob Murphy would say something to the effect of "I sure would enjoy a nice cold Rheingold right now. Then Ralph Kiner would respond, with, "Well Bob, don't forget about your friend Ralph. I sure would love a nice crisp, cold, and clear Rheingold right now too." And they would inevitably always find things to be much funnier during the late innings.
I found out much later that this was due to this duo pounding beers during the telecast. Even though the New York Mets were now my official favorite team, they were beyond horrible, while the Phillies were a polished, good and exciting pennant contender. 1964 was my last year as a new publicly official Phillies fan. I had so much confidence before the 1964 season that I bet my friend Louie, a diehard Mets and Giants fan, a dollar that the Phillies would have a better record than the Giants.
Even though the Phillies had an almost guaranteed pennant, they somehow lost and broke my heart with the worst collapse in baseball history. Even though I was barely able to win my bet with Louie (who still has yet to pay his debt in 58 years) I could no longer split my allegiance with a team that somehow, against all odds. FAILED!!!
Joe, I am a little older than you, 62, and I grew up a Cowboy fan but in 1986 I had enough of how the local media covered them at the exclusion of the other area teams and started rooting against them. I must admit I have enjoyed rooting against their overhyped asses as much as I ever enjoyed rooting for them, now when I am asked who my favorite team is I say who ever the Cowboys are playing.
Here to say that you HAVE to pick the Panthers as your Week 1 Diary team. I mean, the Browns are coming to Charlotte and I presume Baker Mayfield will be the starting QB for the Panthers that day. The column is going to write itself.
You should join me as part of the Lions fan base. I have been a die-hard Lions fan since I was a child and in my 39 years on this planet, they have given me plenty of reasons to find a new team and only a few to applaud a job well done, but all that being said, I still come back, year after year, equally excited and filled with hope that this is finally going to be the year that they turn it around. I know that isn't exactly an outstanding sales pitch, but considering you have been a Browns fan your entire life, there is probably some familiarity in it, which is something to look for in a quest to find a new home. :-)
I think this whole mess is just gonna get worse. The chanting he experienced in that preseason game. Who the he'll is gonna buy a browns jersey? Like reading various comments people are disgusted. The browns had built a playoff caliber team who had an injured qb they trotted out last year irradvisably and this is gonna end bad. That guaranteed contract is a killer tho. But what they did and how they mishandled baker. Man, the front office is a freaking mess.
🎶 'Cause your Brown fanship won't get you into Heaven anymore 🎶
Maybe there's a parallel with LIV golf. At some point doesn't honor and integrity mean something? While I don't fault anyone for chasing the money (and wins), if you lose your integrity in the process, what do you really have? You can win and make money without compromising your integrity. The best franchises know that.
It's pretty easy to determine when my LA Rams fandom ended. When they moved to St Louis. I shared season tickets with a large number of friends and it the Rams were everything. Even when they weren't good. We tailgated, had fun, celebrated wins and mourned losses together. And Hey, it was sorta nice when the greatest show on turf was around & had a great story & a Super Bowl. And then last year they got their elusive Super Bowl back in LA. I preferred that the Rams won in both cases. Because the other choice was a rando team. But I really didn't care. At some point, the franchise really didn't care about the fans, so why should we care? I will never pay money to watch them ever again. And I really don't go out of my way to watch them on TV either. I probably only saw their playoff games last year. I know that I wasn't looking to see when the Rams were on.
I would WHOLEHEARTEDLY try and draft you for this Team, just on the basis of it having the best feeling TD song/bar cheer ever known to any pro sports franchise. A feeling young Katie would have ZERO problem getting on board. Alas … they relocated. Song doesn’t work anymore. Sigh.
https://youtu.be/naB5_32y1UQ
On Feb. 25, 1989, The Dallas Cowboys, fired Tom Landry, hired Jimmy Johnson, and I, at 16 years old, stopped caring about the one thing I may have cared more about than anything else to that point. It wasn't a moral decision- it was an emotional one. I simply didn't care anymore. They fired a guy I worshipped. and hired a guy I hated. I pretty much gave up pro football all together. I loved and watched college football, but enjoyed football free Sundays. I finished dinner and talked with my family instead of rushing off to the living room to watch the game. I read, Got good grades. Went to museums or the park. I'd follow it occasionally, draft fantasy teams of guys I knew from the college side. I can still will watch Tony Dorsett clips on youtube, or look at my old football cards with my kids. And I enjoy that. It's nostalgia. It's what keeps people watching every week. I live in Illinois where people can't get to the second half of a Bears game without mentioning the '85 team. It makes them feel young again, and good. But once the bond is broken, you realize the current product is brutal, plagued by ridiculously frequent commercials, and jarring graphics, and brutal, senseless injuries. And some dudes you don't want your kids to emulate or even read about. You can have the rare ,once a decade, amazing day like this winter with the Bucs-Rams and Bills-Chiefs, but even a casual, non-fan who didn't watch the preceding 20 Sundays gets to see that. Walk away, Joe.
