I’ve always been the world’s worst athlete. In basketball, I’m lucky to hit the backboard. In golf, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve broken 100. Name a sport; I’ve tried it and failed. I blame it on being from Cleveland.

Cleveland Sports: Failure and Disappointment

With very few exceptions, in the course of my lifetime, the sports scene in Cleveland has been one of failure and disappointment. Heck, even when the Cavaliers won a championship, LeBron ditched the City and never looked back.

Like any native Clevelander, even though I left the area, I’m a closet fan of all the teams. That’s hard to admit, but true. I still whine about “The Move,” Art Modell’s traitorous relocation of the Browns to Baltimore. I’ll never call the baseball team anything but the Indians and my Chief Wahoo sweatshirt and baseball cap will always have an honored place in my closet.

But of all my hometown sports memories, nothing can replace the one of December 27, 1964, when the Browns won their last NFL championship game against the great Johnny Unitas and the Baltimore Colts.

Hometown Greatness

I was fourteen at the time and although my family lived hand to mouth, my father was a die-hard fan and somehow found the money to get season tickets for him, my brother, and me. The game was held at the old Cleveland Municipal Stadium, in front of 79,544 fans (the stadium was demolished in 1996-1997).

To this day, I think it must have been one of the coldest, most uncomfortable days that I can remember as our seats were on the side of the stadium where the wind blew in from Lake Erie directly into our faces.

One of our family friends owned a small deli just down the street from the stadium where we could park, grab hot corned beef sandwiches, and a thermos of hot chocolate before we walked down to the gates. Whoever designed the seating in that stadium had to be a masochist as the seats were even hard for my teenage butt to put up with.

Cleveland Football

The game was the first NFL championship game to be broadcast nationally by CBS and there are actually some cool audio and video tapes that can be viewed at the 1964 NFL Championship: Cleveland Browns vs. Baltimore Colts. If you watch the video there’s a great scene where one of the Colts picks up Jim Brown (Cleveland’s fullback) and dumps him on his head.

A play that most likely would be called for unnecessary roughness today. Those guys were tough!

After the game, my father’s best friend somehow purchased a football that was autographed by the entire team as well as Blanton Collier, the former coach.

Thanks to a very close friend, it’s now one of my most treasured possessions as seen below.

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