OK, where did we leave off ...
Let's get back to the Browns.
Warfield for Phipps … The Browns miserable run at QB over the last 40+ years, interrupted by guys you can count on two fingers, may have begun in 1970 with Mike Phipps. And he was acquired in particularly painful fashion. Prior to the 1970 season, in search of their franchise quarterback (sound familiar?), the Browns opted to deal WR Paul Warfield to Don Shula and the Miami Dolphins for the third overall pick of the draft. Warfield, a fan favorite from Warren, Ohio and tOSU, had been a first round pick in 1964 and a key contributor since day one, helping the Browns to their last NFL championship in his rookie year. The Browns used that pick to select Phipps, an All-American QB out of Purdue and the Heisman runner-up in 1970. A two-time Super Bowl champion with Miami, Warfield continued on as one of the premier receivers in football and would eventually be enshrined into the HOF. Phipps … would not.
Kyle & Teed's favorite, Red Right 88 … This was the play call that sealed the Browns' fate in the famous 1980/81 divisional playoff against the Oakland Raiders at frozen Cleveland Stadium. The '80/'81 Browns were one of the most beloved teams in Cleveland sports history. The "Kardiac Kids", behind the arm of NFL MVP Brian Sipe, rose from the doldrums of a very, very dark decade in Cleveland sports to go 11-5 in the regular season to secure an AFC Central Division title and a home playoff game, winning many of the games in heart-stopping, nail-biting fashion along the way. But this January day was more suited for ice fishing than offense, sub-zero temps, swirling winds off Lake Erie registering a wind chill of 18-below, the painted dirt of the field frozen solid. Trailing, 14-12, Sipe drove the team to the Raiders' 13-yard line with 49 seconds remaining. Kick it now? Run the ball once to give kicker Don Cockroft a better angle? (Cockroft was a straight-on kicker, not soccer style.) The 30-yard FG was no chip shot proposition in these field and weather conditions. Cockroft had hit a couple from this distance earlier in the game, but had also missed a PAT. Coach Sam Rutigliano, "Riverboat Sam", called for Red Right 88, a pass play designed for Sipe to hit TE Ozzie Newsome crossing in the back of the end zone. Rutigliano would famously instruct Sipe before he returned to the field to, "Throw it to the blonde in the mezzanine," should Newsome not be open. Sipe's throw didn't hit the blonde. Oakland DB Mike Davis cut in front of Newsome and picked off Sipe's underthrown pass in the end zone, Sipe's third interception of the day, and preserved the win for the Raiders. Oakland would, of course, go on to win the Super Bowl over the Eagles. Think this was the first time sports made me cry. An 11-year-old tipyerbartender sitting on the couch in disbelief. (Wasn't quite old enough to cry in my beer yet.)
The Drive … 1986/87 AFC Championship. Since the Browns going to the Super Bowl is the lifelong dream of so many Clevelanders, this one probably haunts the locals more than any on the list, the game that put John Elway on the map. The Browns had finished the season at 12-4 to secure the #1 seed and home field throughout the playoffs. In the divisional round, the Browns ousted the New York Jets, 23-20, in thrilling comeback fashion behind a playoff record-setting passing performance from QB Bernie Kosar. With just a home game against the Broncos standing in the way, the fans could almost smell the Super Bowl. Kosar hit Brennan on a 48-yard TD pass to give the Browns a 20-13 lead with 5:32 to play. The Broncos muffed the ensuing kick off, and were pinned at their own two. Now the Browns fans could taste the Super Bowl, the defense had stifled Elway and the Broncos all day long. But you know the rest. Elway scrambled, eluded, and passed the Broncos down the field to paydirt, a 15-play, 98-yard, five-minute drive to tie the game at 20. Denver converted three third downs on the drive (including the TD pass), most painfully a third-and-eighteen at midfield with under two minutes to play, a 20-yard strike from Elway. The OT period is now a forgotten footnote in this game. The Browns won the coin toss, but stalled on their first and only possession. Elway drove the Broncos 50 yards to position Rich Karlis for a game-winning FG. His kick won the game, but may have missed! The kick sailed over (or wide of?) the left upright, and many eyewitnesses viewing from the opposite end zone will swear to their graves that that kick was wide left. Typical.
