I had the opportunity to read 4 books received from publishers Gray & Company that Clevelanders - past and present - would enjoy. With the Christmas holiday fast approaching, any of these four Cleveland-based books would be a welcome gift for that special Clevelander in your life!
My favorites – “Cleveland TV Tales” and “Cleveland TV Tales Volume 2”, both authored by Mike and Janice Olszewski (Gray & Company, Publishers). The first book gives an extensive background on the start of television in Cleveland, laced with stories about people whose names are easily recognizable to Clevelanders: Ghoulardi, Dorothy Fuldheim, Page Palmer, and Captain Penny, just to name a few. Volume 2 looks into more recent TV personalities of the 1970s-1990s. Being a lifelong Clevelander, born here in the mid-1950s, these books were a delight to read and brought me back to the time when there were few TV channels from which to chose and how local TV stars came to be. While these books are nostalgic for Cleveland “lifers” like me, they would still be very interesting to anyone who has spent any time in our wonderful city.
My husband is reading “Glory Days in Tribe Town: The Cleveland Indians and Jacobs Field 1994-1997” by Terry Pluto and Tom Hamilton (Gray & Company, Publishers). This book covers the Cleveland Indians in their first years in Jacobs Field and the period of winning seasons. (I remember it well!) Pluto and Hamilton give a great behind the scenes look at what made the team tick, plus interesting commentary on how “Indians Fever” gripped the city. Sports fans will certainly enjoy reading these insights and reliving such an exciting time in Cleveland’s sports history. (As all Clevelanders know, winning seasons here for any sport have been hard to come by!)
And on the subject of sports: Every Cleveland Browns fan knows The Bone Lady. In fact, even non-Browns fans knows of her. She’s hard to miss on game day with her creative dog bone and Browns themed attire, an homage to the Browns “Dawg Pound.” Her book “The Bone Lady” by Derba Darnall (Gray & Company, Publishers), has the subtitle “Life Lessons Learned as One of Football’s Ultimate Fans.” This story tells how she evolved, both as a person and as The Bone Lady. It’s a fun read that tells of sports but also of personal discovery.
So if you’re stuck in what to get someone for a holiday gift, any one – or all four - of these books would make an affordable gift that would bring some Cleveland joy even after the holidays are over.
All four books are available in most local bookstores and at the following links:
(Please note: The link to Amazon is provided for your convenience: I receive no compensation or consideration from Amazon or anyone else if you purchase these books!
Here’s the trailer for the upcoming film “Draft Day” which is a fictional story about one Browns GM who has a fierce drive to build a winning team. Some of the film was shot in Cleveland…and I suspect the “Factory of Sadness” will make an appearance.
I finally found the spare time to convert some of my old slide photos to a digital format, and found a few photos from inside the old Cleveland Stadium. It was the fall of 1977, and the Cleveland Browns were playing the Oakland Raiders. Sadly, the Browns lost. But, at least these photos survived the game.
Last night, the Cleveland Cavaliers lost what may have been their best chance EVER to nab the NBA championship, but the team, with the most valuable player in the NBA (LeBron James) just plain blew it. My response – snore. There is a reason I don’t get too excited about any Cleveland sports team, no matter how well they are doing. It’s because we haven’t won anything major since 1964, a pre-Super Bowl year, when the Browns were the NFL Champions. Everybody in the Cleveland area knows one of the city’s mottos is “Maybe next year…” and that the city has reportedly been cursed when it comes to their sports teams.
There are a few web sites that focus on Cleveland sports teams (and our dismal performances) such as cursedcleveland.com and waitingfornextyear.com to name just two. But, if you want to dig deep into the details of what makes Cleveland sports fans feel cursed, you have to read the book “Curses! Why Cleveland Sports Fans Deserve To Be Miserable” by Tim Long. It speaks to all the horrific sports memories that long time Clevelanders would rather forget, such as the Browns’ “Red Right 88”, the Cleveland Indians trading Rocky Colavito, and Browns owner Art Modell moving the team out of Cleveland. It’s a great read and even after reading about all the history of sports misery in Cleveland, you may not feel so bad. OK, you will feel bad for the city and the fans, but then again, maybe like me, you will chose not to let it bother you anymore.
As for the Cleveland Cavaliers and their loss to Boston last night, well, all I can say is, “Maybe next year…”
As I watch, painfully, the Cleveland Browns vs. the Baltimore Ravens today, I realized how hard it is to be a Cleveland Browns Fan. We’ve had many years of some great football, our fair share of making the playoffs, and some years of getting close to the playoffs.