The injuries are way more frequent, but also far more likely for a player to recover from. I thought the player who would have been the greatest Running Back ever was Gayle Sayers. If modern medical technology were around during Sayer's era he may have recovered in the a manner lose to Adrian Peterson and put up numbers that would truly manifest his unlimited ability.
Come on back to Kansas City Joe!! We loved you when you were here. You were the best sports writer KC ever had! I still have The Soul Of Baseball on my book shelves. So be a Chiefs fan again and follow a true winning QB!
I keep trying to give up the NFL altogether, but my Eagles keep sticking with me. Among cities with losing legacies, Philadelphia is like the New York of losing. "If you can't lose here, you can't lose anywhere," Frank Stallone sang, in "Philadelphia, Philadelphia." Cleveland can only aspire to the losing legacy of my hometown. Repeat after me: E-A-G-L-E-S EAGLES!
As much as I disdain the Eagles (Not as much as the Cowboys) whose fans are only slightly less obnoxious than Jets fans. That said, you cannot be serious calling this franchise losers. In 22 seasons, the have had a winning season 15 times. The Eagles have made the Playoffs 14 times. What team has made the playoffs more in the 21st century? The Eagles have also won the NFC East Division 9 times and won the NFC Conference Title twice. They won one of the two Super Bowls they were in. I'd say that they have made their fans happy over the last 23 seasons.
Great point, so let me clarify. Two things are at play here. First, I'm talking about a legacy of losing as a city. I came of age as a sports fan in at the start of '70s with stories from my grandfather and uncle. We have the first baseball franchise to have lost 10,000 games, but long before that I knew the Phillies' 1964 collapse like gospel. The Eagles were horrendous, just a few years removed from the Joe Must Go year. The Sixers' set the record for worst record in NBA history, a record that hasn't been eclipsed in the tanking era. I don't care about hockey, but we've got all 4 major franchisee. The Flyers and their fans have been cruising in their Broad Street Bullies era forever. The Eagles have been consistently competitive for a long times now, but that doesn't wipe away all the entitled whining much of our fanbase does over the fact that we've only won one Super Bowl.
Second, I'm simply pulling out all the stops I can so Joe can start rooting for the Eagles. The Bills are likely a better choice, but I've got to give it my best to steer him to my team.
I see, I thought you were only referring to the Eagles. My apologies for my mistake and your sports heartbreaks emanating from the City of Brotherly Love. I have a bit of a Philadelphia sports connection that befuddles me to this day. The 1964 Phillies flop has to be the worst in baseball history. Growing up, by the time I was able to comprehend baseball, the tri-state area no longer had an NL baseball team. My Grandfather was a diehard Brooklyn Dodgers fan and hated the Yankees. At the age of seven, I started watching baseball with an understanding of what was going on. With no NL team in New York, and the Yankees televising for free all 162 of their games, I watched a lot of Yankee games. But I also watched a Triple-A team located in Jersey City, where I lived. The Jersey City Jerseys televised their games on channel 13 before it became the education PBS station for the Metropolitan area. I usually watched most of my baseball in 1961 at my grandfather’s house on weekends. My Grandfather always rooted for whoever was playing against the Yankees. He hated the Yankees with a fervor. However, always watching the Yankees and Mickey Mantle grew on me. I eventually evolved into a secret Yankee fan. Mickey Mantle was my favorite player, followed closely by Roger Maris. I would sit with my grandfather and silently root for the Yankees. I didn't hide it as well as I thought I did, as my grandfather would occasionally say, "Are you rooting for the Yankees?"
When I was at my own house, I would watch the Triple-A, Jersey City Jerseys (Formerly the Havana Reds who fled Castro's Cuba, and shunned the nickname "Reds" due to its obvious communist connotation). If I recall correctly, they only televised the Jersey City Jerseys' weekend games. My grandfather would attend these games and bring my oldest brother with him. The Jerseys played their home games inside Jersey City's grand Roosevelt Stadium, which was built during the Depression with WPA funds in the 1930s. The Jersey City Mayor, Frank Hague had a special relationship with FDR. In every State but New Jersey, the WPA funds were issued to each State's Governor to allocate the funds as each Governor deemed necessary. Only in New Jersey did the WPA Funds get issued to the Mayor of Jersey City, Frank Hague. He proceeded to build a 'State-of-the-Art Baseball Stadium that was dedicated to President Roosevelt, as it was named Roosevelt Stadium. This ballpark was as grand and beautiful as any stadium in Major League Baseball, and better than most. It was designed as a combination of Wrigley, Ebbets, and Crosley Fields. The outfield walls beyond the fences were covered with lush Ivy in the same style of brick as Wrigley Field. The Left Field scoreboard is stylized upon the Leftfield scoreboard at Crosley Field. The Rightfield scoreboard was modeled upon the same style as the Ebbets Field Rightfield scoreboard. Overall, Roosevelt Stadium was a 'State-of-the-Art Ballpark that was the envy of most major league stadiums.