The Fumble … 1987/88 AFC Championship. Just one year after "The Drive", the Browns and Broncos met again in the AFC Championship, this time in Denver. Browns fans had not yet even fully recovered from the last one. This game was much more of a shootout, with Kosar and Elway trading big play after big play. An Elway TD pass put the Broncos up, 38-31, with four minutes to play, providing Kosar with an opportunity to deliver some year-old payback with a legendary drive of his own. And he did, almost. Bernie drove the Browns to the Denver 8-yard line with a minute to play. On the next play, RB Ernest Byner appeared headed for the end zone as he dashed through a gaping hole on the left side. I never actually saw "The Fumble" happen, I was too busy rolling around the floor of the TV lounge in my college freshman dorm in celebration of what I thought to be the tying score. I think my friends were afraid to tell me that Byner had fumbled. Just before he crossed the goal line to score what would have been his third TD of the game, Byner was stripped of the ball. By Jeremiah Fucking Castille. And they haven't been close to the Super Bowl since.
The Browns move to Baltimore … 1995 was a weird year for the Browns. Despite coming off the first playoff season in years and a winning record (before the move was announced) in the '95/'96 season, the fans STILL hated Bill Belichick for releasing local hero Bernie Kosar two seasons prior, and the media STILL hated Bill Belichick because he was the same warm and fuzzy guy you know now, just without all the Lombardi trophies. And for the first time in forever, the Browns spent most the first half of the year as second page news, bumped from the headlines by Tribe Fever. But in early November, the Browns got the front page back, for all the wrong reasons. Shocking the city of Cleveland and NFL fans everywhere, Art Modell announced that the team would be moving to Baltimore after the season. This was unthinkable. The Browns were a civic treasure, a source of pride for the city since the 1950's, and one of the most storied franchises in all of sport. Modell was heavily villainized for the move, and rightly so, but really he was as much victim as villain. A victim of back room, dirty, and shortsighted city and county politics, a victim of his own bad business decisions for 30+ years. His hand was a bit forced. I also have always had my suspicions that Modell was merely a puppet in this show, and that the move and subsequent return of the Browns was engineered by the late Al Lerner and the league. The much wealthier Lerner was a minority partner in the Browns prior to the move. His business (MBNA) was based in Baltimore, and it's no secret Lerner put Modell in contact with the decision makers in Baltimore. Lerner was on the dais in Baltimore that November day when Modell announced the move. And Lerner emerged as the only viable candidate to own the "new" Browns, with a shiny new stadium paid for the tax payers of Cuyahoga County. A new stadium for which Modell had been asking for years. In the end, everyone got what they wanted. Modell, now flush with cash, remained the owner of the now Baltimore Ravens and got his Super Bowl. Bill Belichick, dismissed by Modell before the first season in Baltimore, went on to become theSuper Bowl winning "genius" we know him as today. Lerner got his own NFL team. The league got a team back in previously jilted Baltimore, and a team back in the cradle of the game, northeast Ohio. Even Bernie Kosar got a ring, backing up Troy Aikman for one of the Cowboys' Super Bowl runs. Everyone got what they wanted except Browns fans. They got three years without football, followed by 16 years of some of the crappiest football in the league. One playoff appearance (a loss), terrible draft after terrible draft, terrible front offices, terrible coaches, and a comical parade of quarterbacks stretching around the block. In other words, a big shit sandwich.
How about a little more Cavs heartbreak?
The Shot … If nothing else, Cleveland sports is good at providing opposing players the platform to stamp their legacies. The '88/'89 Cavs had set a team record of 57 wins, finishing second in the division to the Detroit Pistons and 10 games ahead of the Chicago Bulls. The Cavs had swept the season series from the Bulls, 5-0. So when the first round of the playoffs rolled around that year, Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls did not seem to pose much of a threat. These were the Cavs of Mark Price and Brad Daugherty, and HOF coach Lenny Wilkens, a deep and promising team that seemed on the cusp of years of deep playoff runs. But the Bulls were not the first round speed bump most had expected them to be, and deciding game five in Richfield went down to the wire. People will remember Craig Ehlo trying to defend Jordan on that final play forever, but what is forgotten is the back-and-forth duel between Jordan and Ehlo (yes, Ehlo!) down the stretch. The lead changed hands five times in the final ninety seconds, including a brilliant inbounds play in which Ehlo passed the ball in and immediately got it back for driving layup that seemed to send the Cavs to the next round. You know the rest, you've seen it a million times. Jordan rises up. Ehlo, playing perfect defense, leaves his feet to contest the shot. Jordan seems to hang in the air, Ehlo comes down, shot goes down, time expires. "The Shot" kind of carried over in the years that followed for the Cavs. That team was probably good enough to win an NBA title at a different time. But not with Detroit's "Bad Boys" arcing at the height of their run, and not with Michael Jordan entering his prime.
