by Mickey McBride saved Football in Cleveland
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.
Bottom Line – Mickey McBride saved football in Cleveland!
Paul Brown is the greatest coach in NFL History
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.
This came after a failed attempt in the Cleveland local newspaper to let the fans decide on a name for the team. The Fans had voted for Panthers as the name for the team, but Paul Brown shot that down. He stated that the Panthers were associated with failure from a past team in town. Brown was brought in to coach the team after years of serving in the U.S. Navy. He signed a contract worth a reported $17,500 yearly, which at the time was the highest paid coaching contract in football. McBride even reportedly offered Brown a stipend for the rest of his time in the military.
Brown wasted no time bringing in as many players as he felt could help the team immediately win. Some of the biggest and best players included Northwestern quarterback, Otto Graham. Running behind Graham would be eventual Hall of Fame running back, Marion Montley. With star wide out, Dante Lavelli, and placekicker, Lou “The Toe” Groza, the new team in town proved to be a force to reckon with.
The Browns began practicing at the campus of Bowling Green State University a couple hours west of from Cleveland. The team colors came from the Bowling Green Falcons, who were brown and orange. “The Browns were being lead by a great disciplinarian”, DeLuca recalls telling a story regarding coach Paul Brown, “He was such a strict coach that even enforced a dress code, but that is why his players respected him. He even fired team captain, Jim Daniel, after he had gotten drunk a week before the 1946 Championship game. Daniel had gotten so drunk that he even took a swing at a cop. In order to set an example for the rest of his team, Paul Brown didn’t hesitate to cut his captain”.
The Browns joined the All American Football Conference in 1946. So prepared for the challenge was Brown that he even convinced McBride to keep a list of reserves, who didn’t make the team, employed on his taxi cab payroll just in case of an injury. The part-time taxi drivers were fondly known as the Taxi Squad. Brown searched the entire country to bring in the best talent he could find.
The Browns took the field at Municipal Stadium for the first game against the Miami Seahawks in front of 63,000 fans on September 6, 1946. Joe DeLuca can still close his eyes and recall the moment fondly. “The lights were shut off in the whole stadium, the only light coming from the exits signs when a spotlight from the right field stands turned on. The light shone into the dugout where the Miami Seahawks players were about to run out and take the field. As the announcer spoke and the first player from the Seahawks ran across the field, he kicked up a little dust as he ran across the dirt infield. I remember getting chills seeing this thinking something great was happening. I still get goose bumps as I think about it all these later”,
DeLuca can still name every single player from the 1946 roster, the position they played, and their number without even having to look at a team picture. Years later, he met Lou Groza at a laundry mat and told him that it was the greatest team in Cleveland Browns history. When Groza asked him why he felt that team was the best ever, DeLuca replied “If that team was lousy, no one would have came and they would have left town”. It was vital that the 1946 Cleveland Browns be great.
Winning brought packed houses for each game. The Cleveland fans quickly forgot about the Rams when the Browns crushed the Seahawks and kept the ball rolling all season. Mickey McBride was a smart business man who took full advantage of the team’s success. Tickets sold at the premium price of 25 cents each. Included in each paid program was a raffle number to allow a fan to win a brand new car. McBride even promised a big celebrity to appear at every home game as well.
In 1946, the Cleveland Browns won their first league championship by beating the New York Yankees 14-9. This completed a magical first season that spilled over into a 1947 season. In their second year, the Browns defeated the Baltimore Colts 42-0 for a second consecutive championship. Heading into 1948, nothing would change as the Browns won their third championship with a 49-7 rout over the Buffalo Bills. The Cleveland Browns did not lose a single game the entire 1948 season making them a dominant force in the league
The 1948 year in sports had been so amazing for Cleveland that the city was now known simply as “The City of Champions”! As Joe Deluca recalls, “We were so spoiled with all the winning; it was as if it would never end”. In 1949, the Browns won the championship yet again with a 21-7 win over the San Francisco 49ers. In 1950, the Cleveland Browns moved to the NFL but they remained dominant, winning the championship on Christmas Eve over the Los Angeles Rams 30-28. Joe DeLuca attended that game with many other rabid freezing fans. The irony was sweet, as they had beaten the former Cleveland Rams.
Otto Graham had a better career than Jim Brown and is the greatest Cleveland Browns player of all time!
Make no mistake about it, he is the greatest Quarterback in Cleveland Browns history, and one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time. Let this sink in, he went 57-13-1 as a starter. Simply unreal, that means in 9 years as a starter in Cleveland he lost 13 games. That’s less than a 2 a season. On top of that he brought Cleveland 3 NFL Championships and 4 AAFC Championships. That is 7 World Championships. Not only that, but he is a NFL Hall of Famer.
There is no debate, Otto Graham is the GREATEST Quarterback in Cleveland Browns history! Not only that, but he wasn’t even the starter in their first ever game in 1946 against the Miami Seahawks. He was the backup who worked his way into the starting role, and led the team to countless championships.
He was a champion, a leader, and unlike the militant Jim Brown, he kept the locker room together.
More on the next page