Being a 7 and 8-year-old kid from Jersey City, I watched as many of those Jersey City Jersey Triple-A games on TV as I possibly could. My older brother used to go to almost every home game as my grandfather was the Director of the Jersey City Parks Department and Roosevelt Stadium fell under his Supervision, albeit, Roosevelt Stadium had its own grounds Director who answered to my grandfather, who was also one of my grandfather's best friends. My brother was able to go into the Jersey City Jerseys locker room and got autographed bats and balls. I got a bunch of Black and White glossy photographs of the Philadelphia Phillies Manager, Tom Sawyer, and their players as the Mayor of Philadelphia supported The Jersey City Mayor in the 1960 Mayoral election. The Philadelphia Phillies then publicly became my favorite major league team, and the Yankees were secretly my real favorite baseball team.
I winded up developing a love for the Phillies, even when the New York Mets brought back NL baseball to the New York metropolitan area. While I quickly grew to adore the terrible 1952 Mets, they were terrible, so I still had an allegiance to the Phillies who were a very good team at the time. I am, drank and slept baseball at that time in my life. Like many other baseball-crazy kids, I snuck my transistor radio into bed to listen to the Mets' night games wherever I slept, even though I slept in the same bed with one of my four brothers. They enjoyed the games too. Regardless of whether I was at home or a relative's house, and/or my family's rented summer bungalow, I batted a 1.000, as I never got caught once, or at least nobody interrupted or stopped me from listening to the Mets' games... Even back then, I could discern that, as it got later into the games, the game's broadcast would inevitably become a little more difficult to discern, especially when Bob Murphy and Ralph Kiner teamed up. Everything was very funny to these two guys once the game got around the 7th inning.
I didn't realize that their slurring wasn't a transmission issue, but rather a Rheingold Beer overdose. if I recall correctly, when there was a Rheingold Beer commercial, Bob Murphy would say something to the effect of "I sure would enjoy a nice cold Rheingold right now. Then Ralph Kiner would respond, with, "Well Bob, don't forget about your friend Ralph. I sure would love a nice crisp, cold, and clear Rheingold right now too." And they would inevitably always find things to be much funnier during the late innings.
I found out much later that this was due to this duo pounding beers during the telecast. Even though the New York Mets were now my official favorite team, they were beyond horrible, while the Phillies were a polished, good and exciting pennant contender. 1964 was my last year as a new publicly official Phillies fan. I had so much confidence before the 1964 season that I bet my friend Louie, a diehard Mets and Giants fan, a dollar that the Phillies would have a better record than the Giants.
Even though the Phillies had an almost guaranteed pennant, they somehow lost and broke my heart with the worst collapse in baseball history. Even though I was barely able to win my bet with Louie (who still has yet to pay his debt in 58 years) I could no longer split my allegiance with a team that somehow, against all odds. FAILED!!!
What an amazing set of tales. Thanks for sharing!
My pleasure, Jim.
Except for the recent Super Bowl win and not too distant Phillies championship...
Yes - isn’t there a rule that says no complaints within 5 years of a super bowl win?
Joe, I am a little older than you, 62, and I grew up a Cowboy fan but in 1986 I had enough of how the local media covered them at the exclusion of the other area teams and started rooting against them. I must admit I have enjoyed rooting against their overhyped asses as much as I ever enjoyed rooting for them, now when I am asked who my favorite team is I say who ever the Cowboys are playing.
Here to say that you HAVE to pick the Panthers as your Week 1 Diary team. I mean, the Browns are coming to Charlotte and I presume Baker Mayfield will be the starting QB for the Panthers that day. The column is going to write itself.
The Vikings and the Browns are one and the same, please Joe, Skol Vikes!
You should join me as part of the Lions fan base. I have been a die-hard Lions fan since I was a child and in my 39 years on this planet, they have given me plenty of reasons to find a new team and only a few to applaud a job well done, but all that being said, I still come back, year after year, equally excited and filled with hope that this is finally going to be the year that they turn it around. I know that isn't exactly an outstanding sales pitch, but considering you have been a Browns fan your entire life, there is probably some familiarity in it, which is something to look for in a quest to find a new home. :-)
Lions ownership seems to care about the community more than most
Sex Ed on Sunday, just have been church
Riveting I bet
Sept. 16, 1979, Catfish Hunter Day at Yankee Stadium
Greg Pruitt was a joy
Bills! Bills! Bills!
Good for you, Pos. Haslams are inept and rich.
What about Bob Kraft? Why does he get off Scott-free?
Same reason Deshaun did - $$$$$