What's Cleveland sports heartbreak without a little more Tribe?
The 1995 Cleveland Indians were a goddamn machine, built to pummel opposing pitchers into a bloody and swollen mess. The '94 Tribe had seemed poised for a playoff run, just three games out and gaining on the division lead when the plug was pulled on the season (another heartbreak). So when baseball resumed for an abbreviated campaign in '95, the talented Tribe shot out of a cannon and never stopped. 100 wins, 44 losses in the shortened season. 100 wins in a 144-game season! Albert Belle mashed 50 bombs and 50 doubles. Again, in just 144 games! How he didn't win the '95 MVP instead of Mo Vaughn is beyond ridiculous. The team clubbed its way to the best record in baseball and the AL Pennant, beating the Big Unit in Seattle to send the Tribe to its first World Series since 1954. The town was crazy for the Tribe. But in an age-old lesson of good pitching beating good hitting, the bats went cold in the Fall Classic against the Atlanta Braves. The big three of Maddux, Smoltz, and Glavine, aided by a strike zone extending roughly half a mile off the plate, silenced the Tribe's mighty lumber to the tune of a team BA barely above .200 and a 4-2 WS victory, the only one the Braves would win in that extended run.
The 1997 World Series was a seven-game classic between the Tribe and the Florida Marlins. The Tribe came within two outs of ending a nearly 50-year title drought. It was a series marked by the improbable. I always like to note that Chad Ogea beat Marlins' ace Kevin Brown, not once but twice in this series, and the Tribe still lost! And of course, game seven. Rather than turning to the veteran Charlie Nagy, manager Mike Hargrove opted to hand the ball to rookie fireballer Jaret Wright for game seven in Miami. And by God, it worked. The Indians took a 2-1 lead into the bottom of the ninth inning, putting the game in the hands of Jose Mesa. He blew it. A Craig Counsel sac fly sent the game into extra innings. The game would be up to Charlie Nagy after all. This time Counsel would score the winning run on a base hit from Edgar Renteria with two outs in the bottom of the 11th. Nagy's defense had betrayed him, Counsel had reached on an error. Cruelly, Nagy received the loss after being passed over for the start, and Cleveland's endless championship drought continued. To this long-suffering fan, this was the toughest one to swallow.
The 2007 ALCS doesn't get quite the run of the previous two on the list, probably because of the round, but it was a pretty epic and painful collapse by the Tribe. A decade after the great offensive teams of the nineties, the 2007 Tribe pitched its way to the ALCS and seemed poised to pitch its way to glory, up 3-1 on the Boston Red Sox with their ace and 2007 CY Young, C.C. Sabathia, lined up for a closeout game five in Cleveland. But Josh Beckett was better that night, sending the series back to Boston. Now the Tribe turned to the 19-game winner formerly known as Fausto Carmona, fresh off a recent steely performance in the famous "bug game" against the Yankees in the ALDS. Fausto's knees were knocking from the outset, the Sox clobbered the Tribe to set up game seven in Boston. Jake Westbrook v. Dice-K. You wouldn't remember it from the 11-2 score, but Westbrook pitched his heart out that night, much better than the Tribe's pair of aces had in the series. But the Tribe's rally from 3-0 to 3-2 fell short, and the wheels came off in the late innings. The Red Sox would, of course, go on to sweep the overmatched Colorado Rockies in four games. Couldn't help but feel, again, what could have been.
So there you have it, and I didn't even get into 10-cent beer night in the summer of 1974. There are, of course, other heartbreaks, shameful moments, disastrous trades that dot the landscape of Cleveland sports over the last 50-60 years. But those are my biggies.
So to paraphrase Princess Leia, "Help us, Obi-BRON Kenobi. You're our only hope."
And if you have a heart, pull for the Cavs. GO CAVS!
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