But the mismanagement of the team over the last few seasons is taking a toll. There was limited optimism when Eric Mangini took over the helm as coach this season. Excitement waned further when Mangini played a guessing game with the media and fans by delaying naming the starting quarterback until right before the first game of the season. He may have been trying to delay tipping his hand so opposing teams wouldn’t be able to adequately plan their defensive strategies when playing the Browns. But the media and fans alike knew this tactic would mean the Browns players lost the valuable time they needed to form a cohesive team in support of their quarterback.
Even before this season started, I knew this was going to be a tough year to start, and likely a tough year to the end for the Cleveland Browns. I was resigned to that fact. Still, it is disheartening to see the team performing so badly this season, their record 0-3 as of this writing. Adding insult to injury was Eric Mangini taking out Brady Quinn from today’s game, and putting Derek Anderson in his place, and then Anderson throwing three interceptions. It was almost as if one could hear the collective screams of fans in the Cleveland Metro area today with each interception.
It will be a long season for Cleveland fans, but fans will continue to be fans. They will support their team, but that support will likely take the form of angry words directed towards team management. The team and management should expect, and deserves, every bit of media and fan verbal backlash that will be lobbed their way. I can envision a whole cadre of apoplectic sports writers and sportscasters writing their scathing copy right now, foaming at the mouth.
So, to help calm everyone’s nerves and soothe the anger, let’s think back to happier days when many of us were a lot younger and the team was a lot better. Here’s a short video that contains the Cleveland Browns Fight Song from the early 1960s. When I hear it, I think of my dad glued to his black and white TV with a radio to his ear, trying to catch every bit of the game. It also reminds me of the years that Clevelanders were not ashamed to be Browns fans. The only constant over all those years – Clevelanders still hate the Steelers, and they always will.
Thinking back to better days: The Old Cleveland Brown’s Fight Song
Cleveland’s NFL football team, The Cleveland Browns , incites all kinds of passion in people, some of it the good kind, some of it bad. Long time Clevelanders have a love-hate relationship with the team. It comes from many years of having fans’ hopes raised when teams reached the playoffs, only to have fans’ hopes dashed when the team just can’t quite reach the top rung. Of course, just this past Monday (October 13), the team temporarily redeemed itself with a 35-14 crushing of Superbowl champions New York Giants, handing them their first loss of the season.
The team and fans have garnered some interesting nicknames over the years. For example, they called the 1980 team the “Kardiac Kids” because of many heart-stopping games that were won or lost in the last few minutes or seconds of the game. The area near the goal line near the bleacher section is now called the “Dawg Pound” because of the dog costumes and dog paraphernalia the fans bring to the game. The moniker was reportedly first conceived by Hanford Dixon (cornerback) who initially gave his defensive teammates the name "Dawgs" to inspire them before the 1985 season. The defense would bark upon certain successful plays, behavior that was soon parroted by the fans. (Thankfully, they didn’t call them the Parrot Pound.)
Despite fans having to endure some crushing defeats – like the one at the hands of the infamous “Red Right 88” play – they still remain loyal to the team. However, an almost fatal blow to the team came when Art Modell announced in late 1995 that he would be moving the team to Baltimore. Fans were outraged, and it clearly had an effect on the team, who finished that season 5-11. Luckily, a legal settlement allowed the Browns name to stay with the city. With a new stadium completed, the Browns had a new team for Cleveland in 1999.
Rather than recap the extensive history of the team here, there are already many places where a complete history of the team can be found. Details going as far back as the team’s founding in 1946 can be found on Wikipedia. There is also current and historical information on the team’s official web site, clevelandbrowns.com , which also includes a great multimedia section . If you’d like a quick video history of the Browns in pictures, take a look at the video below.
A prerequisite of being a true Clevelander is that you have to be a die-hard Browns fan. In my book, being a die-hard Browns fan means it's OK if you get upset with the team when they don't play well. In fact, that's probably the only way you can survive as a Browns fan because let's face it, if you don't vent about the team, it will make you crazy.
So to help everyone stay charged up about this season, here's a short YouTube video that the older Browns fans may enjoy. It's a clip of the old Browns "fight song" from about 40-50 years ago. I think it was drilled into my head as a kid since my dad was a big sports fan. Now that I've heard it again, it makes me feel somewhat hopeful that we could still have a chance - not to mention feeling a little younger again.
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