by There was a time in Cleveland sports that winning wasn’t hoped for, it was expected. People across the country have made the mistake in recent years to mock Cleveland sports teams because we haven’t won a World Championship in over forty-nine years. What those fans don’t realize is that this city was built on winning and that our fans can and will survive anything.
Cleveland is a blue-collar city with hardworking people that want to support their hardworking teams. No matter the previous season’s record, the loyal fan base is confident that this will be their season. Times have been tough for Cleveland sports teams, but it wasn’t always that way. In fact in the late forties, all of the fifties and the early sixties, Cleveland was the marquee sports city on the planet.
Joe DeLuca, who grew up in Cleveland, has many stories about the winning years of the past. Things were much different then and winning wasn’t a gift, but a birth right. Joe was born in 1933 and he had the incredible opportunity to see the first ever Cleveland Browns football game in person. Throughout the first fifteen years of his life, he saw multiple championship seasons, not only in football, but hockey and baseball as well.
When he wasn’t listening to hockey or baseball games, pro football took center stage in DeLuca’s sports filled heart. In 1935, when he was only three years old, the city of Cleveland got its first pro football team named the Cleveland Rams. “The team only cost $10,000, I wanted my father who had very little money to chip in $1,000 so we would be 1/10 owner. Offcourse it didn’t happen, but we could have been millionaires today had we known,” DeLuca recalls. The Rams were named after the Fordham University Rams, best known for their Seven Blocks of Granite, their offense line anchored by Vince Lombardi. Lombardi went on to coach the NFL’s Green Bay Packers to several championships and even the first two Super Bowl victories.
As a small child, DeLuca would go the Cleveland Ram football games with his uncles and father. He fondly remembers walking up Lexington Avenue to the Old League Park. The Green Wall seemed as if it went on forever. The fan following for pro football wasn’t as strong as the backing for college games, but it was slowly starting to gather steam. His uncles wouldn’t say “We are going to see the Rams”, instead they would say “We are going to see the pros”.
After several horrible seasons, the Rams actually disbanded for the entire 1944 season. With college football drawing 80,000 fans, and Rams games only drawing 3,000, the hiatus didn’t come to a surprise to many. However, in 1945 Rams owner, Dan Reeves, brought the Rams back for one more season. This time things would be different as the Rams were headed for a massive turnaround. The talent was about to put it all together for a run at the championship.
On December 16, 1945, a cold winter’s day in Cleveland, the championship game took place between the Cleveland Rams and the Washington Redskins, led by Sammy Baugh. Many fans that saw him play considered Baugh one of the greatest football players of all time. It was a tight game that had four points scored by a player not even wearing a uniform.
In the first quarter, Washington quarterback, Sammy Baugh, dropped back to pass in the end zone, but the ball hit the goal post. The rule stated that when this occurred, a two point safety would be charged against the offensive team. Back then, the goal post was at the goal line and not at the back of the end zone. This gave the Rams a two- point lead. Those points proved crucial later in the game.
After Cleveland answered a Washington touchdown with one of their own, the time came for an unorthodox extra point. Quarterback, Bob Waterfield, who was also the Rams place kicker, booted the ball and it bounced off the goal post before going in. It was the same goal post that created the safety from earlier in the game. The final score saw Cleveland celebrating a 15-14 win and their first pro football championship.
The famed owner of the Washington Redskins, George Preston Marshall, was so irate that two major consequences emerged from this game. The first occurred later that night when at dinner with his coach, Dudley Degroot, the vaunted owner fired Degrott, who had the nerve to complain that his wife’s purse was stolen at the game. Marshall was so irate that the coach dared complain about anything other than the loss that he fired him on the spot. The second major event to occur was that of the safety rule being reversed. From that point forward, any ball hitting off the goal post thrown by the offense was considered a dead ball. It was referred to by most as the “Baugh Marshall rule”.
For twenty plus years I heard DeLuca exclaim: “That goalpost should be in the Hall of Fame”! In the spring of 2012, I visited the Pro Football Hall of Fame with my father-in-law, and to our amazement a piece of that exact goalpost was part of a special exhibit. DeLuca’s wish had finally come true after sixty-seven years.
The unbridled enthusiasm of winning the championship would quickly wore off when owner, Dan Reeves, announced he was moving the Cleveland Rams to Los Angeles in 1946. It wasn’t total heartbreak, because the city would still have pro-football; it would just be a new team under owner Mickey McBride.
McBride, who owned the Yellow Cab Taxi Company in Cleveland, was also an active real estate agent. His first order of business was to move the Cleveland Browns from League Park to the new Cleveland Municipal Stadium downtown. If not for him, there might have not been a football in Cleveland for many years. McBride hired the legendary, Paul Brown, for whom the team was later named. Brown was famous in college football for leading the Ohio State Buckeyes to a National Championship in 1942.Many people have the false impression that the team was named after the “Brown Bomber” Joe Louis; however, it is a fact that they were named after coach, Paul Brown.
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